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Who Should Stand For Ohio?
Every state sends two U.S. senators to Washington, but few people realize that every state also sends two representatives to National Statuary Hall in Washington, D.C. Since the 1880s, statues of James Garfield and William Allen have served as Ohio’s two representatives in Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol.
Legislation was enacted in 2006 creating the National Statuary Collection Study Committee and to set up a process to replace Allen's statue for his anti-slavery views. The committee, comprised of members of the Ohio House and Senate, held numerous hearings to gather input. In February, the committee narrowed a list of more than 90 nominees to 10 finalists and asked the Ohio Historical Society, Cincinnati Museum Center and Western Reserve Historical Society to conduct a public vote at 36 historic sites and museums statewide.
And The Winner Is…
Thank you, Ohio! More than 46,000 Ohio residents of all ages across the state voted from March 20 - June 12, 2010, for one of the 10 nominees for this honor. Tens of thousands of votes were cast to determine who should stand for Ohio. Please be patient as the votes are counted. We expect to complete the vote tabulation by early July. A final count will be announced soon. While all the candidates would have served Ohio well in Washington, D.C., the top vote-getter was world-famous inventor Thomas Edison, a native of Milan, Ohio. The Wright Brothers from Dayton finished second.
Of the total 46,723 votes, 25,503 were cast by adults and 21,220 by students. The final results are listed below*:
| Nominee |
Adults |
Students |
Total |
Percentage |
| Thomas A. Edison |
9,377 |
4,884 |
14,261 |
30.5% |
| Wright Brothers |
6,183 |
7,180 |
13,363 |
28.6% |
| Jesse Owens |
2,103 |
2,818 |
4,921 |
10.5% |
| William M. McCulloch |
3,277 |
472 |
3,749 |
8% |
| Ulysses S. Grant |
1,342 |
1,724 |
3,066 |
6.6% |
| Harriet Taylor Upton |
1,474 |
947 |
2,421 |
5.2% |
| Harriet Beecher Stowe |
938 |
1,316 |
2,254 |
4.8% |
| Judith A. Resnik |
412 |
1,041 |
1,453 |
3.1% |
| Albert B. Sabin |
355 |
374 |
729 |
1.6% |
| James Mitchell Ashley |
42 |
464 |
506 |
1.1% |
* Note: The totals were revised on July 7, 2010. For more information, please read this advisory. (74KB PDF will load in a new browser window and requires Adobe Acrobat ® Reader).
Next Steps
The National Statuary Collection Study Committee will consider the public vote to be the greatest single factor in making its final recommendation to the full General Assembly for approval. Plans for when the Committee will reconvene will be announced in the near future.
Once the decision has been made and private funds have been raised, the new statute will join the statue of President James Garfield as Ohio representatives in Statuary Hall. The Ohio Statuary Hall Commission was established to raise the private funding necessary to commission the new statue to send to Washington and make arrangements for bringing Governor Allen’s statue home to Ohio.
In the meantime, please direct any questions about voting to ohiostatue@ohiohistory.org. For questions related to the National Statuary Collection Study Committee, please contact Sen. Mark Wagoner, chairman, at SD02@senate.state.oh.us or by calling (614) 466-8060.
Media contacts:
Kim Schuette: 614.297.2314 or kschuette@ohiohistory.org or Maggie Ostrowski: 614.995.1280 or maggie.ostrowski@senate.state.oh.us
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