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MIDDLETOWN Republican candidate for state representative Angel Fernandez, until recently an unknown in local politics, said his deep military and business experience make him an ideal candidate to swipe a seat from Democrats this November.

Fernandez, 45, is facing State Rep. Matt Lesser, the Democratic incumbent, in the race for the 100th House District seat.

He said he grew up in the North End of Hartford and has lived in Middletown for 17 years. He spent 18 years in the U.S. Navy, retiring in 2007 due to injury as a master-at-arms second class.

"Right now people are so disappointed with both parties," he said. "It's shocking how disconnected a lot of our politicians are with a lot of people."

Fernandez described himself as "a big Second Amendment guy" but stressed that his campaign is also focusing heavily on rolling back some Common Core education requirements and cutting taxes.

He said he felt laws already in place before new gun control laws were enacted if they had been properly enforced would have been sufficient to address gun violence. He also said the new laws did not address many concerns about mental health, and said as a state representative he would support the rights of gun owners.

Fernandez was served in Operation Desert Storm and was deployed four times to Iraq and Afghanistan in the recent conflicts as part of a military police unit and an anti-terrorism unit providing security.

By his view of the local political scene, elected officials are out of touch with the needs of low- and middle-income residents.

"I served and I fought for my country and I came home to find a mess," Fernandez said.

He is now the owner of Eleven Charlie, a consulting company he started with friends from the Navy. The firm provides threat assessments for corporate and public buildings. He also has volunteered as deputy director of emergency management for the city for five years.

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Republican Angel Fernandez Runs In Middletown's 100th House District

COLUMBUS, Ohio In an autumn of discomfort for many incumbent governors, Ohios John Kasich is smiling. He is coasting toward a second term in a state that long has been one of the nations presidential battlegrounds, campaigning on policies he believes can put a more empathetic face on the national Republican Party.

His economic philosophy is Republican orthodoxy, drawn from supply-side theory and coupled with a reformist streak. What sets Kasich apart from some others in his party, however, is his willingness to use the levers of government and the zeal with which he has embraced his own version of compassionate conservatism, with strong religious overtones.

As the governor of a pivotal Midwestern state, Kasich is seen by some strategists within his party as a potential presidential candidate in 2016. Whatever his intentions or prospects, he is nonetheless eager to put himself into the competition to reshape a national party that has lost the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections.

My party is me, he said during a lengthy interview recently at the Ohio Governors Residence. I have a right to shape my party. I have a right to have an opinion about what my party ought to be. Whos defining for me what my party is? Im trying to define what I think the party is.

Kasich, who defeated incumbent Democratic governor Ted Strickland in 2010, can look just beyond his borders and see fellow Republican governors struggling in their reelection campaigns. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett is one of the most endangered incumbents in the nation. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker face stiff competition but could survive.

Kasich is in a far more enviable position, with recent polls showing him with a double-digit lead over his Democratic challenger, Cuyahoga County executive Ed FitzGerald. Kasich owes his current political standing in part to what he has done as governor. Perhaps more significant is FitzGeralds late-summer implosion brought on by anemic fundraising, a police report from 2012 that said he had been in a car at 4:30a.m. with a woman who was not his wife, and the later revelation that he had not had a valid drivers license for more than a decade.

Kasich won four years ago by just 2 percentage points. Many recent Ohio gubernatorial elections have not been overly competitive. The high water mark was set in 1994, when then-governor George Voinovich was reelected with 72percent of the vote.

Ohio Democrats have largely given up on the gubernatorial race, but not in their criticism of what they see as the skew in Kasichs record. Hes taken all kinds of steps designed to do one thing: weaken the middle class, to exacerbate the problem of income inequality and benefit his rich friends, said Joe Rugola, director of the Ohio Public School Employee Unit and an international vice president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

But Rugola sees Kasich as politician with presidential ambitions who doesnt always fit the mold of other conservatives. To get there (the presidency), hes going to have to accommodate far-right funders like the Koch brothers and [Sheldon] Adelson, Rugola said. I dont think hes abandoned his far-right principles, but I think hes a smarter politician than a Scott Walker. Theres nothing wind-up, right-wing ideologue about John Kasich. In that regard hes pretty smart about how he does this.

If Kasich were to run in 2016, he would likely face some serious obstacles, in part because he has not spent the past year getting ready to run. GOP strategists suggest he would enter as a candidate at the top of the fields second tier, as neither a purely establishment nor purely tea party candidate. He would carry baggage among conservatives for having expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act but could point to success in Ohio as a sign of how he might do in general election battlegrounds.

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Ohios John Kasich wants to redefine the Republican Party

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