CLEVELAND, Ohio — A former top aide to Ohio Gov. John Kasich has joined the office of U.S. Rep. Pat Tiberi, a Columbus Republican who has been testing the waters to run for Senate in 2018.

Rob Nichols will begin Monday as Tiberi’s deputy chief of staff, according to a Tiberi spokeswoman. Nichols, a veteran of Kasich’s official cabinet and presidential campaign, will advise Tiberi on communications issues, working primarily out of the congressman’s Columbus-area office.

Tiberi, of suburban Columbus, is close to Kasich and former House Speaker John Boehner, and has been putting out feelers to take on Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in 2018. He traveled to Cleveland in late June to visit University Hospitals and to meet with the Greater Cleveland Partnership, the chamber of commerce group, to promote his work on the New Market Tax Credit, a federal economic development program.

He also hosted a morning breakfast for GOP delegates that featured U.S. Speaker Paul Ryan during last week’s Republican National Convention in Cleveland.

Tiberi also recently has visited business and healthcare groups in Canton and Cincinnati, and has a future planned trip to do the same in Toledo. He is chairman of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health, and has represented Ohio’s 12th Congressional District, Kasich’s former seat, since 2001.

GOP Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel, who unsuccessfully challenged Brown in 2012, also has indicated interest in running in 2018.

Nichols worked as Kasich’s communications director from 2011 until 2015, when he joined Kasich’s ultimately unsuccessful presidential campaign.

Nichols is known for his sharp tongue and quick wit. Perhaps his most memorable quote from his time in the governor’s office came in 2013, when, in response to an inquiry from a Democratic state lawmaker about the departure of a state EPA official, he said of the lawmaker: “If she had her way, we’d all be living on a collective farm cooking organic quinoa over a dung fire. So we take her views in context.”

Nichols in the past also has taken aim at Mandel, who clashed with Kasich over issues including Medicaid expansion, hiking taxes on oil-and-gas drilling and Common Core.

Nichols, the son of a longtime Madison County judge, previously worked for former Columbus-area U.S. Rep. Deborah Pryce and the campaign for U.S. Rep. Steve Stivers.