POLITICAL NOTES: Maverick’s Choice

POLITICAL NOTES Frank John Lausche, 58, is the only governor Ohioans have elected for a fourth term. Last week, in a decision which set off speculation that he would run for President in 1956, Democrat Lausche announced his candidacy in next year’s election for a fifth two-year term.

Lausche’s alternative was to swap places on the ticket with Senator Thomas A. Burke, the man he appointed to the late Robert A. Taft’s seat, giving Burke a chance for the governorship. But the political dangers of giving up his secure position in Columbus loomed large in Frank Lausche’s mind. In 1956, as governor, he would have a vote-getting record unmatched by other Democrats, and he could confidently expect to control Ohio’s convention delegates. As a freshman Senator, he might weaken home-state ties, and he would have to jump into vote-losing controversies over national issues.*

Ohio’s governor is as politically unruly as his heavy mane of tousled hair. Ever since he was elected Cleveland’s mayor in 1941, Maverick Lausche has spurned “machine” support, winning elections despite organized Democratic opposition. He has heaped such florid oratorical praise on some G.O.P. leaders that they find it awkward later to criticize him in normal partisan fashion. In the 1950 senatorial campaign, Lausche said he “might” vote for Bob Taft instead of the Democratic candidate. By last year the governor had won such popularity as a conservative Democrat that, in defeating Charles P. Taft, the Senator’s brother, he topped Adlai Stevenson’s vote by 415,000.

Frank Lausche, Ohio’s first Roman Catholic governor, whose parents emigrated from Slovenia to Cleveland, has long had his eye on the White House. If he gets there, it will be surprising: no man of Eastern European stock and no Catholic has been President; Andrew Jackson was the only President whose parents were both born abroad (in Ireland).

* No Democratic Senator has won a presidential nomination since Stephen Douglas ran against Lincoln in 1860.