The Rule Breaker

The liner Independence had barely been warped into her North River berth last week before newsmen swarmed aboard to find out how Georgia's Democratic Senator Richard Russell, the South's candidate for the Democratic nomination in 1952, now viewed the Democratic Presidential situation. Dick Russell, who had spent the previous two months touring Europe, told the shipboard reporters that he strongly favors a middle-of-the-road Democratic candidate in 1956--and he made it clear that he thinks Ohio's Governor Frank Lausche might fit the bill just fine. Said Russell: "I consider Governor Lausche to be a middle-of-the-road Democrat, whereas some of the other prominent Democrats are considered in my part of the country to be a little to the left."

Almost immediately, other Southern conservatives, led by Arkansas' Senator John McClellan and Texas' Governor Allan Shivers, began echoing Russell's praise. They thereby focused attention on one of the most remarkable men in U.S. public life: five-term Governor Frank John Lausche (rhymes with How she), 59, who wears a mop of wildly tousled hair as though it were a banner of independence, and qualifies on the record as a superb politician, although he breaks every rule in the book--except the one for winning elections.

The Young Lamplighter. Lausche broke his first rule at birth: he committed the political error--in Ohio, which tends almost exclusively toward such oldstock political names as Harrison and Taft--of being the son of Slovenian immigrants. While a boy in Cleveland, Lausche worked as a street-lamplighter for two dollars a week. His father, a steelworker, died when Frank was 14 and, as the second of ten children, Lausche took on much of the responsibility for supporting the family. He helped his mother run a small cafe, and he also found time to become a star third baseman on the Cleveland sandlots. Before serving as an Army second lieutenant during World War I, he played professional baseball, going as high as the old Class B New England League. He quit baseball and returned to Cleveland to attend night law classes, passing his bar examination in 1920.

Just two years later he made his first political try, running for the state legislature. Lausche's most vivid memory of that campaign is the unhappy occasion when he was booked to speak at a small meeting in Chagrin Falls, near Cleveland. He noticed that all the members of his audience were women, but thought little of it. Even then Lausche was an energetic, highly emotional speaker, bathing himself in both sweat and tears. By the time he had finished, he was sopping wet on the outside, bone-dry on the inside. One of his listeners asked him militantly: "Young man, how do you stand on light wines and beer?" Said Frank Lausche: "Well, I don't know how you feel about it, but for me, I'd like a nice cold glass of beer right now." Only then did he discover that he had been addressing a W.C.T.U. chapter. Violins Before Breakfast. Lausche lost that election--and went right on appreciating the virtues of cold beer, preferably preceded by a shot of straight whiskey and accompanied by a nickel cigar. He ran again for the legislature, lost again and decided, at age 29, to retire from politics. But in 1932 he was appointed to fill a vacancy on the Cleveland municipal bench, and in 1936 he moved up, by election, to the Court of Common Pleas, where he made a name for himself by his stern treatment of gambling house operators, including the proprietors of a notorious den known as the Harvard Club.

Then as now, Lausche was highly informal in his ways. The story is told that once he was presiding over a sanity hearing in which one of the offered proofs of mental irresponsibility was that the defendant refused to wear shoes. There was a sudden shuffling sound as Judge Lausche hastily felt about with his feet, trying to find his own shoes under the bench. Lausche is an early riser, and when the mood strikes him--as it often does --he plays the violin before breakfast. He is a crack billiards player, and his golf is in the high 70s. (Fearful lest voters think he spends too much time on the links, he once exulted over narrowly missing a hole-in-one.)

But the Lausche personality is by no means as relaxed as such habits might indicate. Lausche is given to spells of deep brooding. As a judge he used to stay late at night in his office worrying about whether he was actually dispensing true justice; those who knew him predicted that he would either go far in public life or suffer a complete breakdown.

Lausche was elected mayor of Cleveland in 1941, won re-election two years later, and became Ohio's governor (succeeding Republican John Bricker) in 1945. His record is progressive: his main accomplishment as mayor was to convert the city's transit system from private to public ownership; as governor he has helped liberalize unemployment and workmen's compensation programs, pushed through statewide slum clearance bills. He also sponsored the recently completed east-west Ohio Turnpike (TIME, Oct. 10) and is now deep in plans for a multimillion north-south turnpike. On most national issues Lausche is rated as a conservative.

The Cuss Word. Despite his success as a Democratic politician, Lausche is the despair of Ohio's professional Democrats, most of whom he loudly classifies as "bosses." In 1950, when his loyal supporter, State Auditor Joe Ferguson, ran for the U.S. Senate, Lausche made it quite plain that he thought Republican Robert A. Taft was a much better man (Taft beat Ferguson by 450,000 votes while Lausche was being re-elected Governor by 150,000). Since 1952, Lausche has been unstinting in his praise of Republican Dwight Eisenhower, only last week said in a speech that Eisenhower has brought "unity and confidence" to the American people, who "more than ever feel the grave need of his leadership."

Ohio's professional Democrats who ask Lausche to appoint their friends to state jobs are almost certain to be turned down. For this reason, his name is a special cuss word among the members of the state's Democratic delegation to the U.S. Congress--yet even they have a sort of grudging admiration for Lausche's freewheeling manners. Says one Congressman: "The easiest way to guess what Lausche will do next is to decide how you would not do it yourself." Lausche even manages to keep his wife guessing about his politics. Last summer Jane Lausche, a onetime designer, visited Washington and was asked about her husband's plans for 1956. She shook her head wistfully. "If you find out," she said, "I hope you'll tell me."

A good many other people share her curiosity. Some observers feel that Lausche might suffer as a national candidate because he is a Roman Catholic. In this connection it is perhaps significant that his main out-of-Ohio support comes from the South, which, since Al Smith in 1928, has had a reputation--perhaps undeserved --of being dead set against Catholic candidates for the Presidency. Others note that he has rarely made public appearances outside Ohio and is not well-known nationally. But last week the Cleveland Plain Dealer, writing out of long experience with Frank Lausche as a vote-getter, was only half-joking when it expressed an editorial opinion: "Lausche would be a sure winner if the Democrats nominated him because he would get more than half the Democratic votes and nearly all the Republican."

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