Before his infamous talk show, Jerry Springer was a rising star in Ohio politics

Former Cincinnati Mayor Jerry Springer, who had a memorable career in Ohio politics in the years before he re-established himself as the king of trash TV, died Thursday at the age of 79. Springer mulled an electoral comeback multiple times during the height of his fame, and there was serious talk that he could campaign for governor as recently as 2017. However, he ultimately declined to run each time, saying after his final dalliance that, while he believed he could prevail, “I don't want to add to the circus. … I become a distraction.”

Springer, who was the son of German Jewish refugees who had escaped the Holocaust, was born in London in 1944 in a tube station that had been repurposed as a bomb shelter. The family later moved to New York City when he was 4. Springer went on to attend Tulane University in New Orleans, where he studied political science and hosted shows on the student radio station―both of which would foreshadow the unusual direction his public life would take.

After graduating from law school at Northwestern, Springer made an early foray into national politics when he worked on Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential bid, a job that ended when the candidate was assassinated. He went on to work for a Cincinnati law firm and got involved in the local political scene by running the Hamilton County chapter of the campaign to lower Ohio’s voting age.