Previously unrevealed pitch by Kasich for Lehman Brothers surfaces

Although John Kasich's campaign said earlier this year he only had two contacts with Ohio's pension systems trying to drum up business for Lehman Brothers, the State Teachers Retirement System now says the former Lehman managing director called them as well.

"One of our associates in our real estate area received a phone call from Mr. Kasich about eight years ago in mid-2002," Laura Eckler, spokeswoman for the pension system, told The Dispatch.

"Mr. Kasich was pitching Lehman’s brokerage service to sell our mall portfolio. It was less than a 10-minute conversation. STRS Ohio did not use Lehman for the project."

The "pitch" was confirmed in an email last month from Alan Meunch of the retirement system's real estate division.

When The Dispatch broke the story in May about Kasich's involvement with the state's multibillion-dollar pension funds, only meetings he arranged for other Lehman staffers with the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System and Ohio Police & Fire Pension Fund were divulged by both the Kasich campaign and the state's five retirement systems.

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Gov. Ted Strickland told The Dispatch the newly revealed item calls Kasich's credibility into question.

"Was it a mistake or was it a decision to withhold full disclosure?" Strickland asked. "I don't know, but I think it is a question that is relevant and should be asked and there should be an explanation."

Strickland's campaign manager, Aaron Pickrell, highlighted the same incident during a press conference this afternoon.

"Congressman Kasich and his campaign have engaged in a pattern of dishonesty regarding the true nature of his role as a managing director at Lehman Brothers," Pickrell said. "With every story that has emerged about Congressman Kasich's time at Lehman Brothers, he has offered an excuse mitigating his responsibility there, but he has refused to come clean with Ohioans. Given this repeated and consistent deception, it's clear that Congressman Kasich is hiding the truth."

Strickland has hammered at Kasich's "Wall Street values" and the former congressman's lack of details about what he did and how much he made at Lehman Brothers, whose collapse in September 2008 helped fuel the country's financial crisis. Kasich has minimized his involvement with Lehman Brothers, saying he was merely one of hundreds of managing directors and mostly worked from his Columbus office -- although he also touts his role in major deals such as one involving Google.

The pension funds lost millions when Lehamn went under, but there's no established link between those losses and Kasich's contacts six years earlier.

Today, Pickrell pointed out that one of the Lehman Brothers staffers who Kasich connected to a state pension system in 2002 approached a different Ohio pension fund in August 2008 and tried to dump toxic assets less than a month before Lehman's collapse. Pickrell admitted the Strickland campaign has no direct evidence that Kasich was involved, but said "you have to make the assumption" that as the Lehman official managing the Columbus office Kasich would know about company bigwigs from out of town trying to drum up business with a local governmental entity.

Read the full article here.