National Affairs: The Rule Breaker

(2 of 3)

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.