Wednesday, August 18, 1999
Gilligan to run for board of education
BY HOWARD WILKINSON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
John Gilligan
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John Gilligan's name hasn't been on a general election ballot for 25 years, but the former Ohio governor is starting a new career as a candidate for the Cincinnati Board of Education.
“I'm concerned because there is a lot of discussion about the plight of the public schools, but I don't pick up much of a sense of urgency about it,” the 78-year-old East Walnut Hills resident said Tuesday. “I want to bring a sense of urgency to the subject.”
Mr. Gilligan, a one-term Democratic governor elected in 1970, is entering a field race for one of three seats on the seven-member school board up for election this fall.
Two are held by incumbents Arthur Hull and Rick Williams; a third is open by incumbent Lynwood Battle's decision not to run.
The school board campaign will run simultaneously with a Cincinnati Public Schools' campaign to pass a 4.5-mill, $24 million tax levy.
“There are 48,000 kids in Cincinnati Public Schools, and the education they get in those schools is their one chance for a decent and productive life,” Mr. Gilligan said. “If they don't get that education, they are headed for the scrap heap and we can't afford to let that happen.”
Mr. Gilligan was not specific about what he'd stress in his campaign.
Education would not be a new venue for Mr. Gilligan. He taught literature at Xavier University before being elected to Cincinnati City Council in 1953. He also taught at Notre Dame and the University of Cincinnati College of Law after his term as Ohio's 62nd governor.
Mr. Gilligan said friends and supporters have been urging him in recent weeks to run. “I had some misgivings about it, but I decided that I had something to offer,” Mr. Gilligan said.
His four grown children, Mr. Gilligan said, “are unanimous in thinking I'm crazy.”
For Mr. Gilligan, the decision to run comes 25 years after he lost his bid for re-election as Ohio's governor to former Gov. Jim Rhodes by a razor-thin margin of 11,000 votes — less than one vote per precinct.
When Mr. Rhodes upended Mr. Gilligan in the closest gubernatorial race of the century, it appeared Mr. Gilligan's political career was over, and for almost 20 years, it was.
That career in politics had led Mr. Gilligan from Cincinnati City Council in the 1950s and early '60s to a seat in Congress in 1965 and an unsuccessful run for the U.S. Senate in 1968 before being elected governor.
It was a path that might have led to the White House. In 1974, with President Nixon resigning and the Republican Party in disarray, many Democrats were touting Mr. Gilligan as a Democratic presidential candidate in 1976. But his unexpected re-election defeat that year ended all that.
Mr. Gilligan ended up working for a time in the administration of President Carter as director of the Agency for International Development.
Later, he became director of the Institute for International Peace Studies at Notre Dame.
After returning to Cincinnati in 1991, he taught at the UC law school and started inching his way back into Democratic politics, winning a seat on the county party's central committee three years ago.
He took a high-profile role earlier in support of Issue 4, the ballot issue passed by Cincinnati voters in May that will establish direct elections for a mayor with enhanced powers beginning with the 2001 election.
As governor, he was best-known for pushing the state's first personal income tax through the Ohio General Assembly.
Larry Christman, a former state legislator and now a Columbus lobbyist for independent colleges, said Mr. Gilligan's income tax “put public schools on a sound financial footing throughout the '70s. Without it, we'd be even more reliant on the property tax to fund the schools than we are today.”
But the act that put the Democratic governor in the most hot water with voters was his 1973 decision to deal with a state budget crisis by closing the state parks.
“Shutting people out of the parks and the income tax did him in,” said Pete O'Grady, who was Ohio Democratic Party chairman during the Gilligan years. “He wasn't the best politician, but I think he was the greatest governor of modern times,” said Mr. O'Grady, now a Columbus political consultant.
“He's a great positive thinker,” Mr. O'Grady said. “The man has a lot to offer.”
Mr. Gilligan joins five other declared candidates: Mr. Hull and Mr. Williams; accountant Louis Buschle; college professor Florence Newell and accountant Roy McGrath.
The deadline to file petitions is 4 p.m. Thursday.
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