Ohio Governor John Kasich (R) appeared in a Defending Main Street mailer this week attacking Ohio Rep. Matt Lynch (R-Bainbridge Twp.) for his opposition to Kasich’s big-government agenda.

Lynch, who fought Kasich on the Obamacare Medicaid expansion and has voted against Kasich’s increasingly costly budgets, is challenging incumbent Dave Joyce, Defending Main Street’s man in Ohio’s 14th Congressional District.

In the $27,850 hit piece sent on April 29, the Super PAC – which is funded by labor unions and led by Joyce’s friend Steve LaTourette, a conservative-hating DC lobbyist – bashed Lynch for his disloyalty to Gov. Kasich.

Joyce is backed by big-government groups and is one of the least conservative Republicans in Congress, so Defending Main Street accused Lynch of voting against “the Governor’s balanced budget” and “the Governor’s income tax cuts for hard working Ohioans.”

The mailer instructed voters in the May 6 primary to “tell Matt Lynch we’ve had enough of politicians who won’t balance budgets or cut taxes.”

Kasich’s budgets have increased state spending, and most of Kasich’s tax cuts have been paid for with tax hikes.

“The Republican voters in Northeast Ohio, they know who the conservative in this race is,” Lynch told Media Trackers. “When they [Defending Main Street] use the governor to attack me, it doesn’t hurt Matt Lynch — it hurts John Kasich.”

“Particularly in the primary, these are not the low-information voters that are swayed by attack pieces,” Lynch added. “They know who Main Street Partners is, and Steve LaTourette does no favor to John Kasich by linking him to Main Street Partners.”

Incredibly, the mailer featuring a photo of Gov. Kasich accompanied by the text, “Thanks for nothing, Matt” also slammed Lynch for suing the Kasich Administration and the Ohio Controlling Board in an effort to stop the Obamacare Medicaid expansion.

“Matt Lynch is no friend of Ohio taxpayers,” the mailer concluded. Thanks to Gov. Kasich’s Obamacare expansion, taxpayers are on the hook for billions per year to put hundreds of thousands of able-bodied childless adults on Medicaid.

Rep. Lynch was one of six Ohio House Republicans who sued over Kasich’s Obamacare end-runaround the General Assembly. Last November, Kasich lied about the legislators’ case on national television when Fox News host Laura Ingraham asked, “are they not bringing a lawsuit to stop the Medicaid expansion?”

“No that’s, that’s people on the outside,” Kasich replied.

Click the images below for full-size versions of both sides of the mailer.

Before Lynch decided to enter the 14th Congressional District race, LaTourette’s daughter Sarah filed to unseat him in the 76th Ohio House District in the May 6 primary. Weeks later, the Ohio Republican Party (ORP) refused to endorse three of the other Republicans who were parties to the Medicaid expansion suit.

Joyce’s campaign has sought to paint Lynch as less conservative than Joyce, and in the course of doing so recycled a talking point about Lynch’s personal taxes that ORP called “gutter politics” when Democrats used it in 2012.

Although Sarah LaTourette’s husband Scott Kayser is an ORP field director, the use of Kasich’s likeness in this week’s Defending Main Street hit piece may represent the most blatant attack yet on an opponent of Kasich’s Obamacare expansion.

This story was originally published at Media Trackers.