Frank Lausche
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Frank John Lausche (November 14, 1895 - April 21, 1990) was a Democratic politician from Ohio. He served as the 55th and 57th Governor of Ohio and also served in the U.S. Senate for two terms.
Lausche was born in Cleveland, Ohio. After serving in the U.S. Army during World War I, he returned to law school, graduating from the John Marshall School of Law in 1920. Lausche served as Municipal Court judge from 1932-1937 and Common Pleas Court judge from 1937-1941, before winning election as Mayor of Cleveland in 1941. He served until 1944, when he first won election as Governor of Ohio. Lausche served as governor from 1945-1947, when he lost to Thomas J. Herbert. Lausche defeated Herbert in a 1948 rematch, however, serving from 1949-1957. Lausche resigned in early 1957, having won election to the United States Senate in 1956.
In his first term, with the Senate almost evenly split, Lausche gave Senate Democratic leader Lyndon B. Johnson a scare by hinting that he might vote for Republican William F. Knowland for Senate Majority Leader, although he ultimately did not. Throughout his career, Lausche displayed a bipartisan approach to politics, being known by some as a "Democrat with a small 'd'", but his approach to ethnic Democratic politics paved the way for followers such as Ralph S. Locher, who became Mayor of Cleveland and later an Associate Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court, and Bronis Klementowicz, a leader of Cleveland City Council and law director. Lausche's independence also earned him, among some, the derisive moniker, "Frank the Fence." Lausche was re-elected to the Senate in 1962, but lost his bid for renomination in 1968, due to his loss of labor union support. He was defeated in the Democratic primary by John J. Gilligan, who went on to lose the general election to William B. Saxbe.
Lausche was a very popular, plain-spoken, big-city politician of the old school. He was credited with building a coalition of ethnic voters in Cleveland known as the "cosmopolitan Democrats." There is some evidence that both Democratic President Harry S. Truman in 1948, and Republican presidential candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952, considered asking Lausche to become their running mate.
The State of Ohio's office building in Cleveland, Ohio is named after Lausche.
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| Preceded by: John W. Bricker | Governors of Ohio | Succeeded by: Thomas J. Herbert |
| Preceded by: Thomas J. Herbert | Governors of Ohio | Succeeded by: John William Brown |
| Preceded by: George H. Bender | U.S. Senators from Ohio | Succeeded by: William B. Saxbe |
| Preceded by: Edward Blythin | Mayor of Cleveland, Ohio 1942-1945 | Succeeded by: Thomas A. Burke |