Ohio steel city hosts Kasich's 2nd 'State' speech

STEUBENVILLE, Ohio — An eastern Ohio city that's been a poster child for the successes and struggles of American manufacturing becomes the first site outside Columbus for a State of the State speech, as Gov. John Kasich prepares to set out his agenda for the coming year.

Kasich is expected to highlight the themes of education and shale gas drilling in Tuesday's address in Steubenville, a once proud steel-production center along the Ohio River.

Spokesman Rob Nichols said the location choice wasn't arbitrary. It plays to the Republican governor's priorities.

Kasich chose Wells Academy, the top-ranked public elementary school in the state, as the venue to bring attention to a school that's been able to hit achievement marks without a big budget.

Steubenville is also "the beating heart at the center of Ohio's shale play," Nichols said — offering Kasich an opportunity to tout gas and oil industry investments that are bringing blue-collar jobs back to the region.

The speech is a chance for him to reconnect with voters after last year's bitter campaign over public worker union limits. A bill overhauling Ohio's collective bargaining law was repealed by voters in November.

Outside the school, housed at Steubenville High School, about 100 demonstrators who gathered outside the school. Some came to oppose the use of hydraulic fracturing to reach Ohio's oil and gas resources, while others demonstrated in support of the Occupy movement.

Shane Hanley, 47, a locked-out worker with Cooper Tire & Rubber Co. and member of the steelworker's union, drove the 3.5 hours to Steubenville from Findlay.

He and four others came to "let the governor know we ain't forgotten what he did last year."

He said the steelworkers were instrumental in getting the voters to reject the collective bargaining law. "The union movement ain't going away and don't forget that."

Neither Kasich's critics nor his close advisers expected Tuesday's address to be detail-heavy. Kasich dislikes delivering prepared speeches and shuns teleprompters. Aides initially estimated his first State of the State speech last year would last 15 minutes; it then went well over the allotted hour.

On Monday, Ohio Democratic Party Chairman Chris Redfern predicted "an extended speech with little in the way of nouns, adverbs, subjects and predicates."