Remember, as you should, or forget, if you wish, the 1970 Kent State shootings by Ohio’s National Guard when he was commander-in-chief. But as with an architect’s favorite building, if you seek Rhodes’ monument, look around you: Ohio, today, is it.
His no-dogma, “git ’er done” Republican governorships (1963-71, and 1975-83) are the measures of every one since. Why do Ohio governors stay overnight (or appear to) at the State Fair? Because he did. Why does a governor hustle (or look like it) when someone scouts factory sites? Because — when Marysville landed Honda — leading the parade was the drum major of Ohio politics, James A. Rhodes
So Sept. 17 will be a night to remember. People of both parties will gather at Rhodes’ favorite restaurant, Plain City’s Der Dutchman on U.S. 42, just northwest of Columbus. Those expected include two of Ohio’s top Democrats, former Sen. John Glenn and former Gov. Richard F. Celeste.
Celeste, president of Colorado College, has said he was doubly a Rhodes Scholar — at England’s Oxford University, and then in Columbus. From 1975 to 1979, Celeste was Ohio’s last independently elected lieutenant governor. In that job, Democrat Celeste was, in theory, No. 2 to the Republican governor. (Rhodes reputedly told Celeste to take up golf to occupy his time.)
In 1978, Rhodes won a fourth term by defeating a Celeste challenge. In 1986, then-Gov. Celeste returned the favor; he won a second term by defeating a Rhodes challenge.
This week’s event, hosted by friends of Rhodes, will benefit the James A. Rhodes Leadership Foundation. It aims to place at the Jackson County Courthouse a copy of the Rhodes statue across from the Statehouse, in front of the James A. Rhodes State Office Tower. Rhodes, a coal miner’s son, was born in Coalton, in Jackson County.
Any money raised beyond the estimated $25,000 cost to copy the statue will fund scholarships.
Rhodes’ down-home manner and southern Ohio accent hid craftiness and a sharp eye for Statehouse talent. He picked outstanding (albeit, Republican) aides to help run Ohio. When Ronald Reagan became California’s governor, he borrowed Rhodes’ state budget director, Richard L. Krabach.
Another Rhodes aide was Thomas J. Moyer, now the Ohio Supreme Court’s second-longest-serving chief justice.
Rhodes was no conservative. Today, to GOP hard-shells, he’d be a “RINO” — “Republican in Name Only.” Out of power, Rhodes watched Democrats raise taxes. Then, he pounced, using taxes as a pry-bar to unseat them. But that didn’t mean he refused to spend the tax money Democrats had bequeathed him.
When Rhodes died in 2001 at age 91, an editor at Human Events, the conservative periodical, called him “a master politician” though he’d “pulled no punches in letting me know that he had clashed with most of the Buckeye State conservative leaders that Human Events had championed.”
Even so, Rhodes “was a longtime Human Events subscriber (sometimes renewing in cash).”
No surprise, the cash: Rich pals helped make Rhodes rich.
But meanwhile, Ohio finally finished I-71; Cleveland and Youngstown got state universities; Toledo, a medical school; every county, an airport.
Even if Ohio built more than it eventually could afford to heat, cool or light, even if some mental hospitals were scenes from the Dark Ages, voters made James A. Rhodes governor four times because then, unlike now, they thought Ohio was on the move.
Thomas Suddes is an adjunct assistant professor at Ohio University. Send e-mail to tsuddes@gmail.com.