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Frank John Lausche (November 14, 1895 - April 21, 1990) was a Democratic politician from Ohio. He served as the 55th and 57th Governor of Ohio and also served in the U.S. Senate for two terms.
Lausche was born in Cleveland, Ohio. After serving in the U.S. Army during World War I, he returned to law school, graduating from the John Marshall School of Law in 1920. Lausche served as Municipal Court judge from 1932-1937 and Common Pleas Court judge from 1937-1941, before winning election as Mayor of Cleveland in 1941. He served until 1944, when he first won election to the governorship. Lausche served as governor from 1945-1947, when he lost to Thomas J. Herbert. Lausche defeated Herbert in a 1948 rematch, however, serving from 1949-1957. Lausche resigned in early 1957, having won election to the Senate in 1956.
In his first term, with the Senate almost evenly split, Lausche gave Senate Democratic leader Lyndon B. Johnson a scare by hinting that he might vote for Republican William F. Knowland for Senate Majority Leader, although he eventually did not. Throughout his career, Lausche displayed a bipartisan approach to politics, being known by some as "Democrat with a small 'd'." His independence earned him the derisive moniker, "Frank the Fence." Lausche was re-elected in 1962, but lost his bid for renomination in 1968, due to his loss of labor union support. He was defeated in the Democratic primary by John J. Gilligan, who went on to lose the general election to William B. Saxbe.
Lausche was a very popular, plain-spoken, big-city politician of the old school. He was credited with building a coalition of ethnic voters in Cleveland known as the "cosmopolitan Democrats." There is some evidence that both Harry S. Truman in 1948, and Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952, considered asking Lausche to become their running mate.
The State of Ohio office building in Cleveland is named after Lausche.
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