The Lonely One

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"Everybody is crazy about him," says a clubwoman from Sandusky, "and wonders why." And well they might; by all the ground rules, Governor Frank John Lausche of Ohio ought to be the worst kind of political liability. At 60 he is an unfraternal Democrat who often talks and acts like a Republican. He is the implacable enemy of lobbies and pressure groups of all kinds. Big-shot Republicans resent him; organization Democrats detest him; labor leaders denounce him as the foe of the workingman. His immigrant parentage arouses the suspicion of Mayflowering Americans. Protestants are skeptical of his Roman Catholic raising; devout Catholics deplore the fact that he is, in effect, excommunicated for marrying outside the Catholic Church. Even the schoolteachers of Ohio have reason to dislike him (he once vetoed a pay raise). He is a mystic who plays the violin or reads the poems of Robert Burns when he is moody, who keeps his own counsel, and who often agonizes in his own indecision. He runs from friends offering advice or seeking favors. He is intensely emotional, is sometimes moved to tears by the pathos of his own words.

Record Jackpots. Even in his personal appearance, he violates the rules. His fingernails often need cleaning. His iron-grey hair is as wild as a wad of steel wool. He has an instinct for rumpledness, and only the crafty vigilance of his wife keeps a reasonably presentable crease in his trousers. Nearly everything about Frank John Lausche that meets the unaccustomed eye seems politically wrong, and, to hear them talk, nearly everybody in Ohio is against him. Everybody, that is, except the voters.

For 25 years, from his goulash days as a ward heeler in Cleveland's working-class districts to the governor's mansion in Columbus, Lausche (rhymes with how she) has successfully violated the ground rules and spectacularly bucked bosses, bigots and big shots. Nearly every time that he has run for office Ohio's tabulating machines have clanked out record-breaking jackpots for him:

P:In 1943, for his second term as mayor of Cleveland, he copped 71% of the vote, an alltime record.

P:In 1952, in the teeth of the Eisenhower hurricane, he won a fourth term as governor, with an unprecedented margin of 425,000 votes--just 75,000 short of Ike's own mark in Ohio.

Lausche smoothly broke his own record a year ago, when he was inaugurated (with a cushion of 212,000 votes) as Ohio's first fifth-term governor.*

This year he might just as easily have made it an even half dozen. "My belief," he said recently (TIME, Jan. 23), "is that I could have been elected a sixth time . . . However, I would have felt embarrassed to go to the voters and ask them to vote for me on six separate occasions." He feels no embarrassment, though, in asking the voters for another favor: the seat in the U.S. Senate made famous by the late Robert A. Taft, and now uneasily occupied by George Bender. Lausche's eye is firmly fixed on the Senate, but if the Lausche luck holds, he may lift his gaze upward this year to a far more important job in Washington, the presidency.

Southern Comfort. The year 1956 is almost certainly Frank Lausche's cue to enter the stage of national politics. Last week, as the filing day for candidates came and went. Ohio's Democratic Party conceded him its nomination for the Senate without a fight: no one else was willing to challenge him. And nearly all political forecasters give him a vigorous nod over bumbling Republican Bender to win next fall's election. Yet Lausche is hedging his bet with an across-the-board wager. If Adlai Stevenson falters in the primaries or fails to win the presidential nomination on the first ballot at the Democratic Convention next August, Lausche will stand as good a chance as anybody else--better than most--to get a spot on the national ticket. He already has a full-throated cheering gallery below the Mason-Dixon line: Georgia's Senator Richard Russell, Texas' Governor Allan Shivers, Arkansas' Senator John McClellan and other Southerners have warmly endorsed him as a presidential candidate who eminently fits their conservative specifications.

Against Candidates Estes Kefauver, Averell Harriman and others in the Democratic leftfield, Lausche could muster a formidable dissident vote. He is willing enough, but typically morose about his prospects. Just the same, he has ensured himself a good start by going to Chicago as the favorite son of Ohio's 58-vote delegation. And even if he fails to win the No. 1 spot on the Democratic ticket, the governor is a good bet for the vice-presidential nomination. With his bag of delegates and friends, he might just get it.

Perfect Pitch. As Lausche looks beyond Ohio, many a non-Ohioan is pondering the secret of his success. It is partly a matter of luck. For one thing he has had the good fortune to preside over the state during a period of unparalleled prosperity: the great cities have fattened on industrial expansion; mining has boomed; and even agriculture in family-farm Ohio is relatively prosperous. From Ashtabula to Xenia, the air is filled with mill smoke and the mooing of contented cows; Ohio looks like the happy ending of George Babbitt's dream. Lausche realizes that time and circumstances have blessed him. At the White House Conference for Governors last May, he remarked that he was surprised to see so many new faces among his peers. "Does it frighten you?" asked a reporter. "Yes," said Frank Lausche, in the manner of a man who has pushed his luck a long way.

Lausche's secret is by no means luck alone. He has a powerhouse personality that comes across equally well on a TV screen, at a political rally, at a Croatian steelworker's wedding party, or in the intimacy of a taxicab. He is an instinctive politician right down to his often-unlaced shoes. He is a great orator, a spellbinder of the William Jennings Bryan tradition. His mother was proud of her perfect musical pitch; Frank Lausche has perfect pitch, too--political pitch. Audiences are mesmerized by his warm manner and his mellifluous voice; if Lausche laughs, his listeners laugh with him; if he occasionally weeps, he also moves his audiences to tears. He senses when to thunder and when to whisper, when to be partisan and when to be patriotic. The printed speeches themselves, are usually florid, often mediocre, sometimes just dull.

Names & Faces. In addition, the man has a rare talent that James A. Farley made famous in politics: almost total recall of names and faces. One day last week, as he was leaving his office in the State Capitol building in Columbus, the governor was approached by a visitor who stopped him with words that are familiar and frightening to every politician: "Governor, you don't remember me, but . . ." Lausche stopped in the corridor, looked the man over. Before he could complete his sentence, Lausche broke in: "Why, yes, I met you in Tiffin two years ago." Then, in a flood, he recalled details of the meeting, and, in a moment, the man's name came to him. When the governor left, the visitor was beaming.

Lausche's humility and sincerity register instantly with the average voter. Moving incessantly around Ohio, he hits his audiences with speeches that often are wholly unpolitical. "I do not ask you to vote for me," he said in Middletown in 1950. "I would like you to vote for me, but, above all, cast your vote for the good of the nation. Frank Lausche means nothing in the long scope of things as far as America is concerned. Only the nation and the state are important. Listen to the voice of the Americans who fell on the battlefield. Cast selfishness aside, and vote for the good of your state and your country." Such emotionalism sometimes moves cynics to laughter, political enemies to quivering rage ("He is a fraud and a lie," says Robert Reider, the Democratic candidate to succeed Lausche as governor). But it usually brings cheers from voters of the rank and file. And there can be little doubt of the governor's sincerity and deep patriotism.

Naturalize, Naturally. The governor's father, Louis Lausche, and his mother, Frances Milavec, teen-age immigrants from Slovenia (now part of Yugoslavia), met and married in a Cleveland steelworkers' district. The elder Lausches were passionately patriotic: they helped thousands of newly arrived Slovenes and other immigrants to put down roots in the U.S., gave them room and board until they were settled, and harangued them with patriotic speeches to get their citizenship papers. While Frances Lausche mothered the new arrivals, Louis helped them with their legal and naturalization problems, made good use of his knowledge of English, German, Croatian and Slovenian as an official interpreter. When he was needed as an interpreter, he often took Frank, the second of his ten children, to court with him. Once, when Frank was eleven, he substituted for his father in court.

After their modest fashion the Lausches prospered. On St. Clair Avenue, in the heart of a solid workingman's district, Louis Lausche built the Lausche Building, a two-story frame structure with store fronts below and flats above. Later he bought an adjoining apartment building. At various times the Lausche Building housed a bowling alley, a shop selling Catholic religious articles, the presses of Ameriska Domovina, a Slovenian-language weekly, a restaurant, and, until Prohibition, a wineshop, where the Lausches pressed their own wine from Ohio grapes and sold it to an eager Middle European clientele. The Lausche Building was the hub of neighborhood society, the local political forum, and a sanctuary for new arrivals from the old country.

By the time 9 o'clock Mass was over on Sundays, Ma Lausche always had a regiment-sized buffet of breaded chicken, veal and pork chops, with a Slovenian side dish of sauerkraut and Roman beans, on her dining-room table. All day long the relatives, friends and neighbors came visiting --to eat, drink, gossip and talk politics. In the evenings the family circle tightened around the upright piano in the parlor. Every member of the family played a musical instrument, or sang. Ma Lausche assigned the voices and instruments, and led the singing. Almost always, the finale was her favorite: My Country, 'Tis of Thee.

After Louis Lausche died in 1908, Frances became a gentle matriarch. "My greatest debt in life is to my mother," says Frank Lausche fervently. "She was a good, charitable person, wanting to help everyone, meticulously avoiding any acts or words that might bring hurt upon other people. Mother was proud of her children. I can still see her, dressed in her old black coat, as she stood in the courtroom and watched me take the oath of office as judge." Ma Lausche did not live to see her most famous son become mayor or governor. She died on the Fourth of July, 1934.

Struggle Upward. Even as youngsters the Lausche kids worked at odd jobs. Frank and his brothers folded and delivered copies of Ameriska Domovina. At twelve Frank got his first steady job, at $2 a week, lighting gas lamps in the neighboring village of Bratenahl. After his father and his older brother Louis Jr. died, he helped Ma Lausche in the wine shop and cafe. Some biographers have depicted the Widow Lausche and her brood in terms of stark poverty. Actually, they were always as well off as any of their neighbors. Life was a struggle, but it was a struggle upward.

Frank was a good athlete, and baseball was his first love. As a high-school sand lotter, he was hot enough to catch the eye of a professional baseball scout, and in 1916, at 20, he went off to play third base with the Duluth White Sox. His batting average for the season was .300, and he was known as "The Terror of the Northern League." In 1917 Lausche moved up to the Lawrence, Mass, team in the old Class B New England League. But the Eastern pitchers soon discovered his weakness: a low curve on the outside. At the bottom of a slump, Frank was fired, just about the time the U.S. entered World War I. After officers' training school at Camp Gordon, Ga., 2nd Lieut. Lausche began playing third base on the camp team. Another scout spotted him and, on his discharge from the Army, signed him to a contract with the Atlanta Crackers, in the Southern Association, for $225 a month.

Career by Council. Before reporting for training, Lausche went home to Cleveland. Ma Lausche thereupon called a family council to discuss his future. In the midst of his family, Frank was persuaded to give up professional baseball and study law instead (his brother William, an accomplished pianist and composer, was talked out of a musical career and into dentistry at a similar family meeting). It was an important decision for Frank Lausche and, as it turned out, a wise one. Without any previous college training, he began to study law at night, clerking in a Cleveland law firm during the day, and playing semipro baseball for $15 a game each weekend (years later, in 1951, Governor Lausche was nominated for--and reluctantly refused -- the $65,000-a-year job of U.S. baseball commissioner).

After 2 1/2 years Lausche graduated from law school, second in his class. He was also second, in a group of 160 applicants, when he passed his bar examinations with a mark of 91.7. In 1920 he joined Locher, Green & Woods, the law firm where he had clerked. Almost immediately he got into politics, as a leader in Ward 23, Cleveland's strongest Democratic district. He had been widely known in the neighborhood from his lamplighting days, and he had a pleasing platform personality. In 1922 the party put him up for the state assembly. In 1924 he ran for the state senate. He lost both races (only once since, in his first bid for re-election as governor in 1946, has Lausche ever lost at the polls). Discouraged, he drifted out of politics, concentrated on law and the pursuit of the other woman in his life.

Six Dozen Roses. One night, when Frank was a law student, he went on a double date with a lawyer friend, spent the evening making calf's eyes at his friend's date, pretty Jane Sheal. After seven years of courtship and engagement, they were married by an Episcopal minister because Jane, a "stubborn Methodist" by her own description, refused to be married in the rites of the Catholic Church. Although Frank was automatically barred by his marriage from receiving the sacraments of his church, Ma Lausche, a devout Catholic, proudly welcomed her daughter-in-law into the family with a bouquet of six dozen American Beauty roses.

Jane Lausche, a wise and witty woman, has been a sturdy asset to her husband. She is a charming hostess, a good housekeeper, and an ornament to any political gathering. Not long after her marriage, she quit her successful interior designing business. Life with Lausche, she discovered, was career enough: "It's like being married to a mountain. There's no use trying to move him or domesticate him. He works, works, works all the time."

But Jane has ideas of her own: in 1951, despite her husband's horrified objections, she took flying lessons and got a pilot's license because, she explained, with all the flying she and the governor do, somebody should be able to take over in case anything happened to the pilot. In her way Mrs. Lausche has managed to change her husband slightly, often without his knowledge. When he refused to yield his wrinkled, tired suits to her for cleaning and pressing, Jane slyly bought duplicate suits, now manages to keep the governor's wardrobe fresh by wifely sleight of hand. It was years before Frank Lausche discovered that he owned eight suits, not four.

Editorial Boost. In 1931 the political itch struck Lausche again. That year, in a party split, two Democrats, Ray T. Miller and Peter Witt, ran for mayor of Cleveland in the city's "nonpartisan" campaign. Lausche, breaking with his ward leader, came to the aid of Miller's campaign. Miller won, and a year later Lausche was rewarded with an appointment as municipal judge. The next year he was elected in his own right. In 1936 he was elected to the higher Common Pleas Court. He was on his way.

As a judge, Lausche cracked down hard on organized crime, drove the loan-shark racketeers out of Cleveland, and, with handwritten orders secretly delivered to a friend on the police force, dramatically closed down two of the city's most notorious gambling sinks. Early in his career, Lausche attracted the attention of Louis Seltzer, the breezy, brilliant editor of the Cleveland Press. Seltzer soon decided that the young judge was the freshest, most forceful new face to turn up in Cleveland politics in a long time. In the columns of the Press, Crimebuster Lausche began to get helpful publicity, and Seltzer repeatedly urged him (in front-page editorials) to run for mayor. Lausche resisted Seltzer's blandishments for six years until at last, in 1941, he was ready.

He announced his candidacy at the traditional Democratic steer roast, ran on an orthodox, straight party ticket, with the warm support of Boss Miller and the organization. Soon after he swept into office, however, he had a falling-out with Miller. Miller had promised the leaders of organized labor that Lausche would fire Eliot Ness, the Republican director of public safety. Lausche, he charged, had privately promised the dismissal. The mayor denied the charge, kept Ness on his job because his record had been good. Ray Miller, Lausche's old mentor and friend, became his bitterest enemy.

From that time on, Frank Lausche walked alone. The wrath of the organization Democrats and of labor rained on his shoulders. Despite his new enemies, he was re-elected by an avalanche of votes in 1943, continued his crusade against gambling, and provided Cleveland with clean government and inspirational leadership in World War II. By 1944 he had broadened his political horizons to run for the governorship. His friends advised him not to try: Ohio, they told him, would never elect a Catholic as governor. But Lausche disregarded the advice, as usual, and despite a vicious whispering campaign, he won, as usual--in a year when Franklin Roosevelt lost Ohio by 11,500 votes.

Social Error. His campaign tactics were unorthodox but effective. On occasion, Lausche traveled around Ohio by bus. Whenever he had an engagement at a strawberry festival or a county fair, he usually managed to slip in through a side entrance, avoid the official greeters and mingle with the crowds, shaking all hands, admiring babies, and earnestly talking politics to individual voters. His common touch made excellent word-of-mouth publicity and swung many a vote. In 1946, when Lausche ran for reelection, he was defeated by 40,000 votes. At least part of his defeat was attributed to the fact that he had stopped attending the marriages, wakes, christenings and other ceremonial gatherings in the immigrant neighborhoods of Cleveland and other large cities. Lausche vowed never again to neglect that social duty. He never has. Nor has he ever lost another election.

As Ohio's governor, Lausche has been competent but unspectacular. Except for two years (1948-50) he has had to deal with a Republican legislature that has choked off a good many Lausche plans for Ohio. But the governor is undeniably conservative, and his relations with the legislature have been generally amicable. The G.O.P. has found Lausche's frugal fiscal policies especially gratifying. Although its revenue has nearly trebled (from $396 million to $1,019,759,404). Ohio has not voted a general tax increase during the Lausche decade. The governor runs the state on a tight annual budget, usually reports a tidy surplus in the treasury each year.

In his personal expenditures, Lausche is just as tender with the taxpayer: he insists on paying his own expenses, above transportation costs, whenever he makes a business trip. (Jane Lausche is equally scrupulous with the housekeeping budget for the governor's mansion. She sometimes splits the cost of a pound of coffee with the state: so many cups for private, personal use, so many for official guests.)

Lausche is justly proud of his conservation program. After a bitter struggle with the mining lobby, he pushed through a law to force the strip miners of eastern Ohio to cover up their eroding handiwork after a mine is depleted. Under his direction 27 million trees have been planted to replenish the state's dwindling forests. His position on civil rights might give pause to his Southern supporters in the showdown. During the Democrats' two-year heyday in Columbus, Lausche nearly won passage of a Fair Employment Practices Act with enforcement features. Said Lausche in his 1955 message to the legislature : "The decision of the United States Supreme Court requiring the schools of our country to provide equality of teaching services for our children . . . meets with my complete approval . . . We simply cannot live as a free people if we . . . chip away from any member of our society the guarantees given to him by the Lord on the day that person was born, and then reaffirmed with pen and ink in our Constitution."

"Fearless Frank." His critics have accused Lausche, with some justification, of political timidity. (Opposition newspapers have sneeringly dubbed him "Fearless Frank,'' and even Loyalist Louis Seltzer editorially blasted him for compromising on a truck tax bill.) He runs the state with just two aides, and spends hours arguing with himself over difficult decisions (in such moments he frequently plays the violin). Like a chess player, he is always thinking three moves ahead, weighing the political consequences.

Lausche is habitually reluctant to support other politicians. He has given only faint endorsement to all his party's presidential candidates, from Roosevelt to Stevenson, waited until the last stages of the 1948 campaign before giving a hesitant blessing to Harry Truman (his support, nevertheless, is credited with swinging Ohio to Truman by a breathtaking 7,000 votes). Both Mike DiSalle and Tom Burke got a limp pat on the back from the governor in their unsuccessful campaigns for the Senate. Lausche's refusal to back "Jumping Joe" Ferguson and his openly expressed admiration of Bob Taft in their 1950 race won the governor the undying hatred of many party-first Democrats in Ohio. To most Democrats who ask for a helping hand, the governor has a stock answer: "I don't have time." He found time, however, to push his way through a Columbus mob in 1952, and give G.O.P. Candidate Dwight Eisenhower a ringing official welcome to Ohio.

The Tender Trap. During the 1952 campaign, Lausche went on the road with a group of touring Democratic candidates. In Oxford, Hamilton and Middletown, he failed conspicuously to mention his platform companions a single time. On the way to the final meeting in Dayton, a freshman candidate for Congress sat next to Lausche in his car. "Governor," he said, "I'm new to politics, running for the first time. But it seems amazing to me the way you've been talking. I thought we were all in this together."

Lausche threw back his head and roared. "You're a fine fellow," he said. Then, still chuckling, he reached into his pocket, and, drawing out a Lausche button, pinned it on his companion's lapel. "Everybody for Lausche." he roared.

Lausche does not like to play a losing game or to back a risky candidate. In his lonely, canny way he has decided not even to support Candidate Frank Lausche for the presidency. At a dinner party last summer, he calculated his chances at 1% ("Remember me," retorted Jane Lausche. "Make it one-half of 1%"). Though the odds have gone up in recent months, Lausche is still disinclined to bet on Lausche. "I will do nothing to reach the goal," he says. "The honor doesn't come from one's desire to attain it. A man should not seek office." A politically wise friend sees the Lausche strategy in another light. The governor, he thinks, has laid a tender trap. "He's a little like the bachelor who has made peace with the opposite sex. He's not going to send a dozen roses, or a 5-lb. box of candy, or buy box seats at the opera. He has decided that the only thing to do is just to let 'em know he's available."

*The record will stand. In 1954 Ohio voters put a two-term limitation on. the governor's office, effective after 1956.

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