The Monday After: Regula was man of his county, leader in Congress

A local election legend was voted into office on this date 50 years ago.

"Ralph Regula, state senator from Navarre, Tuesday waltzed into the U.S. representative seat for the 16th District by a comfortable 26,000-vote margin," reported an article in The Canton Repository on Wednesday, Nov. 8, 1972.

According to results reported by the newspaper, Regula, a Republican, had defeated Massillon city solicitor Virgil Musser, a Democrat, by a vote of 101,979 to 75,895 for the seat previously held by the respected Republican U.S. Rep. Frank T. Bow, who was retiring after serving in the U.S. House from 1951 to 1972.

Regula, a 47-year-old father of three who lived on farmland in Bethlehem Township near Navarre, was making his first try for the congressional seat. Voting gave him substantial margins in Stark, Wayne, and southeastern Medina counties, which made up the 16th District in 1972.

The Repository said that Regula was "tremendously pleased" with the measure of support he received from voters.

"Although surrounded by cheering well-wishers this morning, there was a sad glint in the senator's eye."

In his moment of triumph, Regula was thinking of family.

"I only wish my mother and dad were here," he explained. "Dad was a farmer, but was always interested in politics."

The successful candidate noted that he had run for state offices, starting when he ran for the state board of education and continuing through successful campaigns for state representative and senator, with an eye toward holding national ones.

"I suppose when I ran for the state board the thought of seeking a national office was somewhat in the back of my mind," he had said following his election as representative.

Once Regula was sworn into office in the U.S. House of Representatives, he would not give up his seat for more than 35 years. The longtime powerful congressman served as the representative from the 16th District from 1973 to 2009 − 18 consecutive terms.

Other election candidates and issues

Regula's victory wasn't the only big election story to make the Repository after Election Day 1972.

Soon to be disgraced by Watergate, President Richard Nixon "won a landslide re-election by carrying 49 of 50 states," the newspaper reported.

"Nixon's 521-17 electoral vote majority over (Democrat George) McGovern rivaled Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1936 victory of 523 to 8 over Alf Landon," said an Associated Press article in the Repository. "The Republican president, scoring his greatest personal triumph, won about 61 percent of the popular vote, matching Lyndon B. Johnson's 61.1 percent eight years ago."

Locally, Democrat Norman W. Sponseller and Republican Albert M. Creighton were elected as Stark County commissioners. Creighton ousted incumbent commissioner LaVerne Dale, while Sponseller defeated Canton City Councilman Richard D. Watkins for the county office.

Statewide, voters kept the state income tax in place by a vote of more than two to one.

"The income tax repeal amendment failed to carry in any of the state's 88 counties," the Repository noted. Ten Stark County school and municipal funding issues passed, but 18 others failed.

Still, from the historical perspective, the most interesting race 50 years ago was the one claimed by Regula, who would go on to serve in Congress during the adminstrations of eight presidents during three decades.

Regula's career remembered

Regula's front page obituary in July 2017, written by staff writer Alison Matas of the Repository, noted that the longtime congressman − "a moderate Republican and former teacher and attorney" − was a man of the people of Stark County.

"When Ralph Regula was a congressman, he would stand at a booth at the Stark County Fair during Labor Day weekend so he could talk to the people he represented," the obituary began.

Elsewhere in the obit, Daryl Revoldt, who worked for Regula from 1985 to 2001, remembered his former boss as a "wonderful, compassionate human being who, as he moved up the ladder, never forgot where he came from."

The obituary claimed that Regula's legacy "includes a reputation for honesty and a willingness to reach across party lines to get work done."

Some of that work included his passion for preservation of green space, recalled Matas.

"Regula's list of accomplishments as a public servant is extensive and includes helping establish the 33,000-acre Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area; forming the Ohio and Erie Canal National Heritage Corridor, which stretches from Cleveland to New Philadelphia; and working with Democratic U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi to transform the former Presidio military base in San Francisco into a national park."

Matas noted in the obituary that "Regula also assisted his wife, Mary, in creating a home in Canton for the National First Ladies' Library after she founded the organization in 1995 and began raising private funds to support it. He worked to establish the site as a unit of the National Park Service, which (then Executive Director Patricia Krider said) gave it both 'prominence and permanence.'"

But, it wasn't just his work on the House Appropriations Committee and as chairman of an appropriations subcommittee for which Regula is remembered.

Upon his death, noted the Repository new obituary, "constituents posted memories on social media about Regula stepping in to help solve problems for their families − from making sure Social Security checks got mailed to assisting veterans with their benefits."

Bow 'yields to Regula,' again

Not long after Regula's retirement, the congressman's professional relationship with Bow, his predecessor, came full circle.

An honor was passed on. "Bow yields to Ralph Regula," the Repository acknowledged.

After Bow had died only a year following his retirement in 1972, the 1930s-vintage federal office building on Cleveland Avenue SW at Third Street in Canton was named after him. About the time Regula retired, a new federal office building was being built in downtown Canton on McKinley Avenue SW at Fourth Street. It would replace its predecessor, the "Bow Building," which "has historical and architectural distinction," but was "deemed worn out," according to an editorial in the Repository at the time the structure was opened.

"In a week, the Frank T. Bow Federal Building will be empty," said the editorial, published in the Repository on May 26, 2010. "The few remaining federal offices still in the Bow building − the Internal Revenue Service, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, the U.S. Marshal's Office and a few others − will move to the new federal building a few blocks away."

When it opened, the new federal building was appropriately named.

The modernistic-looking Ralph Regula Federal Building and United States Courthouse has served as the seat of federal offices for more than a decade.

Reach Gary at gary.brown.rep@gmail.com. On Twitter: @gbrownREP

This article originally appeared on The Repository: The Monday After: Regula was man of his county, leader in Congress