Joseph B. Foraker

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Joseph B. Foraker : biography

July 5, 1846 – May 10, 1917

Foraker returned to the practice of law, initially vowing to avoid politics; however, he received a number of letters offering him support in a gubernatorial race in 1885. The 1884 Republican state convention elected Foraker a delegate-at-large to the national convention along with Congressman McKinley and Cleveland industrialist Mark Hanna. Sherman’s political managers asked Foraker to play an active role in Sherman’s presidential campaign, and to place his name in nomination at the convention, which he did, though Walters describes his speech as "weak and unimpressive" by comparison with Foraker’s later efforts. Other candidates for the presidential nomination included President Chester A. Arthur (who had succeeded the assassinated James A. Garfield) and John A. Logan, but the convention was dominated by the Blaine forces. Sherman received 30 votes, mostly from Ohio, on the first ballot, but his total thereafter declined, and Blaine secured the nomination on the fourth ballot. There was talk of Foraker for vice president; he received one vote, from New York delegate and Cornell president Andrew D. White. The nominating speech, despite its flaws, made Foraker a national figure. At the convention, Foraker worked with Hanna and with Charles G. Kurtz of Columbus: both would support Foraker in the years ahead, though in the case of Hanna, only for a time. In the fall campaign, both Foraker and Hanna supported Blaine, accompanying the New Englander when he toured Ohio in October. However, Blaine was defeated by the Democratic candidate, New York Governor Grover Cleveland.

Foraker received early support for a second run for governor in 1885, but said little publicly until the state convention in Springfield in June. He did, however, respond to allegations that he had discriminated against African Americans in his law practice and that he had withdrawn from Ohio Wesleyan because a black student had been admitted. Foraker refuted these charges without stating that he was a candidate for office. He arrived at the convention to the strains of "Marching Through Georgia", in reference to his Civil War service, and won an easy first-ballot victory: according to Walters, "the Springfield convention of 1885 marked the arrival of Foraker, the politician." The major issues in the fall campaign were again the liquor question, at which Foraker proved more adept than two years previously, and treatment of the African-American voter, prompted by an incident in Cincinnati in 1884 when a Democratic-minded policeman, Mike Mullen, locked up 150 African Americans the night before the general election to prevent them from voting. Foraker was again opposed by Hoadly, who had pardoned Mullen, and who had accepted a $150,000 fee from the city-owned Cincinnati Southern Railway, though the governor professed not to know how he had earned it. Foraker forged an alliance with African-American editor Harry C. Smith, who would be a supporter throughout his political career. On October 13, 1885, Foraker defeated Hoadly by 17,451 votes. Although he won much of the state, he did not carry Hamilton County due to election fraud.

Wilderness years (1890–1896)

Return to the law; first run for senator

Defeated for re-election, Foraker returned to Cincinnati and the practice of law. Although initially he rejoined his old law partnership, he established his own offices in 1893, the year his son Joseph Jr. became an assistant in his office upon graduation from Cornell. Joseph Benson Foraker Jr. was the first child of a Cornell alumnus to graduate from the university. The senior Foraker, though he accepted a broad array of cases, was a "political lawyer", lobbying the legislature to grant franchises to his clients, and arranging for bills unfavorable to his clients (who included the Edison Electric Company, Cincinnati Bell Telephone Company, and the Cincinnati Street Railway Company) to be quashed.

The former governor was enraged when in March 1890, Hanna gave a speech in New York stating, "Foraker is dead as a factor in our politics and Ohio is again as reliable a Republican state as it ever was." Foraker determined to secure election to the Senate; although the Democratic-controlled legislature had elected Calvin S. Brice to the Senate in 1890, Sherman’s seat would be up for election in January 1892. McKinley was defeated for re-election to Congress in November 1890; his stature in Ohio politics was not diminished by the loss, as he was seen as a victim of gerrymandering. When the former congressman ran for governor the following year, he asked Foraker to place his name in nomination, which he did. Although some saw this as a rapprochement between the Sherman and Foraker factions, the former governor’s supporters, such as Kurtz and millionaire Springfield manufacturer Asa Bushnell, were already campaigning for Foraker for Senate.