Jim Rhodes

James Allen Rhodes (September 13, 1909 – March 4, 2001) was an American attorney and Republican politician who served as the 61st and 63rd Governor of Ohio from 1963 to 1971 and from 1975 to 1983.

Rhodes was one of only seven U.S. governors to serve four four-year terms in office.

Rhodes is tied for the sixth-longest gubernatorial tenure in post-Constitutional U.S. history at 5,840 days.

In 1934, Rhodes began to use his position as a local businessman to climb up the Columbus political ladder, starting on a ward committee.

In 1937, Rhodes won his first elected office as a member of the Columbus Board of Education.

He was then twice elected as Columbus city auditor in 1939 and 1941.

Then in 1943, Rhodes was elected as Mayor of Columbus, becoming the youngest major city mayor in the U.S. at age 34.

Rhodes's time as mayor is primarily marked by two achievements, with the first being his convincing of 67% of Columbus voters to approve the city's first income tax, and the second being his successful use of water gun diplomacy to annex much of the surrounding suburbs to Columbus.

As surrounding communities grew or were constructed, they came to require access to waterlines, which was under the sole control of the municipal water system.

Rhodes told these communities that if they wanted water, they would have to submit to assimilation into Columbus.

As a result of this, Columbus, Ohio, currently has the largest land area of any Ohio city.

He also served as Mayor of Columbus from 1944 to 1952 and Ohio State Auditor from 1953 to 1963.

With an eye on the governorship, Rhodes was elected State Auditor in 1952, and took office in early 1953.

In 1954, Rhodes ran against the popular incumbent, Democratic governor Frank Lausche, and lost by a 54% to 46% margin.

In 1962, Rhodes ran again for governor – this time against Democratic incumbent Mike DiSalle.

Rhodes's campaign centered on "jobs and progress," and in speeches Rhodes routinely claimed that an increase in jobs would lead to a decrease in everything from crime and divorce, to mental illness.

Rhodes also made DiSalle's tax increases, such as the gas tax, a prominent part of his campaign.

Rhodes also weathered a minor scandal when Democratic State Chairman alleged that Rhodes diverted and borrowed a total of $54,000 from his campaign funds.

During a debate, both Rhodes and DiSalle agreed that this was, "the most vicious campaign [of] the Ohio governorship."

On November 6, 1962, Ohioans voted Rhodes into the governorship with 59% of the vote.

Rhodes oversaw the last two (by electrocution) pre-Furman executions in Ohio, which were both in early 1963, before Ohio resumed executions in 1999.

Rhodes served two terms as governor, and he also was a "favorite son" presidential candidate who controlled the Ohio delegation to the Republican National Conventions in 1964 and 1968, before retiring in 1971.

Rhodes championed a county airport program which, after being passed by voters in 1965, saw the construction of 50 airports throughout the state.

On May 3, 1970, Rhodes sent National Guard troops onto the Kent State University campus at the request of Kent, Ohio mayor LeRoy Satrom after the ROTC building was burned down by unknown arsonists the previous night.

On May 4, Guardsmen killed four students and wounded nine others.

Rhodes was born in Coalton, Ohio, to James and Susan Howe Rhodes, who were of Welsh descent.

Rhodes has commented that the reason he and his family were Republicans was because of the respect his father, a mine superintendent, had for John L. Lewis, a prominent Republican union activist.

When Rhodes was nine, his father died, and the family moved to north Springfield where Rhodes graduated from Springfield High School where he played on the football team.

Subsequently, the family moved again, this time to Columbus, because Rhodes earned a modest basketball scholarship to Ohio State University.

Although Rhodes dropped out after his first quarter he is often described as a "student" or "alumnus" of Ohio State.

After dropping out of college, Rhodes opened a business called Jim's Place across from the university on North High Street.

Jim's Place has been described as a place where one could buy anything, from doughnuts and hamburgers to stag film, or place bets on numbers games.

He ran for the U.S. Senate in 1970 and narrowly lost, to U.S. Representative Robert Taft Jr.., in the primary election, which was two days after the events at Kent State.

At a news conference in Kent, Ohio, on Sunday May 3, 1970, the day before the Kent State shootings, he said of campus protesters:

They're worse than the Brownshirts, and the Communist element, and also the Night Riders, and the vigilantes.

They're the worst type of people that we harbor in America.

Since the Ohio Constitution limits the governor to two four-year terms, when Rhodes initially filed to run again in 1974, his petitions were refused by the Secretary of State.

Rhodes sued, and the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that the limitation was on consecutive terms, thus freeing him to return to office by narrowly defeating incumbent John Gilligan in an upset in the 1974 election.

In 1983 Rhodes pardoned boxing promoter Don King for a 1967 non‐negligent manslaughter conviction of stomping one of his employees to death.

He served two more terms before retiring again in 1983.