Hartley drew organized labor further into politics and gave it an emotionally charged

 32
issue with resonance.3

 The CIO's zealous effort to repeal Taft-Hartley impacted Taft's re-election

campaign. Ohio Democrats were in no condition to mount an effective campaign

alone, but the national party offered little assistance. 33 Early in 1950, with the Ohio

Democratic Party in disarray, the CIO-PAC stood willing to help. The PAC's national

leadership made defeating Taft their primary mission and even went so far as to call

Ohio the number one battleground state in the congressional elections. National CIO-

PAC head Jack Kroll, a leader in the Cincinnati labor movement commented that

Ohio was the most important state in the November campaigns. Labor's campaign

rhetoric was much more shrill and aggressive than that of the Democratic Party.34

 Taft had prepared for the onslaught from labor well before the Democrats had

chosen their candidate. In early campaigning in 1949, Taft had often mentioned that

his opponent would be the "tool of avaricious labor leaders" and the "fair-haired boy

of the Fair Deal." Taft campaign manager Willis Gradison had correctly predicted

that the national AFL convention, scheduled to take place in Cincinnati in mid-1950,

would become a forum for Taft's opponents. Union officials and regular Democratic

politicians alike tied Taft to the labor issue and rallied against Taft-Hartley in

speeches in Ohio and across the country. In his State of the Union Address, for

example, Truman called for the repeal of Taft-Hartley and a return to the labor





32 Robert Zieger, The CIO: 1935-1955 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 248-52;
James Caldwell Foster, The Union Politic: The CIO Political Action Committee (Columbia: University
of Missouri Press, 1975), 1-15.

33 Cincinnati Enquirer, January 10, 1950.

34 Ibid., January 15, 1950.