COLUMBUS — Halloween arrives Monday, but two ghosts already haunt Statehouse Republicans in their campaign to save Senate Bill 5.

Those would be John Bricker and Ray C. Bliss, Republican icons from long ago whose words of warning went unheeded way back in 1958.

There’s a happy Republican ending to this political horror story, but the scary parts come first.

In 1958, Bricker was a U.S. senator, former Ohio governor and attorney general and 1944 GOP vice presidential candidate. He knew how to win statewide elections.

Bliss, an Akron insurance man, was Ohio Republican chairman. He knew about winning elections, too.

As Summit County Republican chairman in Akron in the 1930s, he elected Republicans in a union town during Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.

As state chairman, he brought the Ohio Republican Party back after big losses in 1948, the year Democrat Harry Truman captured Ohio en route to an upset win in the presidential race.

Then came 1958.

Almost alone among Republicans, Bricker and Bliss implored GOP Gov. C. William O’Neill and the Ohio Chamber of Commerce not to put the “right to work” issue on the statewide ballot.

It was a proposal to prohibit labor contracts that made union membership a condition of employment.

Bricker and Bliss weren’t union fans. They agreed, however, that such a frontal attack would antagonize labor voters, their families and friends. Long before the so-called “Reagan Democrats” of the 1980s, these union voters had helped Republicans win Ohio elections.

At a meeting with “right-to-work” supporters, Bricker said that with the issue on the ballot Republicans might lose the legislature, the governor’s office and some U.S. House seats.

“I may go down myself,” Bricker said. Supporters called him “gutless” and concerned only with “saving his own skin.”

Bricker’s prophecy proved correct, as the proposal was crushed with 63 percent of the vote. O’Neill, Bricker and most other Republicans lost.

Last week’s Quinnipiac University poll indicated that Issue 2 on this year’s ballot, a referendum on Senate Bill 5, the legislation restricting public employee collective bargaining, could face a similar fate.

A “yes” vote upholds the law; a “no” vote repeals it. In the poll, repeal led big, 57-32 percent.

Times have changed since 1958.

The “right-to-work” issue was directed mainly at private sector union members, not public employees.

From 1958 until this year, however, Republican governors and legislative leaders have avoided an attack on unions as direct as Senate Bill 5 has been perceived to be.

If poll results hold up, there could be a historical echo, John Green, director of the Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron, said in an email.

“Such a result would be reminiscent of the right-to-work-ballot issue in 1958 and may reflect a sense in the public that the legislative majority overreached on Senate Bill 5,” Green said.

Repeal wouldn’t be the end of the political road for the GOP.

From the ashes of “right-to-work,” Bliss rebuilt the GOP, culminating in big 1962 wins, including the first of four terms for Gov. James A. Rhodes, the grand master of overreach avoidance.