Gerald R. Ford photo

Remarks at a Reception for Local Labor Leaders in Cincinnati

June 07, 1976

I want to thank very, very deeply Governor Jim Rhodes for his all-out effort. I want to thank the Republican organization from the top down to the person that gets people to the polls and tells them how to vote for the good of the country. And I want to thank all of the Republican Members of the United States Congress, Bob Taft and my former colleagues in the House. I want to thank the State legislators. They have done a super job on my behalf. I never thought I could get this many Buckeyes to help the Wolverines. Of course, the epitome was when Woody Hayes1 came out for a Wolverine.

But let me give you a message in capsule form that I gave a comparable group in New Jersey yesterday. Here is a group of people in the great State of New Jersey who remember very vividly the clobbering they took in 1964, where they lost virtually the whole ticket from top to bottom. They lost what they call freeholders, which are the courthouse people. They lost the State ticket; it was just decimated. And they are not going to let that happen again by having the wrong person leading the Republican ticket in November.

And I am not--I just can't believe that Hamilton County or in the other counties of Ohio you are going to let the wrong person lead the ticket for the Republican Party in 1976. We can win. I can be elected, and I can 'help elect more Republican Members of the House and the Senate, in this State legislature, and in the local courthouse.

That is the way you build a party. That is the way you maintain a political philosophy. That is the way you make headway in trying to keep America on the right path economically, militarily, diplomatically, morally, spiritually, and everything else.

All I am saying to you is we have got about 24 hours now, just about 24 hours to make the difference. And what you do here in Hamilton County-we are in the last minute of the last quarter, and this is when you really turn on the steam. This is when you convince people, and you get people to the polls. We did a pretty good job in Michigan a few weeks ago, and as I said in the other meeting, this is one time I would love to see Ohio beat Michigan's record.

Thank you very much.

1 Head coach of the Ohio State University football team

Note: The President spoke at 9:03 a.m. in Reception Room 213 at the Cincinnati Convention Center.

Gerald R. Ford, Remarks at a Reception for Local Labor Leaders in Cincinnati Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/257361

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