It's been more than 50 years since an Ohio Republican mounted a serious campaign for president.

At the 1952 Republican convention in Chicago, "Mr. Republican," Sen. Robert A. Taft, faced off against Gen. Dwight Eisenhower. It was Taft's third run for president, and many thought he was the front-runner.

In the days before primaries, nominations came down to backroom battles. In this case, it was over which delegates - the Taft backers or Eisenhower's - got credentials. Eisenhower won.

Ike went on to become a beloved two-term president. Taft returned to the Senate and died the next year.

No Ohio Republican has launched a serious campaign since then. Rep. John Kasich of Columbus ran in 2000, but - as Dennis Kucinich discovered this year - running from one of 435 U.S. House seats means no one's ever heard of you. Kasich dropped out before the first primary.

Considering Ohio is the Mother of Presidents, that it has supplied seven Republican presidents (and one Whig), and considering the GOP domination of Ohio for the past decades, where are the Ohio presidential candidates? Can any step up in 2008?

Gov. Bob Taft will be out of office by then, but he has been riding low in public opinion polls.

By 2008, Gov. Ken Blackwell or Gov. Jim Petro or Gov. Betty Montgomery will have been in office only two years, too short a time to mount a national campaign.

The Ohio Almanac, a regularly updated encyclopedia of all things Buckeye, concludes that the entire congressional delegation, in general, has "lost some of its luster" in recent years.

But it singles out one man considered "a rising star in the Ohio constellation," Rep. Rob Portman of Terrace Park.

He wouldn't be able to run from his House seat either. But if he takes a job in a second Bush administration, he could establish his name nationally. His name has even been offered as a possible replacement this time around for Vice President Dick Cheney.

Portman says he doesn't know what he'll do, and he was quick to pooh-pooh the idea of replacing Cheney.

But here's a scenario: Suppose something happens to Cheney in a second term. Portman, a longtime friend of Bush's, could be tapped as a replacement veep, a la Gerald Ford in 1973.

Presto: instant 2008 Republican front-runner.

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Job opening in Chabot's office: Brian Griffith, Rep. Steve Chabot's spokesman since 2001, has left to get a law degree at the University of Cincinnati. Griffith, 30, who grew up in Landen, joined Chabot's office in 1997.

"I'm not sure where law school may take me," he said.

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They said it: "I hear this from my constituents back in Cincinnati, and that's the frustration sometimes about actually getting (Osama) bin Laden because we think he's in that Wild West region of Pakistan, the tribal-controlled areas up there. ... Some people will say, 'Oh, well, Iraq was a distraction and that's why we didn't get bin Laden' and that sort of thing, which is trash as far as I'm concerned." - Chabot at a House International Relations Committee hearing last week.

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E-mail cweiser@gannett.com