Harding lived in rural Ohio all his life, except when political service took him elsewhere. As a young man, he bought The Marion Star and built it into a successful newspaper. In 1899, he was elected to the Ohio State Senate; he spent four years there, then was elected lieutenant governor. He won in a landslide over Democrat James M. Cox and the then-imprisoned Socialist Party candidate Eugene Debs and became the first sitting senator to be elected president. After the election, Harding had announced he was going on vacation, and that no decisions about appointments would be made until he returned to Marion in December.
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