The Great-Grandson Race

Friday, Oct. 21, 1966

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In 1877, Alphonso Taft was Attorney General in the Cabinet of fellow Ohioan Ulysses S. Grant, and Patrick Gilligan, recently arrived in Cincinnati from Ireland's Sligo County, began a mortuary business. Cincinnati's Taft dynasty in succeeding generations occupied an ever more commanding role in the Republican Party and U.S. politics. The Gilligans also prospered in their chosen field.

It was not until Patrick's great-grandson John Joyce Gilligan decided to run for Congress in 1964 that the two families' destinies converged. Jack Gilligan not only beat the Taft-ruled organization's candidate, Representative Carl Rich, but in his re-election race this fall is running against Alphonso's great-grandson, Robert Taft Jr., grandson of a U.S. President, son of Mr. Republican.

Innovations. In his battle to hold the First Congressional District—covering the eastern half of Cincinnati and Hamilton County—Gilligan bucks more than Taft tradition. He owed his election two years ago to the Goldwater debacle and is only the third Democrat to be elected from the district in this century.* The first two were retired after one term. And Bob Taft, 49, has more impressive credentials than his illustrious name. Elected four times to the Ohio house of representatives, where he served as the Republican floor leader, he won his first statewide race in 1962 to become Congressman-at-large and would almost certainly have been elected to the U.S. Senate in 1964 save for the Lyndon landslide. Taft's chances have been boosted this year by the presence on the ticket of a popular Republican incumbent, Governor James Rhodes, and the fact that the First District has been reapportioned and is more heavily Republican than ever.

Yet it is a tight race. In less than two years, redhaired, blue-eyed Jack Gilligan, who never really stopped campaigning, has earned a reputation to match the motto on his placard: "The Congressman who gets things done." He opened a local office, started a newsletter—both innovations in the district —and even put out reports in Braille. He arranged free junkets to Washington for high school students and brought delegations of Washington officials to Cincinnati to discuss local problems with community leaders.

Making of a Soph. Most effective of all, Gilligan was the first to announce the news of every federal financial grant or industrial contract of benefit to his constituency, whether he had anything to do with it or not. As a loyal supporter of Lyndon Johnson and one of those Democratic freshmen that Johnson would like to make sophomores, Gilligan had plenty to report. Some items: a $750 million defense contract for a local plant, $4.7 million for a housing project, $285,000 to help convert the old Union Station into a museum. For a number of such boons, he claimed personal credit, notably State Department sponsorship of a world tour by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.