Rhodes was in the final year of his second four-year term, barred by the state constitution from running again,xiii and was seeking the Republican nomination for a U.S. Senate seat in an election just forty-eight hours away. He was behind his rival Robert Taft, Jr., in the polls. He had positioned himself as the “law and order” candidate who would use “all the force that was necessary” to end campus disturbances throughout the state.
