page_title: Jim Rhodes
section_title: Life and Politics
hierarchical_section_title: Jim Rhodes / Life and Politics
caption_attribution_description: One of the friendly folks I met on a warm January day when I visited Coalton, Ohio was the mayor, She suggested that I visit the birthplace of former Governor Rhodes whose father was a coal miner. The James A. Rhodes Applachian Highway was named after him. He was also mayor of Columbus. Wikipedia has a detailed and interesting biography: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Rhodes
context_page_description: James Allen Rhodes was an American Republican politician from Ohio, one of only seven governors to serve four four-year terms in office. Rhodes is tied for the fourth longest gubernatorial tenure in post-Constitutional U.S. history at 5,840 days.
  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 gunned down unarmed students Allison Beth Krause, 19, Jeffrey Glenn Miller, 20, Sandra Lee Scheuer, 20, and William Knox Schroeder, 19, and wounded nine others, including Dean Kahler, who suffered permanent paralysis.
context_section_description: Rhodes was born in Coalton, Jackson County, 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 The 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.
  In 1934, Rhodes began to use his position as a local businessman to climb up the Columbus political ladder, and became a ward committeeman, a member of the Columbus school board, the city auditor, and eventually the mayor of Columbus (1944–1952). It was during this time that he married Helen Rawlins. 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.
  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 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. 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.
  Rhodes oversaw the last two (by electrocution) pre-Furman executions in Ohio, which were both in early 1963, before Ohio resumed executions in 1999. In 1983 Rhodes pardoned boxing promoter Don King for a 1967 non‐negligent manslaughter conviction of stomping one of his employees to death.
  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, an
caption: The residence where Jim Rhodes was born
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