Harry M. Daugherty

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Harry Daugherty

Harry Micajah Daugherty (January 26, 1860–October 12, 1941) (daw-GER-tee) was an American politician. He is best known as a Republican Party boss, and member of the Ohio Gang, the name given to the group of advisors surrounding president Warren G. Harding.

Daugherty graduated from the University of Michigan Law School at the age of 20, but had to wait one year before taking the bar exam. Over the next 15 years, he practiced law and began his political career as a city councilman in Washington Court House, Ohio. From there, he became a prosecutor in Fayette County, Ohio, then served in the Ohio House of Representatives from 1890 to 1894. Bids for higher offices, such as U.S. Congress, state attorney general and governor all came up short.

As an Ohio Republican party boss in 1920, engineered Harding's ascendency as the Republican Party Presidential nominee at that year's Chicago Republican National Convention. The decision to propel Harding forward if the nomination wasn't decided on the first ballot, was made in what became known as in American politics as the smoke-filled room in the Blackstone Hotel. Daugherty served as campaign manager for Harding in the U.S. presidential election of 1920. He ran the campaign based on Harding's affable personality and fairly neutral political stance, advocating a return to "normalcy" after World War I.

Harding won the Republican Party nomination after the vote deadlocked between Leonard Wood and Frank Lowden, an event whose possibility Daugherty had suggested months before in an interview. After Harding won the general election, he appointed Daugherty United States Attorney General.

Daugherty's controversial three years in office saw his name surface in connection with veterans bureau irregularities, alien property conspiracies, as well as his role in the pardoning of Eugene V. Debs and Charles W. Morse. However it was his alleged knowledge of a kickback scam involving bootlegers (operated by his chief aid Jess Smith) that lead to his eventual resignation in March 28, 1924. As the subject of a U.S. Senate investigation begun the year before, spearheaded under the direction of Junior Senator Burton K. Wheeler of Montana, Daugherty, was eventually not found guilty in the investigation.

He returned to practicing law until his retirement in 1932, and that year published along with ghostwriter Thomas Dixon, The Inside Story of the Harding Tragedy about his time in the Harding administration. In the book, he claimed that Albert B. Fall had become Secretary of the Interior by forging Daugherty's name, and that his close friend, Jesse Smith, had killed himself because of diabetes, not a guilty conscience.

Spending many of his final years in Florida and Mackinac Island, Michigan, Daugherty planned to write more books to clear his reputation, but in October 1940, he suffered two heart attacks and was stricken with pneumonia. Bedridden and blind in one eye during this last year, he died peacefully in his sleep with his son and daughter at his side. His wife, Lucy, had died in 1924, following many years of ill health, while another son died in 1930.