The Ohio Politics Almanac

Third Edition, Revised and Updated

Michael Curtin, Joe Hallett

• Publisher: The Kent State University Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781631011429
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Roughly a century ago, President Theodore Roosevelt said, "I think there is only one thing in the world I can't understand, and that is Ohio politics." If The Ohio Politics Almanac had existed then, Roosevelt still might not have understood Ohio politics, but it wouldn't have been for lack of information. A comprehensive and authoritative resource, The Ohio Politics Almanac sheds light on the complexity of Ohio's electoral statistics. This third edition presents everything a journalist, political junkie, scholar, or candidate needs to know about Ohio demographics, elections, and government. It updates and expands on the Almanac's original chapters, including retrospectives on the state's 69 governors through 2014; a history of the General Assembly and its leaders, as well as the state's delegation to Congress; an examination of the structure of Ohio's judiciary and its key figures; important revisions to the state Constitution; the evolution of Ohio's political parties; and histories and statistical analyses of the state's 88 counties and biggest cities. New to this edition is the emphasis on electoral politics, based on recent political events. The Almanac now contains maps and charts illustrating the outcomes of presidential and gubernatorial elections statewide, by region and by county. The new material offers even more insight into why Ohio has become America's fulcrum state in presidential races—a must-win prize in modern national elections. Many national political reporters refer to the Almanac when they come to Ohio and, when they arrive in 2016 to cover the presidential election, this updated edition will instruct and guide their reporting with accuracy and clarity. The Ohio Politics Almanac is an indispensible, one-of-a-kind resource for anyone seeking to analyze Ohio's unique political culture.

CHAPTER 1

Ohio’s Political Heritage

They were farmers and frontiersmen who distrusted
strong central government, which they saw as removed,
elitist, and controlled by powerful financial interests.

For most of its history, Ohio has held a pivotal place in the national political landscape.

At the nation’s founding, the 981-mile Ohio River was the primary route westward into the vast interior and the promise of America. The river ensured that pioneers who ventured into the Northwest Territory would come into the lands that would become Ohio. It also ensured that, with the river as its southern boundary, Ohio essentially would be settled from the south up. It explains why a southern community, Chillicothe, would become Ohio’s first capital.

The first permanent white settlement in Ohio was along the river, at Marietta in April of 1788. The settlers were members of the Ohio Company of Associates and the first of many to claim land bounties in Ohio in exchange for their service in the Revolutionary War.

This first settlement occurred just seven months after adoption of the federal Constitution in Philadelphia, and while the original 13 states were in the process of ratification. The early pioneers largely were from the New England states and were descendants of English Protestants. Those who had made their way into the rich Ohio lands knew that the territory would attract many. In 1790, an estimated 4,200 people lived between the western boundary of Pennsylvania and the Mississippi River. By 1800, at the taking of the second national census, Ohio’s population already had grown to 45,365.

Major Political Parties in the U.S.

Source: Adapted from Congressional Quarterly, Guide to U.S. Elections (1975), p. 176

DEMOCRATIC-REPUBLICANS TAKE POWER

A majority of the men who took part in public affairs in Ohio’s earliest days identified with the Democratic-Republican Party of Thomas Jefferson. They were farmers and frontiersmen who distrusted strong central government, which they saw as removed, elitist, and controlled by powerful financial interests. The early Ohioans favored statehood to ensure close-to-home representation.

The Federalists, members of the party of George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, opposed statehood for Ohio. One of them, Gen. Arthur St. Clair, had been appointed in 1788 by Congress as governor of the Territory of Ohio. St. Clair vetoed many bills of the territorial legislature, controlled by members of the Democratic-Republican Party, and otherwise frustrated the aims of the majority. Growing opposition to his rule soon would result in his ouster. Thomas Worthington, a leader of the Democratic-Republicans, accomplished that by filing charges against St. Clair with President Jefferson in 1802 at about the time Congress was passing an act to enable the people of Ohio to form a constitution and state government.

On November 1, 1802, an Ohio Constitutional Convention began meeting in Chillicothe. Of the 35 delegates there, 26 were members of the Democratic-Republican Party. Seven were Federalists. The affiliations of the two others are unknown. The dominance of the Democratic-Republican Party at Ohio’s founding also is underscored by the fact that the state’s first seven governors were members of it.

The experience under St. Clair was the major reason the drafters of Ohio’s first constitution made sure that the document severely limited the governor’s powers. For example, it gave the governor no veto authority. This initial distrust of strong, centralized authority would become engrained in the state’s political culture. For decades to come, analysts would describe Ohio politics in terms of a suspicion toward government, an antitax sentiment, and a conservative outlook.

On February 19, 1803, Ohio was admitted into the Union as the 17th state, after Tennessee and before Louisiana. Ohio’s admission came one month after Edward Tiffin of Chillicothe was elected Ohio’s first governor.

The members of the Democratic-Republican Party often referred to themselves as Republicans. Their opponents, though, frequently referred to them as Democrats, because the word democrat at the time carried negative connotations of mob rule identified with the French Revolution. Even today, some references to Ohio politics refer to the early governors as Democrats while others refer to them as Republicans. In fact, they were Democratic-Republicans.

RISE OF THE WHIGS

In the 1820s, the party shortened its name to the Democratic Party under the leadership of Andrew Jackson, who emphasized the rule of the common man. The Federalist Party had ceased to be a factor in national and state elections. Jackson was elected president in 1828 and re-elected in 1832, and carried Ohio in both elections. Jacksonian democracy blossomed in the 1830s and 1840s.

In the 1830s, the Whig Party—the party of Henry Clay—arose to challenge the Jacksonian Democrats in Ohio and nationally. The Whigs were named after the English political party that opposed a monarchy and supported parliamentary power. Although derided by the Jacksonians as the party of wealth, the Whigs attracted a diverse following.

In Ohio, Whigs soon outnumbered Democrats in most parts of the state. Three of the first four mayors of Cleveland were Whigs, as were five of the first seven mayors of Cincinnati. In 1836, Joseph Vance of Champaign County became the first Whig governor of Ohio. And from 1844 to 1850, the state had three successive Whigs as governors. The Whigs won the presidency in 1840 and 1848. In 1844, Ohio went for Henry Clay in the presidential election, although he lost to Democrat James K. Polk.

Nationally, the Whig Party disintegrated between 1852 and 1854, while 1853 marked the end for it in Ohio, when Nelson Barrere was the party’s final challenger for governor. The Whigs’ decline coincided with the emergence of slavery as the dominant issue of national politics. Proslavery Whigs found more comfort in the Democratic Party; antislavery Whigs were instrumental in founding the modern Republican Party.

Until the 1850s, the majority of those moving into Ohio settled in the southern half of the state, especially on the Ohio Company lands in the southeast and the Virginia Military District in the southwest. Cincinnati, on the Ohio River, was by far the state’s largest city. In the 1850 census, Cincinnati’s population was recorded at 115,436, compared to 17,882 for Columbus and 17,034 for Cleveland.

The National Road

Between 1800 and 1830, the English, Scots, and Irish dominated the ethnic groups moving into Ohio. The Welsh were especially noticeable in the southern counties of Jackson, Scioto, Gallia, Lawrence, and Meigs. The movement had been so great that by 1840 Ohio was the third-largest state in the Union, behind New York and Pennsylvania. The state was entitled to 19 congressmen and 21 presidential electors, making it a force in national politics.

By midcentury, the Germans had come in droves to Ohio and the Midwest. They made up the largest ethnic group in the state, followed by the Irish. Cincinnati virtually became a German city. In the 1850 census, about as many Cincinnatians listed Germany as their place of birth as listed Ohio.

From the mid-1800s until today, Germans have remained the largest single nationality group in Ohio. Besides building Cincinnati, Germans for the most part established Alliance, Canton, Columbus, Lancaster, Massillon, and Steubenville.

THE NATIONAL ROAD

As people poured into Ohio and on to other western destinations, the need for improved roads became more evident. In 1806, Congress gave final approval to legislation authorizing construction of the nation’s first federal highway—a National Road from Cumberland, Md., to Ohio. Money had been set aside from the sale of public lands. Construction had begun in 1811 but was largely interrupted until 1815 because of the War of 1812.

The National Road, later called the Cumberland Road and eventually U.S. Route 40, reached Wheeling, W.Va., in 1818 and was extended to Columbus by 1833. By 1840, the road had been completed through Ohio. A large share of the nation’s westward travelers had to come to, or at least through, Ohio. The road, completed in 1856, eventually stretched to St. Louis.

In time, U.S. Route 40 would come to signify Ohio’s political dividing line, separating a more highly urbanized, more ethnic, Democratic north from a more traditional, more conservative, Republican south. When the interstate highway system was developed, I-70 was laid out alongside Route 40 and inherited the role of demarcation line.

THE CANAL ERA

Although the National Road was extremely important to the development of Ohio, the state’s early leaders recognized that much of the state’s interior—especially the north—would not develop and prosper without better ways to cheaply move products to markets.

The Canals of Ohio

Taking notice of the success of New York’s Erie Canal, begun in 1817 and opened in 1825, Ohio’s political and business leaders made plans for a system of canals to link Lake Erie with the Ohio River. Canal construction began in July 1825. The Ohio & Erie Canal was completed from Portsmouth to Cleveland in 1833; the Miami & Erie Canal was completed from Cincinnati to Toledo in 1845.

The birth of the canal system brought more waves of immigrants and triggered the development of cities along their routes. In 1825, for example, Cleveland had fewer than 1,000 residents, mostly native-born. By 1850, after Ohio’s canal system was completed and in full operation, Cleveland’s population exceeded 17,000 and would continue to boom for decades as the city became a major port.

The selection of Cleveland as the northern terminus for the Ohio & Erie Canal is a major reason—perhaps the primary reason—that it eventually developed into Ohio’s largest and most ethnically diverse metropolitan area. Some argue that Sandusky, Port Clinton, or any number of other lakefront cities could have developed into the state’s largest if chosen as a canal terminus.

Ohio’s location as gateway to the West also ensured that the state would attract many railroads, which replaced canals as the favored means of transport in the second half of the nineteenth century. In 1860, Ohio ranked first in the nation in length of rail lines. The rails especially speeded the development of Cleveland, Toledo, and the rest of northern Ohio.

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY IS BORN

In the early 1850s, as Ohio’s population surpassed two million, the Whig Party was disintegrating and proslavery elements controlled the Democratic Party. This prompted groups opposed to the extension of slavery, including many Whigs and antislavery Democrats, to begin efforts to organize another party.

On July 13, 1854, the 67th anniversary of passage of the Northwest Ordinance, state Republican nominating conventions were held in Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Vermont. Although those at the Ohio convention did not adopt the name Republican at that meeting, the Ohio State Journal referred to them as Republicans. The following year, during a convention on July 13, 1855, the name “Republican Party of Ohio” was officially adopted. The party’s chief issues were opposition to the extension of slavery and economic conservatism.

In its first year, the Republican Party took control of the state legislature; by 1860, it controlled all statewide offices.

The 1856 presidential election had been won by Democrat James Buchanan, but Ohio went for Republican John C. Frémont, who received 48.5 percent of the vote to Buchanan’s 44 percent. The 1856 vote marked the first of 14 consecutive presidential elections in which Ohio voted Republican. The string would not be broken until 1912, when Ohio joined the nation in electing Democrat Woodrow Wilson. In the presidential elections from 1856 to 1892, the nation went Democratic three times without Ohio’s help: 1856 (Buchanan); 1884 (Grover Cleveland); 1892 (Cleveland).

The Building of Ohio

During the Civil War, Ohio’s Republican Party went out of operation and the Union Party controlled state politics. The Union Party, which emphasized the paramount importance of saving the Union, was made up mostly of the Republican Party and one wing of the Democratic Party. In contrast, the Democratic state convention, held in Columbus on January 23, 1861, approved a resolution stating that war “should not be waged for the purpose of overthrowing the established institutions of the states.”

Following the war, Ohio Republicans supported and Ohio Democrats opposed ratification of the 15th Amendment—to grant Negro suffrage. In 1867, the Ohio Democratic platform stated: “We are opposed to Negro suffrage believing that it would be productive of evil to both whites and blacks and tend to produce a disastrous conflict of races.” The amendment was ratified on February 3, 1870.

Republicans continued to be the majority party in Ohio into the 1870s, but in 1873 Democrats elected their first governor in 20 years, William Allen. Despite that victory and some others, Democrats were not truly competitive with Republicans in Ohio until after the turn of the century, a time of massive immigration of the foreign-born into the state.

In the final third of the nineteenth century, five of the six presidents elected by the people were Ohio-born. All five were Republicans: Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, and William McKinley.

NORTHEASTERN OHIO BOOMS

The development of Cleveland and northeastern Ohio in the late 1800s and early 1900s dramatically changed the political complexion of the state. Until the twentieth century, the 14 counties that made up the Connecticut Western Reserve were populated mostly by descendants of New Englanders who identified with the Whigs and Republicans.

But Ohio was becoming an industrial dynamo, and the factories of Cleveland, Akron, and Youngstown in northeastern Ohio were attracting an ethnic workforce of Slavs, Italians, Greeks, and Scandinavians as well as more Germans and Irish. Similar immigration patterns were transforming cities outside northeastern Ohio, especially Toledo and Dayton.

By 1910, Ohio’s population was nearing five million and, for the first time, more t...