Mark Bernstein - John J. Gilligan: The Politics of Principle

THE POLITICS OF PRINCIPLE

Mark Bernstein

THE KENT STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS

KENT, OHIO

To David, my brother

Publishers note: John J. Gilligan died on August 26, 2013.

2013 by The Gilligan Institute

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2012048158

ISBN 978-1-60635-113-0

Manufactured in the United States of America

This publication is made possible in part through the support of The Gilligan Institute.

Every effort has been made to obtain permission from those persons interviewed by the author who are quoted in this book.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Bernstein, Mark.

John J. Gilligan : the politics of principle / Mark Bernstein.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-1-60635-113-0 (hardcover)

1. Gilligan, John J. (John Joyce), 19212. GovernorsOhioBiography. 3. LegislatorsUnited StatesBiography. 4. United States. Congress. HouseBiography. 5. OhioPolitics and government19516. Cincinnati (Ohio)Biography. I. Title.

F496.4.G55B47 2013

977.1043092dc23

[B]

2012048158

17 16 15 14 13 5 4 3 2 1

As will become apparent to the reader, my principal debt in this work is to John Joyce Gilligan, who was enormously generous with his time, even-handed thoughtfulness, candor, and humor. He always wished to press on with the project. I particularly recall three days of interviews conducted by candlelight in the governors home after the remnants of a tropical storm had rendered Cincinnati free of electricity.

Perhaps next most intimately involved were James Friedman, Robert Daley, and William Chavanne, the three principals of the Gilligan Institute. They not only saw to the projects underwriting and were a continuing source of advice, but they were steadfastly clear that the work and the conclusions it carried were to be those of the author.

To have ones spouse or father made the subject of a book is perhaps an intrusive thing. I was therefore greatly pleased at the full cooperation of Susan Gilligan, the governors wife, and of his four adult children: Donald Gilligan, Kathleen Sebelius, John Gilligan, and Ellen Gilligan.

The principal archive I used in researching this work was the Ohio Historical Society in Columbus. I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Thomas Rieder, who as head archivist not only seemed to know everything but knew where it was shelved. The staff of the Ohio Historical Society, operating in somewhat straitened circumstances, was unfailingly competent, cooperative, and a pleasure to work with. Most of the day-to-day accounts of the Ohio General Assembly during Governor Gilligans tenure come from Gongwer News Service, an invaluable newsletter published whenever the legislature is in session. As a great courtesy, Alan Miller, president of Gongwer, made freely available four years worth of publications. I also acknowledge the assistance of Charles Lamb at the University of Notre Dame Archives, Father Thomas Kennealy at Xavier University in Cincinnati, and Mark Motz at Cincinnatis St. Xavier High School, each being an institution Jack Gilligan attended or at which he taught.

Though I lived in Ohio from 1973 to 2004, I was a resident of Maryland when this project began. An enormous amount of on the ground work needed to be done in Ohio, from searching out 500 newspaper clippings to securing copies of reports from the State Library of Ohio in Columbus. This project could not have been completed without research associate Mary Kay Mabe and her resourcefulness, her fundamental good sense, and her ability to draw others into the effort. These others included Christine Wolff, public affairs office of the Cincinnati Public Schools; Connie Ostrove, reference librarian at the State Library of Ohio; Melanie Chapleau, personal assistant to Father Theodore Hesburgh at the University of Notre Dame; and Carol Hester, chief public information officer at the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency. Led by Nancy Horlacher, local history specialist, the staff at the Dayton Metro Library was very helpful: Nicole Eby, government records reference librarian; Gregory Estes, interlibrary loan reference historian; and Jean Waselewski, interlibrary loan clerk. Additionally, thanks to Rhonda Wiseman, library specialist, and Shannon Keman, reference librarian, both at the University of Cincinnati Law Library, and to everyone in the periodicals department of the Cincinnati Public Library and microfilm department of the Columbus Public Library.

For their comments on the manuscript, I am particularly indebted to Dr. George Knepper of the University of Akron and to Michael Curtin, whose career at the Columbus Dispatch took him from reporter to associate publisher. They read and critiqued the manuscript in its entirety, discovering both virtues of which the author was unaware and matters that needed correction. The production of the book was ably executed by Kent State University Press, most notably Will Underwood, director; Christine Brooks, production manager; Joyce Harrison, acquiring editor; and Mary Young, managing editor.

Less formally, but no less important, was the advice and moral support received from Mark Stern, Mark Sondheim, Tony Dallas, Alan Loeb, Neil Shister, Jean Bernstein, Michael Derr, Tom Suddes, and doubtless others. Despite this, there were times when I seriously questioned the projects future. At those times, I was blessed to have near me someone of unwavering confidence in the successful completion of the task. To Susan Drake Swift, whose faith was the evidence of things unseen by the author, I am most deeply indebted.

___________________________

Wilbur Wright was once asked to name the prerequisites of success. Easy, he said, Pick out a good father and mother and begin life in Ohio. There was more than state (or family) pride in Wilburs response; there was due appreciation of the Buckeye states peculiar history. When Americans first spilled over the Appalachians, Ohio was the only contiguous free state on the other side. As such, it attracted all manner of groupsfrom the Mormons who settled in Kirtland to the German separatists who founded Zoar. Ohio was where the Yankee blacksmiths from New Hampshire and the mill workers from Massachusetts and the small farmers of Virginia mixed and mingled and where they created a population no longer tied to the Atlantic, a population that looked forward to the West rather than back to Europe. A population, for the lack of a better word, of Americans.

Ohio offered vast resources to a scattered population, an imbalance that rewarded inventiveness. Initially, these inventions were incidental things, like better ways to squeeze cider from an apple or extract honey from a hive. Eventually these inventions changed the worldthe work of the Ohio-born Thomas Edison, of Ohio-born Charles Kettering, and of Wilbur and his Ohio-born brother Orville.

Ohio was patriotic to its fighting core. The state was home to the generals who won the Civil WarGrant, Sherman, and Sheridanand home to most of the presidents who followed that conflict; between 1869, when Ulysses S. Grant took office, and 1923, when Warren G. Harding died, there was an Ohio-born president in the White House more than half the time.

With industrialization, Ohio offered location, mineral wealth, and deep reserves of water. Iron ore from Minnesota traveled by ponderous lake carriers to be made into steel in Cleveland, the city in which John D. Rockefeller built the very model of the modern monopoly. Ohio cities specialized. Akron had rubber; Toledo had glass; Dayton was second only to Detroit in the auto industry. Visiting northeastern Ohio in 1962, John Steinbeck wrote, My eyes and mind were battered by the fantastic hugeness and energy of production, a complication That energy had been fueled by enormous investments in industrial plants made during the Second World War. Arguably, the immediate postwar years saw Ohios industrial strength at its peak. From that peak, it is difficult to say with certainty when the states decline began. Clevelands manufacturing employment, for example, began to drop off in 1969. Historian George Knepper notes that in the 1950s Ohios economy accounted for more than 6 percent of the nations gross national product (GNP). Thereafter this percentage fell, slowly but steadily, to less than 5 percent by the centurys close.