Warren G. Harding: Return to Normalcy and the Ohio Gang's Betrayal

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Warren G. Harding was born in Ohio in 1865 into an abolitionist family, and at 18 he and partners paid $300 for the failing Marion Star. He kept the daily edition nonpartisan and the weekly mildly Republican to sell to both sides of a divided county. He married Florence Kling, a divorced piano teacher five years older, who ran the paper's circulation and finances. Her father, Amos Kling, spread rumors that Harding had African American ancestry, a claim DNA testing refuted in 2015. Harding rose to state senator and lieutenant governor by avoiding conflict, won Ohio's first direct Senate election in 1914, and delayed firm positions on Prohibition and suffrage until the outcome was clear.

Promising a return to normalcy, he won the 1920 election in a landslide. He created the Bureau of the Budget, pursued naval disarmament at the Washington Naval Conference, released Eugene Debs, and appointed Herbert Hoover, Charles Evans Hughes and Andrew Mellon. He also placed friends known as the Ohio Gang in power. Interior Secretary Albert Fall secretly leased naval oil reserves including Teapot Dome, and Veterans Bureau chief Charles Forbes sold off hospital supplies. Harding died of a heart attack in San Francisco in August 1923 during his Voyage of Understanding, and was widely mourned before the scandals and revelations about his private life broke.

• He sided with William Howard Taft in a feud, leaving behind his longtime political mentor.
• He reportedly choked Forbes against a wall at the White House, then let him resign and leave for Europe.
• Justice Department associate Jess Smith died by suicide as exposure of influence peddling loomed.
• Letters later revealed a 15 year affair with Carrie Fulton Phillips, the wife of a Marion friend.
• Nan Britton's bestselling book claimed she had his child and described meetings in a White House coat closet.