National Affairs: 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.