MJP –
East Walnut Hills native and Ohio senator JD Vance isn’t the first person from Ohio to run for vice president, but he is the first in quite some time.
But, since James M. Cox’s 1920 presidential campaign, Vance is the first Greater Cincinnati contender to appear on the ballot.
A political behemoth once stood in Ohio. Of the eight presidents to hail from Ohio, five have deep connections to Cincinnati. Three of our vice presidents were born in Ohio as well, however none of them ran for office from the Buckeye State.
In 1944, Republican Thomas E. Dewey and Ohioan John W. Bricker were the last major party presidential ticket members. They were defeated by the newly-elected Franklin D. Roosevelt for president.
The following are four noteworthy elections in which Greater Cincinnati candidates were involved.
Campaigning was changed forever by William Henry Harrison.
Despite being the first Ohioan to run for president, William Henry Harrison was born in Virginia in 1773 to parents who were signatories to the Declaration of Independence.
Famous for his role in defeating Tecumseh’s Shawnee forces at the Battle of Tippecanoe, Harrison was an army soldier in the Northwest Territory. He served as an Ohio senator and representative from his home in North Bend, which is located west of Cincinnati.
As one of four regional Whig candidates in the 1836 presidential election, Harrison was not alone. Martin Van Buren defeated him despite his dominance in seven states.
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Relying on his inflated image as “Old Tippecanoe,” a battle hero, he stood for office again in 1840. Although Harrison actually resided in a sixteen-room mansion, the Whig campaign depicted him as having “frontier virtues” in a log hut.
“Politically, Harrison’s greatest achievement was to star in what is still celebrated as one of the most ridiculous presidential campaigns in history,” wrote Gail Collins in her biography of Harrison.
Harrison was inaugurated president but passed away just 31 days later. He passed away on April 10, 1841, according to the inaugural issue of The Cincinnati Enquirer. North Bend, at his family’s land, is where he was laid to rest.
During the 1864 election, which had significant implications for the end of the Civil War, two candidates with connections to Cincinnati ran against Abraham Lincoln.
Peace Democrats, sometimes known as Copperheads, wanted to terminate the war by pacifying the Confederate states, which meant keeping slavery in the South. President Lincoln wanted to keep the Union together.
The Democrats nominated George Hunt Pendleton, a well-known Peace Democrat and lawyer from Cincinnati, for the position of vice president. (Worn at his Prospect Hill home—which is still standing—the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883, while serving as a senator.)
Gen. George B. McClellan, who had commanded the Union Army until Lincoln withdrew him after the catastrophic Battle of Antietam, was nominated by them for president.
Lincoln was reelected, perhaps aided by the Southern states that denied the Union a vote, despite the general’s refusal to accept the party’s program of declaring the war a failure.
Did McClellan have any ties to the Queen City? At the outbreak of war in April 1861, he was serving as president of the eastern section of the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad in Cincinnati, with headquarters at Third and Race Streets.
On the day of the election, William Howard Taft was in Cincinnati.
Only one president, William Howard Taft, was born in Cincinnati, not in the surrounding area. At 2038 Auburn Ave. in Mount Auburn, his childhood home and place of birth are now museums.
On November 3, 1908, he was in his hometown, staying at the grand mansion on Pike Street that is now the Taft Museum of Art, hosted by his half-brother Charles Phelps Taft.
Four telegraph operators were busy gathering election reports at the Taft residence. When the election results were announced last night at the Taft mansion on Pike Street, among fifty people, Taft was deemed “the coolest person among them,” according to The Enquirer.
Taft declared plainly, “I’m contented – perfectly contented,” when news of his triumph over William Jennings Bryan reached him.
The president-elect later that day, at 1310 Sycamore St. in Over-the-Rhine, he oversaw the groundbreaking ceremony for the new Woodward High School building, his alma mater.
In 1920, two Ohio newspapermen stood against each other in the election. Having two candidates from the same state, much alone the same profession, is quite unusual.
Republican candidate for senator Warren G. Harding once oversaw the publication of the Marion Star in Ohio’s Marion town. Former Ohio governor and Democrat James M. Cox was also the publisher of the Dayton Daily News.
Cox started his career in journalism in 1892 as a railroad correspondent for The Enquirer. He was born and brought up in Butler County. He established the Dayton Daily News and elevated it to the status of “the people’s paper” after serving as a political assistant to Middletown’s U.S. Representative Paul R. Sorg.
The youthful Franklin D. Roosevelt was Cox’s running companion in 1920. Harding spoke with voters on his front porch in Marion, while Cox traveled by railway to 36 states.
Harding, the final president to hail from Ohio, emerged triumphant.
