[26]

Start in politics
Soon after purchasing the Star, Harding turned his attention to politics, supporting Joseph B. Foraker in his first successful bid for governor in 1885. Foraker was part of the war generation that challenged older Ohio Republicans, such as Senator John Sherman, for control of state politics. Harding, always a party loyalist, supported Foraker in the complex internecine warfare that was Ohio Republican politics. Harding was willing to tolerate Democrats as necessary to a two-party system, but had only contempt for those who bolted the Republican Party to join third-party movements.[27] He was a delegate to the Republican state convention in 1888, at the age of 22, representing Marion County, and was most often elected a delegate until becoming president.[28]
Harding's work as an editor took a toll on his health. From age 23 to 35, he required five admissions to the Battle Creek Sanitorium for reasons Sinclair described as "fatigue, overstrain, and nervous illnesses".[29] Dean ties these visits to early occurrences of the heart ailment that killed Harding at age 57. During one such absence from Marion, in 1894, the Star's business manager quit, and Florence Harding took his place. 