Ohioans once ruled the roost in presidential politics, sending eight men to the White House. But while Ohio is an important stepping stone in the path to the presidency, it hasn’t been a successful launching pad for candidates since two Ohio newspaper publishers — Warren G. Harding and James M. Cox, the former governor of Ohio and founder of the Dayton Daily News — squared off in 1920.
“Since 1920 you have not had a nominee from Ohio, but you have had a number of people who ran with varying levels of credibility,” said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “Probably the most credible one was Senator (Robert A.) Taft. He really could’ve been the nominee a few different times, 1940 and 1952 most prominently.”
The reasons for the drought of presidential winners are varied, but experts say the amount of money needed to establish name recognition on a national scale make mounting a credible campaign exceedingly difficult. Also, the early contests — Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina — are tough tests for an Ohioan to build momentum.
Ohio candidates who have run in recent years include then-U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Cleveland, in 2004 and 2008; and then-U.S. Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio, who dropped out of the Democratic race after a poor showing in the 1984 Super Tuesday primaries. There were brief forays in 2000 by Kasich, then a congressman; and in 1988, by Richard Celeste, then Ohio’s Democratic governor.
Of them, only Glenn was widely known nationally, with his status as a national hero and the first American to orbit the earth. Even so, Glenn was unable to gain traction in a Democratic Party race that ultimately sent former Vice President Walter Mondale to lose against the incumbent President Ronald Reagan.
“I suppose there is an assumption that being a national hero translates into votes and I don’t know that that equation works,” Celeste said in a phone interview from his home in Colorado. “It’s certainly not an automatic equation.”
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After an event in Columbus earlier this month, the 93-year-old Glenn said he had “no real advice” for Kasich but noted running for president is “a tough job.”
Dale Butland, chief speech writer for Glenn’s campaign and later his senate press secretary, said there is plenty to criticize with the 1984 campaign and its failure to capitalize on Glenn’s hero status.
“But the first thing I would point out is that it’s really difficult to get elected president of the United States,” said Butland, now spokesman for Cincinnati Councilman P.G. Sittenfeld’s U.S. Senate campaign. “Lots of really good, well-known people have tried and never gotten there.”
Celeste and others say Kasich’s greatest challenges would be overcoming his lack of a national profile and raising enough money to have a good showing in the early primaries in 2016.
“So I think part of the question now for anyone running for president today is, ‘Can you get your hands on enough of the money that’s going to be spent over the rhythm of primary season to be a credible and ultimately successful candidate?’” Celeste said. “This is a challenge that John (Kasich) would face or anyone else would face.”
Mark Caleb Smith, director of Cedarville University’s Center for Political Studies, said a candidate’s survival depends very much on the early primaries in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.
“Candidates that finish out of the top two or three are just left in the dust,” Smith said.
Kasich has made numerous trips to New Hampshire and has visits scheduled this week in Georgia and South Carolina. But in recent presidential polls he has nabbed just 2 percent of the vote, trailing far behind Republican front runners Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, according to averages compiled by RealClearPolitics.com.
Celeste said Kasich will likely struggle to balance his day job with the campaigning necessary to boost his name recognition.
“In the first place, he still has to govern Ohio,” Celeste said. “I think it’s hard for a sitting governor in a state like Ohio to spend as much time on the campaign trail as some of his competitors might.”
Ohio a ‘powerhouse’
Known as the “mother of presidents,” Ohio was the birthplace of seven presidents and the adult home of an eighth, William Henry Harrison, who was born in Virginia but whose political career was in Ohio before he became president and died in 1841 on his 32nd day in office.
Only Virginia can claim more native born presidents, with eight.
Ohio’s presidential heyday was the 52-year period between the 1868 election of Ulysses S. Grant and the election of Harding, who died in office in 1923.
“We were a real powerhouse at that time. It was kind of the political center, probably starting with Grant,” said former Ohio Gov. Bob Taft, great-grandson of President William Howard Taft and grandson of Sen. Robert A. Taft. “That’s a pretty amazing streak.”
At least two dozen Ohioans have run for president since Harrison’s victory. Nearly all those candidates were Democrats or Republicans, although a Dayton native, James Baird Weaver, was the nominee for the Greenback and Populist parties in the the late 1800s. John McLean, a New Jersey transplant who settled in Warren County, ran unsuccessfully as a Whig and as a Republican in the mid-1800s.
Ohio has produced other presidential hopefuls who launched short-lived or unlikely bids — including two in 1988: then-U.S. Reps. James Traficant, D-Poland; and Douglas Applegate, D-Steubenville. The Prohibition Party nominated John G. Woolley in 1900 and the Socialist Party nominated Norman M. Thomas six times, beginning in 1928.
In 1972, Johnstown congressman John M. Ashbrook ran in several Republican primaries against President Richard M. Nixon in an effort to draw attention to what Ashbrook saw as Nixon’s failure to live up to conservative values.
Ohio’s presidential contenders have also included “favorite son” candidates, including two Ohio governors, Democrat Frank J. Lausche in 1956 and Republican James A. Rhodes, who in 1964 and 1968 won Ohio’s primary but no others.
Favorite son candidates typically were not serious contenders but were chosen by their state delegation at political conventions or were running in an effort to use their political power to influence the party’s platform and nomination process.
“That just doesn’t happen anymore,” Kondik said. “The old favorite son thing is basically a relic of when a convention really mattered.”
Ohio continues to be a critical swing state with a trove of Electoral College votes coveted by all presidential contenders.
“Ohio is a must win state for any candidate,” said Taft, a Republican and political science lecturer at the University of Dayton. “The Democrats know if they can deny Ohio to Republicans they’re in all probability going to win. And the Republicans know they’ve got to carry Ohio.”
Ohio has voted for the presidential winner in 28 out of the 30 elections since 1896, said Kondik, who is authoring a book about Ohio and the Electoral College. The exceptions were when Ohio picked Republican Richard M. Nixon over Democrat John F. Kennedy in 1960 and in 1944, when Republican Thomas Dewey and his vice presidential running mate, Ohio’s then-Gov. John W. Bricker, lost to Roosevelt.
Sen. Robert Taft — Bob Taft’s grandfather — sat out the 1944 election in deference to Bricker, who aspired to being at the top of the ticket. Sen. Taft tried three other times for the nomination — campaigns that came as the Republican Party struggled to regain the White House it had lost with Roosevelt’s election in 1932.
Those years also saw a shift to what Bob Taft says were East Coast “establishment” Republicans fearful of his grandfather’s isolationist views. The closest Sen. Taft came was in 1952 when the “establishment” candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower and his forces — which included Nixon — mobilized support from California and the southern delegations to deny Sen. Taft the Republican nomination.
“There was a lot of backroom maneuvering, probably a lot of cigar smoke and a lot of plotting and strategic maneuvering behind the scenes to produce the outcome,” Bob Taft said.
Declining clout
Taft says Ohio’s status as a “politically mainstream state” provides a potential launching pad for the right candidate.
“It’s very competitive, it’s very diverse and whoever is governor of Ohio is going to appeal to a broad base,” he said. “That’s on the plus side for winning a national election.”
Kucinich argues that Republicans may need Kasich on the ticket if they want to have any chance of winning Ohio. With the Republican National Convention in Cleveland next July, Kasich has an opportunity “to put the best case forward for himself,” Kucinich said.
“I think Governor Kasich would certainly be a formidable candidate,” he said. “And if the Republicans are not able to come up with a consensus candidate, he could end up being a dark horse in the campaign.”
Smith said the problem nationally for the moderate candidates like Kasich is that political primaries tend to attract voters from the fringes — the political left for the Democrats and the right for Republicans — who are “looking for some ideological purity.”
Kasich, for example, could have trouble with conservative Republicans unhappy with his expansion of Medicaid funding to provide health insurance coverage under the federal Affordable Care Act.
“Those (moderate) characteristics don’t sell as well necessarily in a primary system,” Smith said.
The decline of the political convention as a force in politics in 1970s largely coincided with Ohio’s industrial decline and the national shift in population and political influence to the western and southern states — forces that did little to help Ohio’s political clout.
The incredible money demands haven’t made the task any easier, said Wright State University p0litical science professor Paul Leonard, a former Democratic lieutenant governor and Dayton mayor.
Back in Ohio’s presidential heyday, Leonard said, the powerful, monied people were from Ohio and the Midwest, making it more likely that an Ohio politician would know them. But today’s mega-donors — people like Sheldon Adelson, Charles and David H. Koch, George Soros and Tom Steyer — don’t live in Ohio, and have yet to champion a candidate from the state.
“Our political system is an auction,” Kucinich said. ”In all but rare cases campaigns and candidacies are sold to the highest bid. It really is a national disgrace.”
Despite the challenges, all of those interviewed said an Ohioan could again win the White House.
“I think it’s really a matter of the right candidate appearing at the right time, capturing the moment,” said Butland. “I absolutely think an Ohioan could win. You just have to catch lightning in the bottle.”
Access our interactive graphic on Ohio’s past presidential candidates
Money challenges »
Staff Writer Laura A. Bischoff contributed to this report.
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