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Frank J. Lausche: Ohio's Great Political Maverick

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If you grew up in Ohio from the 1930s through the 1960s, you undoubtedly remember-or should-Frank Lausche, the bushy-haired, immensely popular Mayor of Cleveland, five-term Governor of Ohio, and two-term United States Senator.
Who was Frank Lausche? He was the highest-ranking Slovenian-American politician in the country. He was a talented baseball player who turned his back on a professional career. He was the mayor of Cleveland during one of its worst catastrophes-and governor of Ohio during World War II. And briefly he was the choice of President Eisenhower's choice to replace Richard Nixon as vice president. In case you're wondering, Lausche was a Democrat and Ike a Republican.
Those are a few examples of how author James E. Odenkirk has brought Lausche into fuller perspective. The author traces the career of the industrious youth who never went to college and yet graduated from law school and went on to a distinguished career as a municipal and common pleas judge. He shows how Lausche was an independent spirit as a judge and mayor, retaining capable Republicans like Eliot Ness in his cabinet and cracking down on the gambling dons. He describes Cleveland's version of 9/11, the East Ohio gas explosion of 1944 which virtually leveled the neighborhood in which he grew up. Lausche was the Rudolph Guliani of that catastrophe-calm, capable, and determined.
No wonder Lausche was so successful in running for governor in a Republican state. Unlike today's politicians, he eschewed ideological labels and often refused to discuss issues. Odenkirk shows how he worked the state fairs and attracted the votes of the small town Republicans with pledges of fiscal integrity. As governor, he kept those promises, keeping taxes low and committing himself only to highways (the Ohio Turnpike) and restoring of mine-scarred hillsides.
I enjoyed learning of Frank and Jane Lausche's marriage. Frank was Catholic and Jane Protestant; yet, at a time when mixed marriages were unusual, they attended their own churches without fanfare. To save money and improve their diet, Jane raised vegetables and chickens on the grounds of the Governor's Mansion when Frank was governor. They subsisted on a modest $13,000 gubernatorial salary, though Jane finally had to browbeat her parsimonious husband in providing a larger clothing allowance.
When I was a boy, I heard a family friend, a Republican politician, refer to Lausche as "Frank the fence sitter." Odenkirk shows the two sides of the coin: the fiercely independent public servant who refused to keetow to organized labor or Democratic bosses and on the opposite side, the crafty politician who managed to get elected and reelected by avoiding issues. As a senator, he hewed a conservative course that was Democratic only in its resemblance to the southerners in his own party. Odenkirk virtually admits that he was a Republican elected as a Democrat.
Ironically, on one issue, he was ahead of his time-civil rights. As governor, he always supported civil rights legislation and even desegregated a southern Ohio town with separate schools for black children. In the cauldron of the 1960s, while supporting the war in Vietnam, he voted for the Civil Rights Acts. But changes in racial demographics, Odenkirk shows, resulted in his political demise. He refused to support the first black candidate for mayor of Cleveland, Carl Stokes, who was swept into office in 1966. Two years later, organized labor and black voters combined to back John Gilligan of Cincinnati who defeated Lausche in the Democratic primary.
Odenkirk evokes the memory of long departed Ohio luminaries: Louis Bromfield, the Pulitzer-prize winning author-farmer who was a close-the closest-friend of Frank and Jane Lausche; Louis Seltzer, the powerful editor of the once-influential Cleveland Press and an early Lausche supporter; Ray Miller, the Cuyahoga County political boss who couldn't stand Lausche and yet couldn't defeat him; James Rhodes, the Republican warhorse who would be his party's version of Lausche (in political longevity) and a personal friend. In fact, the political friends of Lausche confound political logic: Robert Taft, John Bricker, even Dwight Eisenhower.
Yes, the author is aware that Lausche's politics represents a contradiction-a Democrat often clothed as a Republican. Yet he has dug deep enough to convince the reader that Lausche was a remarkable politician-the first Catholic to break into the highest echelons of politics in Ohio; the first ethnic to command the loyalty of WASP voters in rural and small town Ohio; one of the few politicians with lengthy careers never to be tarred with scandal. Ironically, his honesty and frugality were perhaps his downfall-he wanted to run the government as he ran his own life and that became increasingly difficult.
I strongly recommend this thoroughly researched and nicely illustrated book. It's obvious to me that the author, while not blind to his subject's shortcomings, really admires Frank Lausche. And, I came away from this book believing that there is a lot to admire in Lausche and that he deserves the close attention to details of his life and career. I found this book held my interest and attention (though I didn't read it in a single sitting). I give it a thumps up.

John S. Watterson