Ohio Gang

The Ohio Gang is a misnomer, applied to a group of officials within the administration of Warren G. Harding, 29th President of the United States of America. It carries connotations of self-serving, corrupt men hailing from Harding's home state of Ohio, despite the fact that most Harding officials were neither Ohioans nor corrupt.

The personality anchoring "the Ohio Gang" was Harry M. Daugherty, an Ohio Republican Party boss. Other administration names included under the Ohio Gang umbrella included Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall (a native of Kentucky, later of New Mexico), Postmaster General Will Hays (Indiana), and Secretary of the Navy Edwin Denby (Michigan).

Scandals Attributed to the Ohio Gang

Harry M. Daugherty is credited with engineering Harding’s nomination as the Republican Party Nominee at the Chicago Convention in the summer of 1920. When Harding won the election, he nominated Daugherty to the post of Attorney General in return for Daugherty's services. Once in office, Daugherty brought into the federal government his longtime friend from Washington Courthouse, Ohio, Jess Smith. Smith managed Daugherty's interests where the illegal sale of alcohol was conducted; Smith later committed suicide when his involvement was made public. Daugherty’s activities were the subject of a government investigation; however no charges were filed, and Daugherty never faced trial.

Albert B. Fall used his position to sell portions of the navy's strategic oil reserves and leases to Sinclair Oil of California – thus embroiling himself and Denby in the Teapot Dome Scandal. Fall was found guilty and became the first presidential cabinet member to serve time in prison. None of the other parties involved in Teapot Dome were from Ohio.

Charles Forbes, who bilked the government of millions of dollars while the head of Veterans Administration was also not from Ohio but had in fact first met the Hardings in Hawaii. Forbes relationship with Harding's sister Caroline Harding Votaw and her husband also lead the rumor mills to assume that Harding had blessed Forbes' activities when in fact it was Mrs. Votaw who informed the White House about Forbes activities in fraudulent real estate deals.

Guilt by Association

Dr. Charles E. Sawyer, the President and Mrs. Harding's personal physician, has been incorrectly associated with the Ohio Gang, because of allegations made by private investigator Gaston Means. Upon release from federal prison, Means wrote “The Strange Deaths of President Harding” in which he alluded to the possibility that Dr. Sawyer, in collaboration with Mrs. Harding, conspired to poison the President in order to avoid the disgraces associated with the scandals while still in office. This premise, however, is false; Harding’s health had been in decline for a number of years, and his death was actually from cardio pulmonary issues exacerbated by the strenuous schedule of the Voyage of Understanding and the stress from the burgeoning scandals. Sawyer, who was of advanced age and suffered from heart health issues, died in Marion Ohio in the late summer of 1924. Mrs. Harding died in November of 1924 of kidney disease.

While Harding’s personal short comings have been documented, none – other than the consumption of alcohol during prohibition – broke Federal law. No known records or official administration documents have been presented that clearly implicate that President Harding knew of, or directly benefited in any way from the antics of his errant cabinet members.

The term "The Ohio Gang" was used as the title of Charles Mee Jr.'s 1981 book based upon the antics of the Harding Administration.