Former Ohio governor, congressman Gilligan dies

COLUMBUS, Ohio Former Ohio Gov. and U.S. Rep. John J. Gilligan, a liberal Democrat whose creation of the state income tax was his most lasting accomplishment and also the undoing of his political career, died Monday. He was 92.

Gilligan's death was confirmed by his caregiver, Frank Kennedy, who did not provide a cause of death.

Gilligan's daughter Kathleen Sebelius, a former Kansas governor, in 2009 became Health and Human Services secretary under President Barack Obama.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich ordered flags lowered to half-staff until the day of Gilligan's funeral. Kasich, a Republican, said he was saddened to hear of Gilligan's death.

"He served with honor and distinction," Kasich said in a statement.

Gilligan, a teacher, became the state's 62nd governor in 1970, a year in which Republicans suffered from a loan scandal in the state treasurer's office.

He inherited a school funding problem in which 24 districts had closed for lack of operating money and more were expected to follow suit.

Gilligan persuaded legislators to enact the state's first corporate and personal income tax in 1971 to raise money for dealing with those and other government priorities.

During the tax battle, he closed state parks to save money. The move may have turned up heat on legislators, but it also caused a public uproar.

Gilligan also presided over creation of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, passage of strip mine reclamation laws and division of the prison and mental health agencies into separate departments.

As he headed into a campaign for a second term, he claimed a 57 percent increase in state funding for primary and secondary education, a 60 percent boost for mental health, and hefty spending increases for treatment, education, and law enforcement programs to cut drug abuse.

But the income tax issue continued to dog him. An offhand remark at the Ohio State Fair was one of Gilligan's most memorable.

When a reporter asked if the arriving Gilligan was going to shear a sheep on the fairgrounds, the governor said: "I shear taxpayers, not sheep."

In the 1974 race, former two-term Republican Gov. James A. Rhodes hammered at Gilligan for raising taxes and scored an upset of about 11,000 votes out of 2.9 million cast.

Gilligan was born March 22, 1921 in Cincinnati. He served as a Navy gunnery officer in World War II, earning a Silver Star for saving several crew members from the destroyer USS Rodman after enemy shells set it ablaze off Okinawa.

Before his military service he had graduated from Notre Dame University in South Bend, Ind. After the war he earned a master's degree at the University of Cincinnati and then started teaching literature at Xavier University.

Gilligan's political career began in 1953 with his election to Cincinnati City Council, where he was re-elected five times. Later in life he returned to local public service as a school board member.

Gilligan was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from the 1st District in 1964 but lost re-election two years later and returned to Cincinnati City Council. In 1968 he defeated U.S. Sen. Frank J. Lausche for the Democratic nomination to the seat but lost the general election to Republican William B. Saxbe.

Gilligan won the May 1970 Democratic nomination for governor, and defeated Republican Roger Cloud in the general election.

After leaving the governor's mansion, Gilligan was a fellow with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington and led the Agency for International Development for two years.

He returned to teaching, spending 12 years at Notre Dame, where he also headed the university's Institute for International Peace Studies. He returned to the University of Cincinnati in 1992 where he was director of the College of Law's Civic Forum.

Some observers saw Gilligan as arrogant and aloof; friends described him as witty and intellectual.

He delivered a thoughtful speech at a reunion of his administration's officials in 1993. Gilligan said the United States never would recover the millions of good-paying jobs lost in the relocation and downsizing of American industry.

"What's going on now in American industry is called re-engineering, redesigning whatever their product or service is, redesigning how they produce it to eliminate, insofar as humanly possible, human labor," he said.

"We will develop new industries and new types of employment hitherto unknown, or our economy will continue to decay and deteriorate. All of us and our grandchildren will suffer the consequences," Gilligan said.

Gilligan and his wife, Mary Kathryn Dixon, had four children.

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Former Ohio governor, congressman Gilligan dies

COLUMBUS, Ohio Former Ohio Gov. and U.S. Rep. John J. Gilligan, a liberal Democrat whose creation of the state income tax was his most lasting accomplishment and also the undoing of his political career, died Monday. He was 92.

Gilligan's death was confirmed by his caregiver, Frank Kennedy, who did not provide a cause of death.

Gilligan's daughter Kathleen Sebelius, a former Kansas governor, in 2009 became Health and Human Services secretary under President Barack Obama.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich ordered flags lowered to half-staff until the day of Gilligan's funeral. Kasich, a Republican, said he was saddened to hear of Gilligan's death.

"He served with honor and distinction," Kasich said in a statement.

Gilligan, a teacher, became the state's 62nd governor in 1970, a year in which Republicans suffered from a loan scandal in the state treasurer's office.

He inherited a school funding problem in which 24 districts had closed for lack of operating money and more were expected to follow suit.

Gilligan persuaded legislators to enact the state's first corporate and personal income tax in 1971 to raise money for dealing with those and other government priorities.

During the tax battle, he closed state parks to save money. The move may have turned up heat on legislators, but it also caused a public uproar.

Gilligan also presided over creation of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, passage of strip mine reclamation laws and division of the prison and mental health agencies into separate departments.

As he headed into a campaign for a second term, he claimed a 57 percent increase in state funding for primary and secondary education, a 60 percent boost for mental health, and hefty spending increases for treatment, education, and law enforcement programs to cut drug abuse.

But the income tax issue continued to dog him. An offhand remark at the Ohio State Fair was one of Gilligan's most memorable.

When a reporter asked if the arriving Gilligan was going to shear a sheep on the fairgrounds, the governor said: "I shear taxpayers, not sheep."

In the 1974 race, former two-term Republican Gov. James A. Rhodes hammered at Gilligan for raising taxes and scored an upset of about 11,000 votes out of 2.9 million cast.

Gilligan was born March 22, 1921 in Cincinnati. He served as a Navy gunnery officer in World War II, earning a Silver Star for saving several crew members from the destroyer USS Rodman after enemy shells set it ablaze off Okinawa.

Before his military service he had graduated from Notre Dame University in South Bend, Ind. After the war he earned a master's degree at the University of Cincinnati and then started teaching literature at Xavier University.

Gilligan's political career began in 1953 with his election to Cincinnati City Council, where he was re-elected five times. Later in life he returned to local public service as a school board member.

Gilligan was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from the 1st District in 1964 but lost re-election two years later and returned to Cincinnati City Council. In 1968 he defeated U.S. Sen. Frank J. Lausche for the Democratic nomination to the seat but lost the general election to Republican William B. Saxbe.

Gilligan won the May 1970 Democratic nomination for governor, and defeated Republican Roger Cloud in the general election.

After leaving the governor's mansion, Gilligan was a fellow with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington and led the Agency for International Development for two years.

He returned to teaching, spending 12 years at Notre Dame, where he also headed the university's Institute for International Peace Studies. He returned to the University of Cincinnati in 1992 where he was director of the College of Law's Civic Forum.

Some observers saw Gilligan as arrogant and aloof; friends described him as witty and intellectual.

He delivered a thoughtful speech at a reunion of his administration's officials in 1993. Gilligan said the United States never would recover the millions of good-paying jobs lost in the relocation and downsizing of American industry.

"What's going on now in American industry is called re-engineering, redesigning whatever their product or service is, redesigning how they produce it to eliminate, insofar as humanly possible, human labor," he said.

"We will develop new industries and new types of employment hitherto unknown, or our economy will continue to decay and deteriorate. All of us and our grandchildren will suffer the consequences," Gilligan said.

Gilligan and his wife, Mary Kathryn Dixon, had four children.

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Bo Xilai trial ends with disgraced politician's last-ditch effort to cast doubt over wife, former aide

JINAN, China China's most sensational trial in decades ended Monday with disgraced politician Bo Xilai hinting at a love triangle involving his wife and former right hand man — both key witnesses against him — as he made last-ditch efforts to redeem his reputation.

The prosecution countered by saying Bo should be severely punished because he showed no remorse in the five-day corruption trial in the eastern city of Jinan, aimed at capping a scandal set off by his wife's murder of a British businessman and resulting in Bo's purge from top posts and the Communist Party.

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In testimony, Bo denounced both his wife, Gu Kailai, as crazy and his former police chief, Wang Lijun, as dishonest, as he has sought to portray himself as an official who worked too hard to scrutinize his family's affairs and who was surrounded by conniving, duplicitous people.

"He (Wang) was secretly in love with Gu Kailai, his emotions were tangled and he could not extricate himself," Bo told the court.

Prosecutors said Monday that the trial proceedings have shown adequate proof of Bo's guilt on charges of netting $4.3 million through bribes and embezzlement and abuse of power in interfering with the murder investigation. A date for the verdict has not been given.

"The defendant's crimes are extremely grave, and he also refuses to admit guilt. As such, the circumstances do not call for a lenient punishment but a severe one, in accordance with the law," the prosecutor said, according to a transcript of court proceedings.

Though Bo's downfall has widely been perceived as the result of his defeat in party infighting ahead of last fall's once-a-decade leadership transition, officials have taken unusual steps to portray his trial as a legitimate prosecution of his misdeeds, including the release of detailed, though presumably vetted, transcripts of the proceedings.

Bo mounted an unexpectedly vigorous defense against the criminal charges, recanting earlier confessions and rarely expressing contrition as he sought to lay the blame for most of the misdeeds on his wife and others. However, he refrained from using the trial as a stage to denounce the administration and his political opponents.

Most importantly, he acknowledged the party's legitimacy while holding firm to his denial of the charges — a move that at once seeks to retain his honor and appeal to party loyalists.

"I know I am not a perfect person and I had a bad temper and acted subjectively and I made serious faults and mistakes," Bo said. "I deeply feel that I failed to govern my family and it had a negative effect on the state. I sincerely accept the investigation from the party and the judicial departments, but the charge of corruption is not true."

Bo added a folksy touch to his arguments, hitting on themes of filial piety, simplicity and tradition that appeal to his support base, made up mostly of farmers and workers at the lowest rung of society who have been disillusioned by perceived immorality of party cadres. He said the jacket he was wearing was made by a local township company in Dalian, and the pants bought by his mother in the 1960s.

In his efforts to distance himself from Gu, he admitted an affair and said the couple had been estranged at one point.

Bo was accused, among other things, of providing political favors to a businessman, Xu Ming, in return for having him at his family's beck and call. According to Bo's wife, Xu gave the family expensive gifts that included a villa in France, international airfare to three continents, abalone dinners and a Segway scooter — and Gu said Bo knew about the gifts because she told him.

Bo is also accused of funneling $800,000 in government funds from a secret project.

The court also heard allegations over the weekend that Bo abused his power as the Communist Party secretary of Chongqing to block an investigation into the Briton's murder, as well as to hide his aide's embarrassing flight to a U.S. consulate — an event that help set the scandal into motion.

On Monday, Bo repeated his doubts about the evidence presented by prosecutors while introducing a bizarre twist to the narrative. Bo said that Wang tried to defect to the consulate early last year, not in a dispute over the investigation into the Briton's murder — as was commonly understood, but because he had confessed his feelings to Gu and feared Bo's rage over that trespass.

"He knew my personality, he'd trespassed on my family and violated my basic emotions, this is the real reason he decided to defect. Wang Lijun in reality is trying to muddy the waters," Bo testified.

He also said that Gu and Wang were as close as "glue and lacquer" and that they had a `'very special relationship; I was frustrated by that."

Wang had earlier in court said he went to the Americans because he feared for his safety after he told Bo that the politician's wife had murdered the Briton.

Striking a note of resignation, Bo thanked the court for letting him fully defend himself. "I know there is no escape from my fate and sometimes I was weak at heart. Faced by imprisonment, I have mixed feelings and the only thing I have is the rest of my life."

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Weiner aide lashed out at former campaign intern

NEW YORK — The chief aide to embattled New York City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner went on an expletive-laced tirade about a former campaign intern in an interview with a political news website.

Barbara Morgan later apologized for using vulgar language to describe former intern Olivia Nuzzi. She said she believed her interview with Talking Points Memo was off the record.

Talking Points says Morgan launched into her attack on Nuzzi for writing an unflattering article for the Daily News about her experience working on Weiner?s campaign.

Nuzzi wrote that Weiner often called interns ?Monica,? a reference to former White House intern Monica Lewinsky, and that many people worked on the campaign to get close to Weiner?s wife, Huma Abedin. Abedin is an ex-aide to former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Nuzzi declined to comment.

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