ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 examines an important early state-level example of the service party concept developed by Ray Bliss in Ohio in the 1950s. It was in Ohio that Bliss, as Republican state party Chair between 1949 and 1965, first experimented with and worked to refine the idea of building a more permanent, centralized party structure dedicated to providing the strategic services needed by Republican candidates in increasingly candidate-centered, expensive, and competitive state elections. Ohio offers an opportunity to examine not only how the service party impacted the state Republican Party organizationally, but also politically. The introduction of a service party infrastructure in Ohio did help the state party rebuild after its losses in the 1948 election, but it also effectively enshrined the party’s “Old Guard” conservatism that had long prevailed on the party’s right, even though the political climate of the state in the 1950s was becoming increasingly pro-union and Democratic. As such, Ohio offers a unique glimpse into the institutional framework and thinking associated with the development of the service party model that would later shape Bliss and Brock’s tenure as out-party chairs at the RNC in the 1960s and 1970s.
