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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview C-0328-2, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Elected to the governorship of North Carolina in 1972, James E. Holshouser Jr. was the first Republican chief executive of that state since 1896. In this interview, he remembers his service to the state, from his early days administering a budget surplus to his involvement in the partisan battles over major state issues. The biggest political challenge Holshouser faced was his effort to shore up the strength of the executive branch against incursions from the legislature. Even as he sought to secure executive power, he applied his managerial mentality, a belief in consensus-building honed during his time as a member of the minority party in the state legislature, to tangled issues like road-building and the reorganization of the University of North Carolina system. Holshouser describes the ethical challenges that confront politicians—including demands for favors or appointments and his efforts to avoid them—as well as commenting on his relationship with the media, which he seems to find inflammatory and overreaching. He also addresses the power of North Carolina's governor, both in absolute terms and in relation to the state's legislature, and how that power comes into play in budget negotiations and other arenas. This interview offers a comprehensive look into the world of North Carolina's governor, both its possibilities and its limitations.
James E. Holshouser Jr., North Carolina's first Republican governor since 1896, reflects on the office and the challenges it presents.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
Governor Holshouser, why did you want to be governor?
Well it wasn't something that had been planned since
childhood. As a matter of fact in my first session of the legislature, a
lawyer by the name of Andy Jones drafted all of my bills that I put in
and we got to be good friends and we talked a lot. He said one time, he
said, "I don't know why anybody wants to be governor
you lose about a friend a day because every time you make an appointment
there were five other of your best friends that thought they were going
to get it or whatever. And no matter who you pleased every time you make
a decision you are displeasing somebody." As I kept going
through the legislative process I kept getting sort of a hidden sense of
frustration over not being able to get some things done that in some
cases I thought were pretty common sense and in other cases I thought
could never be done until you had sort of a major change, not like a
paradigm change, but a dramatic change in how the person at the top and
those around him viewed government. That the Democrat establishment had
been in so long, there were so many people within the bureaucracy even
at the near top levels who were just part of that establishment that you
couldn't break the mold of how problems needed to be
addressed. I don't think that was all to the Democrats as
oppose to say the Republicans in Iowa or Ohio or some place where if any
party that is in too long
You said that you felt and experienced some frustration. Was that frustration primarily related to the decision making process or were there frustrations about particular projects or policies that you felt should be?
Some of them miniscule. Just for example, I thought it was ridiculous to
make new license plates every year and we got that changed. Now
everybody gets them every five years or whatever. You just put these
little paper sticky things on in the middle. The prison officials used
to come over and argue that they needed something to
And that had been a very big issue in the most recent legislature or so.
That is right.
Any other sort of policy concerns that you had that you might of said, "Well, I could do something about that if I was governor?"
Well, I was convinced going back to roads that we needed a planning
process that said to the public in writing here is what we are going to
do in the next ten
Once you were elected and preparing to be governor, indeed when you were taking the oath of office, what were your thoughts on that occasion?
Well it was an interesting time. We were so tired by election day. I
think I probably told you the last time that when we did that fly around
the day before election I saw myself on television that night, the first
time in a good while. I just looked like I was dead on my feet, which I
was. Election night is still just sort of a blur. Bob Scott called and
asked me to come by the mansion and just talk, which was really just a
courteous and good government thing to do. And so we had about two days
there in
You and your family going to Florida?
Yes. But I knew when we got back there were transition things you had to
do. You had to get ready to move the family to Raleigh. So we lined up
an apartment and that sort of thing. But all of this sort of
non-government, it was personal. From a governmental standpoint we were
far less prepared to start an administration then Skipper Bowles would
have been had he won because he had people working ever since the
primary on the assumption that he had won it all. So we had some very
fast cranking up to do, finding people to serve in the cabinet, key
positions and getting hold of the budget that Bob Scott was going to
present to the legislature and sort of look and see where the things
that we wanted to do were going to fit in. And it was, we had a
transition office set up over not too far from the capitol, set up
headquarters there and started looking to people to talk to about coming
into the administration and try to get as many of those as we could by
inauguration day. But the programmatic side was still, just required a
tremendous amount of very focused attention. We had some fairly decent
analyzers helping. But I knew from having been on the appropriations
committee and having been in legislature, I knew the things I wanted to
try to do and about how much money it would cost. Because I
wasn't like some businessman coming in who had gotten
elected, as has happened in a lot of states, and that helped a lot. But
it also meant that I was the one who had to do the analyzing. I knew it,
but I couldn't tell other people how to go about making sure
where it would fit. And I am still with Casey Stengel. I would rather be
As you were actually taking the oath of office and you were about to assume the responsibilities of the position on inauguration day, do you recall what was in your mind?
Well, we had the inauguration ball the night before and all the Republicans who had come to town just raised hell. The first time a lot of them had ever been to Raleigh for one of those. We got to bed very late and started the day very early. We had an early communion service at the First Presbyterian in Raleigh. Then we had to be over at the mansion ahead of time where the inaugural party gathers and all that. But we had worked almost up the last minute, being my typical procrastinating self, on the inauguration address. I remember getting up and thinking well at least it is not raining or snowing, typical mountain boy I guess. I think because of the very solid courtesies that Bob Scott had shown me since the election that we were being especially cautious to make sure that the outgoing governor was treated with all the honors that he was suppose to get. And when we got over to the inauguration, you know it was sort of like coming to a homecoming in a way when you sat, and you looked out over all these faces that had been working for you over this last year or so and really in a sense longer than that because I had known most of them for several years as state chairman. It is one of those feelings almost like the proverbial wanting to punch yourself to make sure it is real. It was hard to believe it was happening.
Well in two cases, I want you to comment on this. 1) It was the first Republican governor of this century. A truly historic event. And 2) being governor at any time, Republican or Democrat, it is a tremendous responsibility.
Yes and we were scared about that. I told folks that we
shouldn't ever think that something had to be done just
because that is the way that it had always been
What about the impact that assuming this job had on you personally? Was that a thought that came to your mind or was that a distant concern?
Well I remember lying in bed in the Governor's Mansion the
first night over there. The way the windows are arranged in the
Governor's bedroom up on the second floor of the mansion and
shutters and shades and all, usually have some lights from the streets
coming in on the ceiling so it is not ever totally dark unless you
really work hard at it. And I am lying there looking up and I said,
"Well, you have certainly got yourself into now." And
there was a sense, there was a part of me that understood the budget
which I still think is the Governor's most important tool,
that felt pretty good. But there was so much more about the day to day
things that I was going to have to face that I knew that I
didn't know, that it was sort of scary just plain and simple.
I also had figured
It created an environment of people being suspicious of people in public office. We will get back to that but did you feel that you had made mistake.
No, never felt that and never did during the whole time and would have gone back and done it again if you had asked me at the end of the term. I was glad I didn't have the opportunity to run for re-election because in my particular case because of the kidney problems that would have been a serious mistake.
Right, but never any second thoughts?
No, no. And by having the one-term limitation, it also left you with the sure knowledge that if you could only run again, it would have been unanimous.
Well let's go back to some of these issues that you have mentioned earlier that were sort of on your mind during the period of transition and working up to the inauguration. If you would take one or more of these, you mentioned the budget, education, parks, community colleges and may be others, that you would rather look at. If you would take a couple of these and comment on how these came to be important to you, why was it that that particular issue, community colleges, parks, education or whatever it is, that you want to talk about. Why did that become important to you?
Well, it is bad to have to say so and I am not sure that I want to say so
for public attribution but it was a large part looking for places to put
money that would not be
That was with recurring?
That is right. And a lot of them were just common sense things that came from the departments themselves which is always the best way to go. You ask people how they could do it better, how they could save money and they always know better than anybody else if they will tell you. I was real pleased with that because I thought part of what I had to do as a Republican was to show people a few different wrinkles in the approach to government. One way was to try as near as you could to show people their tax money was being spent wisely and not just being wasted unnecessarily. I don't think you ought to do one of those every administration. I think you ought to do one of those every ten to fifteen years because you'll cut back and it gradually starts to build back up.
And history shows that it is done about each time a Republican government comes into office.
Could be, could be.
I mean there is one actually with a Democrat governor, but Jim Martin did have his own.
That is one of the things I encouraged him to look at.
One of the things that I take from what you were saying is that in a sense, once you learned more about the budget, or maybe budget developments became revealed after you were elected, you realize there was a lot "surplus money" and so you were looking for legitimate projects, nonrecurring. What does that say if anything about how well people who run for public office are prepared to run the public office?
Well, a lot of times they are not very well prepared. Now business people
if they are running a pretty good size business have had to deal with
budgets and how they operate their own business and there is some
carryover there, but not totally in that the state government has some
operations that are not ever going to be profit centers. We had a report
here at the Board of Governors yesterday and today about a North
Carolina hospital and the consultants were saying that there has been a
4.8% return on the state's dollars that have come in since
1990 or something like that. And I told them after the meeting, I said,
I don't think you are going to find the average legislator
that is going to relate to that because they are not use to thinking in
terms of monetary return on their dollars. They are used to providing
money for operating agencies that have a product they turn out that
doesn't make a return. So there is little bit different
mentality and you also have some different rules under which you operate
the state. You have got, you are
Now one of the practices that was in effect when you became governor was that the outgoing governor, in your case Governor Scott, actually prepared the budget.
That is right.
What do you think of that idea? How did that effect your ability to be governor?
Well it my case as I said, I sort of lucked out in a way because if they had proposed a budget that took up all the money, I would have had to be proposing cuts in that budget in order to do anything I wanted. I felt strongly enough about that as a problem though generically that when Jim Hunt was elected in 1976, I met with him a week after the election. I said I want you to have some of your staff people to get with the state budget people before anything goes to the Advisory Budget Commission. If you have got some things that you want to put into the budget, we will get them in there. Because it seems to me that when the people have elected a new person, they are bound to have some programs. It just makes sense that they ought to have the prerogative of doing it.
You had not been brought into any anticipation and preparation of Scott's budget?
That is right. And it is not to say that Bob Scott should have because it
was sort of a new situation there too. I think that if you look back at
the administration previously, he had not been particularly plugged in
with Dan Moore and Dan Moore and Terry Sanford hadn't been on
the same side. Terry Sanford hadn't been close to Luther
Hodges and if you just go on back and there has been sort of a history
of each person doing their own thing. But I can say this from what I
have heard from other states. We
Would you recommend any kind of change in that relationship, that may be even put into law, or that the out going governor essentially recommends the budget to the first general assembly of the incoming governor?
Well, I confess I haven't stayed up nights thinking about this and my notion is that you don't get to be governor until you are sworn in. At the same time somewhere or another that first budget that goes to the legislature really ought to be the incoming governor's. You can't give him power before he takes office. It may well be that what we ought to do is to have that first session of the legislature start about the first of March and let that budget process and not have the budget go to them and come in January the budget is already printed and it is in black and white sitting in the state warehouses some place. So I think you don't want to deprive the outgoing governor of the right to stay governor as long as he is in office but at the same time I don't think you necessarily have to give him the prerogative of presenting that in that budget. So I think that might be the way to do that just every fourth year have the legislature meet in March.
Another issue that you mentioned that was very important to you, and I
wanted to explore a little bit, is the university governance procedure.
Under Governor Scott a
Well I think I talked with you before a little bit about the fact that I
thought we probably struck the best lick for the state in 1971 in
putting together the new structure of the university, the best thing
that happen while I was in the legislature. I still think my involvement
in that was more important than anything I did as governor and I think
it is one of the best things that has happen for the state in my life
time. Mostly because I think higher education in North Carolina is what
sets the state apart from a lot of sister states. I think we have just
been fortunate not to say we are perfect. We have a good education
system, public and private higher education, and probably have got a few
too many of each. I am not going to take on that battle. I have reached
the place where you have only got so many fights that you can fight and
that is not one I am going to fight. I had, for a guy who was thinking
about running for governor, I had put myself at risk a lot in
'71 simply by plowing a path of what I believe was where we
should end up and it came very close to perfect of where we did end up.
And if I had written it from the start it wouldn't have ended
up exactly where it did but very close. The things that were different
were not material long term differences. I felt that not only had we
done a good job for the future in terms of getting away from all of
these institutional battles, but that we had a way of maximizing the use
of the taxpayers' dollars by getting everything under one
umbrella, that said this institution is going to do this and this other
institution is going to be a different creature instead of trying to
have everybody be shooting to be king of the world. And I did a speech
to the combined Board of Governors and all the trustees up in
Did you feel at the end of your term, having in a sense lost that fight, that you had won the larger fight maintaining…?
Yes, lost the battle but won the war. By the time I left office I think it was in good standing and on solid ground. Still you are going to have some fights. The fight that came along unexpectedly for me, and I wasn't even aware of it when I was in office and signing papers about it, was the stuff that was going on with HEW about the segregation. Bill Friday would call and say they were having some more negotiations with HEW and I had to sign off on a new plan if I would. I would tell him to send it over but I didn't realize all the implications of it at the time. It was only after I got on the Board of Governors and on the committee here that was working on that that I realized just how prolonged the process had been and how much of the university's resources had been expended in that fight that would have been so much better spent in other ways.
And do you think that threatened the governance system or was that undermining the quality of the program?
I don't think it threatened the governance system. I think it
threatened the ability of whatever governing body you have to act for
higher education. Because you just couldn't let the federal
government become the dictator for how you are going to run the
university. I think Bill Friday was exactly right in fighting it. For a
fellow who is by and large a liberal, he got a very bad name in some
circles. He is not a racist certainly but one who was standing in the
school house door and a lot of people thought for the wrong reason. I
thought for the right reason. I shouldn't stop there because
the things that the university implemented under his guidance in trying
to meet the same kind of goals and
Which was an important difference?
Yes.
Let's turn to discuss your relationship with the General Assembly. You said in a speech in 1973 to the General Assembly, "I have been here and because of that I believe in the General Assembly". What did you have in mind with that statement?
Well, I had been in the General Assembly enough to know that there was
always a kind of tension between the legislature and the executive
branch. It didn't have anything to do with political parties.
A lot of people felt like the legislature didn't really have
the authority that it was suppose to have under the state constitution.
That you appropriate money and you left town and you never knew whether
the governor really spent it the way you said or not because there was
some flexibility in moving money around and still is. And there was
always the feeling that the governor was trying to run the show all by
himself and that we were just sort of temporary pawns in the game of
things. And I guess having coming in the legislature, out the
legislature, I thought that probably I could help bridge the gap a
little bit. I met the legislature at a preconvening thing they had I
think in December. I can't remember exactly where it was
except it wasn't in Raleigh. It was in Chapel Hill or Durham
some place I believe. I told them then as long as we didn't
worry about who got the credit that we would get along just fine. And I
found that through out the whole administration, that if I
didn't go out promoting everything that Jim Holshouser had
done, that that was pretty much true. So we set out a plan because we
didn't have near enough Republicans to be in control. As it
So you had raised people's awareness and desires, so to speak.
Well, the awareness and desire was there but you let them know you
understood. But we were also fortunate that there was some people around
who understood that what the proposals were going to be far worse than
turning the reins over to the Republican Board of Elections'
people. And people like Ed Rankin who had been
Did you think that circus as you called it was motivated by partisanship or by institutional differences or something else?
Strictly partisanship. That wasn't legislature verses the governor. And during the last two years of the term the hardest fights were protecting the institution, the office of the governor from invasion by the legislature. Jim Hunt as Lt. Governor and members of the Council of the State helped head those off as a group. And not necessarily totally altruistically. Jim Hunt was counting on being the next governor and the Council of the State people didn't want people meddling in their departments too much. So I lucked out again.
Did that occur in discussion with you or did those people act independent of you in trying to put that down?
We didn't have any smoked filled rooms. I talked with several Council of State people myself and said I am counting on you being interested enough in your department to see that this doesn't happen. Jim Hunt and I talked and said this is just not good for the state, not good for the office of the governor. You may well be the next governor you ought to make sure that this doesn't happen.
So there were some discussions between you. Lets go back to the more positive part of this which is…
It was not an organized thing, at least that I knew about.
You mentioned that as I quoted you that you believed in the General Assembly. If you think about it in terms of the relationship between the Governor and the legislature, as Governor did you think of the legislature as being superior to you, equal to you, or inferior to you.
A governmental and independent partner of sorts. They had a job to do in their branch. I guess if you took political science in college you got some understanding about that. Maybe not all the nuances. I understood what I thought the role of the legislature should be. I had promoted as a legislator having what I called the Auditor General which would be a legislative officer whose job was to do post audit on governmental appropriations just to see that the money did get spent the way that it should. So I had that background. So I had an appreciation of the differences in the branches at that standpoint but they had the assignment under the constitution of appropriating the money and then we ran operations. You are sort of a CEO in that regard. You didn't treat the legislators as your Board of Directors, but well Dick Spangler calls them your bankers.
Your bankers?
That is close at times. And I always, with the legislators and
particularly with people on the Council of State, tried to remember that
they had all got elected too. The legislators hadn't gotten
elected statewide, but they had gotten elected. We had people who were
legislative liaison people who had been in the legislature and knew a
lot
And do you think that result came from what your experience as a legislator or your person, the way you approached your responsibilities as Governor? How does that develop?
A little of all that. I am not a confrontational type person for the most
part. Every now and then you have to stand up and say folks that is just
not the right thing to do. Usually if you are smart, you will say that
might not be too bad of an idea but it might work better if you did it
this way. For instance on the coastal management bill, I get credit for
that and I am due some of it. But the fact is that it started in the
legislature in 1971. They set up a study commission. They had gone up
and down the eastern seaboard seeing what other states had done. They
came in with their legislation ready to go in 1973. Bill Wichard, who
had been an old friend, long standing from the legislature, was handling
it in the Senate. You could tell from the chemistry that you were going
to have to start off drawing a line in the sand here but knowing that
you were going to have to back away from that line. Backing away inches
at a time in order to get something through, before you end up at your
final line in the sand. You started off with everything being controlled
from Raleigh and gradually had to have a coastal resources commission
that was going to be composed mostly of residents of the coast appointed
by different people or at least represented different interests. Some
had to be local officials and some
And why couldn't you bring them along?
Well they were prepared to go along with a Republican governor on this
stuff for down at the coast as it was three hundred miles away for some
of them. We didn't have any Republicans down there anyway
some of them figured. I was asking them to do it. But when we started
talking about the mountains, they started hearing from their populace,
constituencies. If you put it up on the legislative agenda, it will
still be that way for the mountains. We got a lot different mood in the
mountains as more people have moved in and different things have
happened. You know the ridge law came around because of that high tower
up in Avery County but there is still that strong populist feeling. We
didn't gain any of those Democrat legislators from the coast
who voted
Did you feel that was something that you had put as much effort in to as the coastal area management bill or was it a lower priority?
Well we had put more effort into the coastal area bill because it took so much negotiating as you went along. All that negotiation was pretty much out of the way and you had the package finished at the end that was about as good as you could do. But that still wasn't enough for the folks in the mountains.
So you put more emphasis on it but people worked hard on the mountain bill?
I worked with just as much intensity on the mountain act but it didn't take as much time. Because they had already been through the other one, they didn't have to do a whole lot of thinking. Whatever you could use to persuade them the first time around, you had already done that. They already knew where they stood and the folks from the Piedmont mostly supported both bills. You had some people on the coast that supported the coastal bill but not many.
What do you think is the most effective means that a governor has to secure the support of members of the legislature?
Well if you have really solid liaison people who are trusted and you are
trusted, that is important. You have got to have somebody who is sort of
a wheeler-dealer, who knows how to make a deal. I think lawyers are
usually pretty effective because they are use to negotiating things;
doesn't always have to be one but I think that is a good
start. They also understand sometimes the nuances of language that make
a difference. And if they have been there and know the people and are
liked that is
More of a social occasion in that instance. As far as the liaison people, you worked in effectively about four legislatures or sessions, and you said that it was important for that liaison person to have the trust and confidence of the people. So does that make the decision of selecting that person one of your most important decisions?
Absolutely, absolutely and if you don't, you pay a price for that and if you don't really work hard; maybe more important than any cabinet position or other office position in terms of finding the right person. Because the two qualities I have mentioned, three qualities, being likeable, knowing the legislature, and understanding how to make deals, just are absolutely essential.
So how did you find that person.
Well as you would suspect it was a fairly limited pool because I felt like it needed to be a Republican and at the same time we hadn't had all that many Republican legislators over time. A lot of them were extremely good legislators but they wouldn't necessarily be good in this particular position. At the time I was inclined to think, and my relationship with the legislature in recent years as such that I can't say is still the case. At the time I was inclined to think that people from the east were better deal makers than people from the piedmont and mountains and were more use to do it. We got George Clark from Wilmington and he went over to the Utilities Commission after a couple of years. Then George Rountree from Wilmington came up. Both of them had been in the legislature. Both were very gregarious and both lawyers and both had been good legislators and so they knew how it ran.
So you felt pretty confident whenever you named those people that they were going to be good representatives of you in the legislature?
Yes. And given what I said earlier about that being such an important position, those may have been the two best appointments made the whole time.
That is a very interesting revelation. Can you elaborate on that a little bit because some people think of the governor as an executive official. That particular statement suggest that the relationship with the legislature is maybe the most important responsibility of the governor.
Well, you can't ignore the fact that they are the ones who
give you the money. Given the fact that when I was there the governor
couldn't succeed himself and he didn't have the
veto, if you didn't understand the budget and how to use that
tool you
The
I'll expand a little bit on that because in 1975, the most the governor and the legislature could do given the economy at the time was to figure out how to retrench responsibly.
Because you had a recession during that particular period of time.
Yes
What about the role of the governor in the organization of the legislature? Did you play, did you participate any, in the selection of the leadership or in the naming of committee personnel? Did you take any role of that type?
Not a lick. Totally left that to them. Did not get involved in the selection of even the Republican leadership on both legislative sides. I just felt that was their thing and the most I could do by getting involved was probably just get myself in trouble.
So if a member of the legislature who is in a position to make committee appointments were to come to you and ask you if you had any interest in particular people, would you say no?
I guess Jack that is the most hypothetical question I have ever been asked because it never happened, it never happened. I probably would not have said no if somebody had come and said give me some help on who you think would be good here. It just didn't happen.
It just doesn't happen. Maybe it was because you were a Republican?
Perhaps. Your interviews with some other governors who are Democrats will tell you more about that.
Right, right.
So you were hands off as far as the organization of the legislature was concerned.
Yes. And it is interesting when I think about. The relationship between the governor and the legislature at the time Terry was governor and through the time that Jim Hunt's second time now, I think it has changed fairly dramatically in a lot of ways, some because of personalities and some because of events. But the ability to seek a second term and the ability to veto, particularly the last, makes you a player more in the legislature more than you were at one time. One of the nice things about being governor when I was, if the legislature did something that was just really screwy, you could just say that it was really screwy and there wasn't anything that I could do about it.
You mean you say that publicly or you just said it to yourself.
I didn't do that much of criticizing the legislature publicly, but you didn't have to sign off on every bill saying that this bill is okay with me.
Now there are other ways in which you could try to influence the legislature and maybe I can get to those. Did you spend time recruiting candidates for the legislature?
I did. I did.
Raising money for candidates for the legislature?
Some, although not near as much as today simply because you didn't have, I mean the whole nature of campaign has changed so much. As I think I told you before, about 22 or 23 hundred dollars I think was the most I spent in any single race for the legislature and that was only one time. With that exception I never spent over hundred dollars and that was in a three county district. Now days you have got people in districts that are similar in size and nature and are spending $50,000 and $75,000. We use to think that you had to be out of your mind to think about spending that much money for a job that doesn't pay any more than it does. I think the public still doesn't understand quite how it is. But there is change in the times. There is more money that can be raised. Unfortunately a lot of it through political action committees. The lobbyists and the legislature just get worn out with people coming to them with their hands out both during the session and later. Now the legislature clamped on some rules about during the session which I think has been a healthy beginning. But I think that genie is out of the bottle and it is going to be very hard to get back in. The state has looked at it several times. But given the constitutional limitations on freedom of speech which includes the right to give people money to speak, I think you are going to have to change the constitution probably to do some of the things that probably would be necessary.
Or get a different interpretation of the first amendment of the Supreme Court which is possible? As far as recruiting people, can you talk a little bit about how you went about getting people to run for the legislature as a Republican?
Well we talked to them about I needed some help down there and I was pretty analytical. I didn't spend a lot of time trying to talk people into running for places I didn't think they could win. We concentrated primarily on districts where we thought we had a chance. It is not that we didn't make some effort in other districts as well because you never know when lightening is going to strike. Sometimes the incumbent just screws up and is going to get beat by whoever happens to be there so you would like for it to be a pretty decent person. I mean one of the worse things that can happen in politics is electing people unexpectedly where you didn't go out and get the best people you could and then you have got to live with the results and I have seen some of that too, unfortunately. But I thought that was part of my job as "the party leader," so to speak and part of that was left over from being state chairman probably. But if you assume that at least part of running for governor was the belief that the state needed a two-party system. That was sort of a natural corollary to that.
And you had some luck except that in 1974 anyway the party didn't do particularly well because of other circumstances but mainly outside the state I assume.
Just as 1966 and 1972 had been great years to run as Republican, if you put your name on the ballot you were liable to get elected. In 1974 if you are on there as Republican you might be the best thing since sliced bread but there wasn't a prayer for an awful lot of people. We had a lot of people who were incumbents who got beat through no fault of their own at all.
And did that give you any difficulty in recruiting people for the next legislature in 1976-77?
Things had turned around somewhat but not totally. Gerry Ford was still going to face an uphill fight for the presidency and as it turned out we didn't do very well in 1976. We tried hard again on recruitment of candidates to help although they tended to be a little bit more focus in 1975 and early 1976 on the statewide ticket and the presidential thing too.
Did you have other tools that you could use as governor that would improve your position in the legislature?
Those tools in some cases are there and I saw them used when I was in the
legislature. I didn't think I could use them very well as a
Republican with a Democrat legislature. Democrat legislators who
supported the governor's program in the 1960s, a lot of them
fairly regularly showed up with judges robes on or with roads through
their county or whatever or with some key appointment to something that
they wanted, or their wife be appointed to something that they wanted.
And I always disapproved of that but was pragmatic enough that I would
probably have not flinched too bad at the idea of doing that except that
I didn't think I could effectively deal with the Democrat
legislature that way. I believed pretty much in, I started to say
sanctity, because that is just about how I viewed our highway program.
Because I called the chief highway engineer and the secretary of
transportation in the office early on into 1973 and 1974 and said we are
going to try to do this thing right. Set up a priority program for
paving of secondary roads. We are going to talk about what we can do
with the primary road system to knit this state together and that is
going to be where the priorities are. And at the end of the time I felt
So what you are saying and I am just trying to understand it myself, for members who were Republican and in the legislature you would or wouldn't be reluctant to use those tools.
Didn't need to.
Didn't need to for that.
I could count on their loyalty. It is one of the advantages of not having been in power for decades. That got to be something the Democrat legislators were use to sort of seeing as part of the game and Republican legislators didn't expect that. Well they knew me too because I had served with them and they just wanted me to do a good job.
So that wasn't perceived as part of the spoils. I mean positively perceived as the spoils.
Well we never had serious discussions about that. That is just sort of
how the time was. I have no doubt that Republican legislators were
calling people in higher offices and the people in the various agencies
about friends who wanted jobs. That is something that is going to happen
forever and it should happen forever, because if they know people and
feel like they are good. That is more likely to turn out to be the fact
than any other way. But it is awfully hard to measure on paper how well
folks (will do). We didn't have a civil service and still
don't. The state personnel act is more protective of career
employees now than it was. Frankly state government employees take a lot
of
You had campaigned and in fact spoken a lot regarding road building in the state that you wanted to take politics out of it. Did that restrain you in any way from using roads to try to satisfy Republican supporters?
Didn't do it. Just didn't do it. I promised two
Democrat legislators that I would see that the Ahoskie Bypass was
finished. I thought that was important and they had been people that I
had known and had confidence in. I sort of felt like this was a
So you felt comfortable with the idea that you had in fact accomplished this goal of keeping politics out of the road, I mean that is something in fact you achieved?
Well, I have this feeling that on the major corridors, the intrastate,
maybe I should just say the primary road system, that is a good way to
say it including the interstate system, I think we did about as non
political good government approach to that as you could possibly do. I
really feel good about that. And the secondary road program I ought to
give some credit to where it is due. Jimmy Green in the legislature came
up with a plan during the Spring of '73 where a secondary
road council would be separate from the highway commission or the
Department of Transportation Board. They would look only about secondary
roads. I thought it was a good idea, so I said let's do that.
So you had this thing set up, this board set up that just looked after
secondary roads. Each county would be allocated so many miles of
secondary roads each year based on the percentage of the
state's unpaved mileage. And there was a formula system set
up which road ought to have the first priority and on down the line. I
think where I lose my sense of total confidence is that some where down
the line I wouldn't be surprised that we didn't
have some members of our secondary road council that got some roads in
there that might not have been at the top of the priority list. I say
that because in my own county of Wautaga in the '74 campaign,
we got accused of paving a road out towards my former law partners
house. If you knew the land, you knew that it didn't involve
the fact that he was out there. He was a Democrat anyway, as the saying
goes. But when I got looking into it, I realize that it went to the
place of the son of a former Republican chairman. I never did inquire
because it was already after the fact and done as to whether that had
jumped into the priority list somewhere or another. But at least tweaked
the thought in my head that
Well in fact there will be somebody some people who would argue that it is impossible to take politics out of road building.
Well I think it is to some extent. I used politics there in the sense of that generic kind of politics. I am not so certain that the local guy sitting down in Podunk county can see the needs of his county and who really needs the most roads maybe better than all the engineers and the roads with traffic counts and stuff. There are just so many examples of abuse of doing it that way. The comfort in the scientific method, using traffic counts, the number of houses there were there, it is a dead end road or not, the comfort in that is that you know there is not an abuse in that for the most part. It may have some casualties along the way that shouldn't be. But it is not nearly as much potential there as it is on the other side for abuse.
So when you say you take it in the larger generic sense you are not talking about partisan politics so much but you are talking about people trying to influence decisions on a personal basis.
Yes because if Joe Jones who is here and his Republican friend is on the
DOT board, or this Democrat has his Democrat friend or to make an easy
case it may not even be a friend, it may just be somebody you know
casually or don't even know at all, and in particular if they
had been a financial supporter of the governor who happens to be in the
office at the time, there is potential for the public to get skewed a
little bit. I kind of think we have seen some examples of that recently.
I think the papers are taking small percentages of the projects that
have been done wrong probably and made it seem like
The last question I want to ask you about your relationship with the legislature, maybe is not quite as hypothetical as the one I asked you earlier. But if you had had the veto power in your term as governor would you have used it, and if so what on?
Well I haven't given a whole lot of thought about that since I didn't have it. But as I have looked back I would probably have vetoed the Administrative Procedures Act because I had the sense at that time that I couldn't slow that down by lobbying against it and so I didn't fight it. It was the last year of my term and I was about as lame of a duck as you could get. I mean the Democrat primary and the Republican primary for governor had already been held and there it was. I sort of felt like that had the potential to get the whole process involvement with the governor so entangled…
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
We were talking about the Administrative Procedures Act and the fact that
some people think that there is merit and I think there is in saying
that if you are not happy with the state agency's decision
here is how you go about appealing that. But unfortunately it has the
overall effect of slowing down the process of implementation of things
so badly that I think it serves poorly. It also means that if you decide
that you have
Well that is a very major act, I mean the consequences of that.
It was, and I will admit that part of the reason I didn't fight it, if it had been in 1973, I think I would have fought it. I wouldn't have been as much of a lame duck but it would have also effected me a lot more. Because I knew that it was going to effect the next governor a lot more than it did me. I decided I guess that if Jim Hunt could live with it, that I would let him live with it at that point.
And he was in the legislature during that time.
He was presiding over the senate as Lt. Governor.
Right. Were there any other acts that you would have vetoed?
There were some changes in the composition and how some commissions got
appointed. There was more nibbling away at the executive branch during
that time. Some of that had some backup because the court decision since
that. But there was an initiation of appointments to the state boards
and commissions by the speaker of the house and then Lt. Governor; now
it is the President pro tempore of the Senate. So I guess for the most
part for the first time, we had the legislative leaderships starting to
involve itself into having designees on state boards and commissions
which is probably an invasion of the executive branch. The court said
that dealing specifically with the Advisory Budget Commission and its
role changed. I guess I would digress for a minute and just talk about
the Advisory Budget Commission because of its role with the budget.
But did it compromise your role as Governor, in a sense, to have the authority that you needed over the budget?
Well, the way that we worked it I think that I probably had more authority than my predecessors in a way. By setting up that policy council to review the agency requests. You started off saying to the cabinet people these are the things that we don't want you to do. Now come on with everything else that you think that your various department heads and division heads want. Then we look at those. It saved us a lot of problems because sometimes agencies heads would just being in favor of something that a) was controversial b) I didn't agree with. It shouldn't be in my budget request and was going to cause problems over there that you just didn't have to have in the legislature regardless. So by screening those out first before it went to the Advisory Budget Commission, it was much more likely to be a solid document. Now because of the court decision, the governor is now just sending his own budget. But when that court decision came along and they got taken out of the process and since, that is when fiscal research got to take a much greater role.
Let's turn to talking about your role as head of the executive branch of government. How can a governor be an effective head of the executive branch of government?
Well, it is one of the most challenging things. It was particularly difficult for us. Because we didn't have a single Republican in the whole state that had ever been a part of the executive branch that I knew about anyway, certainly not in a high policy making positions. We went through just reams and reams of paper looking at potential candidates for cabinet positions. And I am not sure that every decision that we made was the perfect choice. You can look back now and see that some cabinet members did better than other cabinet members. Some of them were just superb. But given the fact that it was the first Republican administration, we probably did better than we might have I guess is the best way to say that. I think I probably delegated less than most governors should simply out of wariness and there were times that you had to have heart to heart talks with folks about something that might be happening. Never had public fights with anybody. We did have to let some people go, not cabinet people but sub-cabinet people, who just did some things that weren't right. They weren't necessarily illegal but they just shouldn't have been doing it. And when you have got people who are coming to Raleigh for the first time, personal habits that weren't noticed out in the hinter lands sometimes get magnified by the capital press corp. So you just sort to have to deal with that. But governors end up with the ultimate responsibility for probably, at the time it was about 60,000 state employees and at least a dozen of them is probably going to screw up every day some where or another. I said that wrong. Everyday at least a dozen will screw up. It won't be the same dozen but there will be that many. That is one of the little bit of surprises. It shouldn't have been but it was. The other one was that so many people wanted to see the governor and nobody else.
You are emphasizing the appointments in this initial response. Why is it that appointments are so important?
Well you know that you can't run the whole thing yourself. Even if you are just brilliant you have got to have some people that you have got some confidence in. In my case it just took a while to build that confidence. We had some change over during the time. For the most part, we laid out in some cases where we wanted to go. That was particularly true in DOT. The Department of Administration is an administrative agency. It is not nearly as much a policy making agency. Cultural Affairs has its own thing it does and has its own constituency out there. Not many governors are going to be doing a lot of serious oversight on that even though they get involved a lot. They have different things involving the symphony and arts of one kind or another. Different governors pay different attention to them but there are a lot of things that you can do. But too, the department itself is small. Of course you don't have any involvement with the Council of State agencies. Human Resources is just a big can of worms. It has got such a conglomeration of things. That was the name of it at the time. It changes every four to six years. I think it is now Environmental Health and something now I think. And you have had various health agencies move back and forth between the two departments over the years. We were fortunate in having some people in a couple of key agencies that had enough experience in the field and in management that you could have some confidence about that because there wasn't any way that you could have oversight everyday on it.
So what kind of criteria did you use in selecting people? What were you looking for these major appointments that you made in the cabinet appointments for example?
Well I am not sure that I can tell you right now what the answer to that
was. Because if I look back at the people that got appointed
particularly the first round, it was looking for people that I had known
personally, that I felt like had good native intelligence plus some
reason for thinking that they would fit with the agency that you needed.
Bill Bondurant for example had headed up a foundation. I had known him
in college. When I talked to him about coming to be the Secretary of
Administration, I just think it blew his mind probably. Every time I see
him he never fails to thank me for that great year he had but he only
stayed a year. He took a year of leave from the foundation and came
down. Of course he was a registered Democrat. We didn't have
many of those but some. I wanted people that I could count on, not just
integrity in the sense of being honest but in having good motives. There
is a distinction there. Jim Harrington for instance took a serious pay
cut to come and be Secretary of Natural and Economic Resources. He had a
background from being the President down at Pinehurst and up at Sugar
Mountain to know both the development side and the environmental side of
that agency. It has been almost twenty years now since we split
conservation and development. I still think it is one of those serious
mistakes the state has made. Because I believe you are much better
having everybody under one boss in that agency instead of having these
folks fighting each other across agency lines. It is partly because so
much of the things that help the environment can be handled at small
cost up front in the development but if you have to do them after the
fact, the cost just gets monstrous. It is much better to have industries
come in to the state and have some problems that the industry knows
about at the same time we are recruiting them. They know that they are
We are talking about the criteria that are involved.
And it was obviously going to require either an interest in that first Republican administration or just generally public spiritedness, if that is a term.
It is?
Or a combination of those two things. And some people just wanted to be part of the excitement of things like that and willing to take off from their business and come and do this. And I think that is going to be the case in almost every administration. Not all the people in every administration can have that motive but a lot of them will.
Did you have any situations where you wanted someone to come in, you made the decision that you wanted to appoint someone, but you ran into either concerns about the pay cut that they would experience or the public scrutiny which is inevitable in a position like that?
Well on the first part, we had some people we asked to come in that couldn't or wouldn't. Just said no. And sometimes it was because it came at a particular time when they couldn't afford to leave their business because there wasn't anybody else there to handle it and they were in the crucial state of expansion or whatever, change.
Not financially afford it but just the conduct of the business?
Right. I suspect that almost everyone that came took a pay cut and I
think that is probably still true. Although the cabinet
secretary's offices have improved. They are getting close to
$ 100,000, so that has probably changed. We didn't
have anybody that I know about scared of a spotlight. I don't
think that spotlight was near as common
But in terms of recruiting other people, you didn't make that requirement?
No and wouldn't now I don't believe. I think this
is one of those cases of sort of overreacting to press demands that come
about a problem. And I have to tell you I sort of understand how that
is. Because when we went through the energy crises, may
But disclosure statements wouldn't do that?
They don't. They don't.
One of the factors that is related to this whole appointment business and I don't know if it became important to you in selecting either your cabinet heads, secretaries, or your personal governors office, is the question of bringing in people who had been involved in the campaign. What was your policy on that and what is your evaluation of whatever that policy was?
Well I suspect that almost everybody who is involved in a staff position on a campaign wants to go in with the governor if you win. A few don't, in that they may have interrupted their college education or they may have been, or they may have left college because of some other reason, and then decided to get involved in the campaign but decided to go back to school. For the most part though that is an exception. For the most part, they want to come into the government. You have to resist the temptation to over reward those folks because they have given their lifeblood for you in a way. In our case I know it was true. Because it was, while as I have told you earlier, we had a combined staff with Nixon and Helms people for certain parts of this, there were certain people just on our payroll. And when our payroll started running out in September, you had this guy get kicked out of his apartment so he would have to move in with his buddy over here and by election day we had the entire staff living in one apartment, just to keep them off the street.
What a wonderful story.
I mean it is communal living at it worse. It wasn't quite as
bad as it seems in that most of them were on the road almost all of the
time. It was just a place
And had been campaign manager.
And had been campaign manager. But I brought in Phil Kirk to be the
Administrative Assistant. And I told both of them very candidly that it
was sort of a balance kind of thing that I didn't want them
fussing, that I was going to listen to them both. There
shouldn't be any constant tug for power along the way because
we just didn't have the time for that. But I expected Gene on
the other hand to be my eyes and ears and if something was going wrong
out there or you saw a potential for scandal to let me know
So he was sort of your reality check in terms of trying to make certain that if something is developing out there that you ought to know to tell you.
That is right and it wasn't at all that came to him but that was one of his major assignments. He also had the job of keeping in touch with all of the Republican county chairmen to see if their favorite nephew in fact was qualified for DOT or the job down at the asylum at Morganton or whatever that they would get some people looking about it. Not necessarily getting the job but just looking at it. So several of them went in as assistant secretaries which is the third notch down in the agencies and that varied in responsibility from agency to agency.
Still kind campaign people going in to those positions.
That is right. I think anybody who had worked on the staff was offered a position somewhere in the government and I think all of them took it. A couple of them may have gone back to school.
But you did not put any campaign people into positions of department secretary.
No.
And was that, why was that?
Well part of it was because, almost all of them were really just kids. We
had, we had four who had just finished at State in the spring. I suspect
the average campaign staff age was probably twenty two. I take that
back, on not putting anybody in. Tenny Deane who had been a near
classmate or classmate at Davidson I don't remember exactly.
I think he was a couple years behind me. He came on board in mid summer
to
Do you see any inherent or generic problem with having campaign people, obviously you have in terms of the difference between campaigning and governing. Obviously you have a kind of sense of obligation these people have worked for you hard and made it possible for you to be there, but do you as you think back about it in terms of sort of evaluating the policy do you see anything inherently contradictory between these things, obligations?
Well a good campaign worker doesn't always make a good
governmental worker. Because there is a lot of times that government can
be sort of dull after the excitement of working in the campaign and
there is the potential for them to get into
Now one of the things that some persons who have served with governors have talked about is something that I alluded to a little bit earlier with your reference to Gene Anderson, that there is a need to have someone in the administration at an important position, level, to be able to tell you either when something is going wrong or maybe even when you are doing something wrong. 1) Do you agree with that and 2) Did you have such a person and 3) How did it work?
I totally agree. I think there is a terrible tendency for folks not to
tell people in high elected positions what they honestly think in terms
of, not necessarily, misdeeds. I think that is the wrong term probably,
an errant performance of somewhere another. If you don't have
anybody but yes people around you, then you are going to find out in the
newspaper that you have done something wrong when it didn't
have to end up in the newspapers. Or you are going to think that the
newspaper is just beating on you when they shouldn't. But
when your friends are good enough friends to say to you, you
So you had the kitchen cabinet or some form of that.
I say I don't think, when I started off I got some people together during December after the election and once in January but it sort of fizzled out. Mostly my lack of attention on that I think. But the people in the office and the cabinet secretaries and some key legislators that I had known would let me know if they thought there was a problem.
Another group that you have relationships with as a chief executive is
the Council of State, separately elected, independent departments. How
would you
That is right. We had a couple of instances where a member of the Council
of the State died, one instance where they resigned and you had
Republicans temporarily and they lost it at the next election.
Fascinating since I have left office over the last twenty years at one
time or another, I have had at least four or five Council of State
people or former Council of State people tell me that they had the best
relationship with me that they had with any governor, Democrat or
Republican. And part of it is that I didn't try to invade
their turf too much. Actually some of them, not at all. That I respected
them because they had gotten elected as officials even though I am not
sure Council of State people really are elected in the same way that
governors are elected. Because people who don't know them; it
is mostly a name ID thing. Any rate. We had a couple of instances where
it got a little tense. Bill Bondurant made an innocent mistake during
that one year of getting ready to do some renovation in our offices and
was going to seal off a back entrance that Thad Eure always used to get
into his office. Bill didn't tell me about it or would have
told him probably would be a good idea even though it made sense. Thad
got upset and called Bill and Bill was a little snippy with him. We
ended up with a major discussion about it at the next Council of State
meeting. So I had to have some general policies about the quarters in
which the Council of State members were housed. That is just one of
those things that happens. During the time that Robert Morgan was the
Attorney General you know and was asked to investigate the campaign
finances that we had had, it was strained in the sense that you can do
that kind of thing without being strained. But Robert knew me and I knew
him and it came out as clean as
Now when putting together your budget, those budget requests from the individual departments went to the advisory, or to your office, and then to the Advisory Budget Commission but you said earlier that you had a policy council which if there was something that you felt or you were not comfortable with or needed further thinking or something that you would send it back. Would you do that with the departments in the Council of State?
We sent their budgets on as they were presented. And I am trying to think back with Craig Phillips' case with the education budget whether we had anything. And I am inclined to think that that only happened in that first year where we were adding on to Bob Scott and the Advisory Budget Commission's budget. Because we added some things to Craig's budget as we did to the community colleges and parks and some other things. But I think I sort of felt like that unless there was something just contradictory to what we were trying to do someplace else that it was sort of their prerogative. They had gotten elected and it was not up to me to say.
Now in the area of education there is a particular problem because the
department which the superintendent of public instruction heads is
separately elected, more or less independent. Governors as you did have
very strong feelings about
Although that included more than just the public schools.
Right, I understand that. But education certainly was an important part of whatever budget you presented and education policy is often a publicly debated and discussed area of public policy. What happens in those cases where you have potential for conflict between a separately elected person and the governor in your example?
Well I think in our case the nature of the process at that time and what
Craig's budget sent over, Craig always took the position that
he was going to send over everything he could think of and it was up to
the legislature to pare it back and I just didn't get in the
way of that, although we had plenty of influence with the legislature on
where we thought the priorities should be. We've got a
terrible structural problem with education, there is no question about
it. It became far worse later than it was then. And if I had my druthers
and just could wave a magic wand, I would not have an elected
superintendent but have a superintendent appointed by the state board.
You could get two or three different opinions about how that board ought
to be structured, but mostly by the governor. Simply so that you have
clear lines for accountability and authority. Because what we have got
is just a mess and it depends on, the structure depends, the success of
the structure totally depends on the ability of the people who are there
to get along with each other and when they don't it is just a
disaster. And we have just seen plenty of examples of that. We got
probably the best situation right now that we have had in that Mike
Ward, professional educator, seems to have the respect of the education
community as well as the legislature. While we have got a mix of
Republicans and Democrat
Institutionally there is a flaw.
That is right.
Individuals can make it work.
And just have to.
Are there other areas where you have experienced any of that kind of conflict or potential for conflict, you said you really didn't have that much conflict?
Not even close, not even close. You have got little things that happen. In our case we had some conflict when the secondary road council and the highway people, not because of their assignments, because both of them were going to be getting calls from Joe Doe citizen who didn't know exactly what the responsibilities were and so sometimes things got crossed up that way. But that was just miniscule compared to what we have in education that effects a huge part of the state's future.
So with the Council of State departments and the Council of State members, you don't see other major areas for potential conflict between a governor and elected executives?
That is right. And the time to change that was when Bobbie Ethridge was getting to run for Congress and there was an opening there. When they didn't shorten the ballot that way at that point, they just missed a golden opportunity I think. And usually you have to do things like that when you have a window and I think it is closed right now.
Under Governor Scott there was a new executive group created called the Executive Cabinet. This was, as I understand it from reading the literature and talking to Governor Scott about it, an effort to try to bring some coordination between the departments that have appointed heads and departments that have elected heads. Did you find that a useful concept? Did you use it?
Didn't use it at all. As a matter of fact, I am not sure that I was aware that he had use it.
He had created it but it was near the end of his term and so I don't think it was a major factor in his administration.
That is right because it would have been a creature following reorganization of state government which I think was a very important and good thing and still serving well.
The reorganization was good and important and still serving well.
Yes because before that you had umteen zillion people reporting directly
to the governor. It was just crazy. And of course reorganization was one
of those politically correct things that swept the country in the late
1960s but not without some merit. Just because it was politically
correct does not mean it was wrong. So I supported it as a legislator
and thought it was a really good thing and I think it has probably saved
the lives of several governors since then. And what you found during
that process, everybody was in favor of it except you should leave their
agency alone. Commerce got created in a sense because you
couldn't figure out anywhere to put some of their agencies
but you wanted them under something. Wildlife ended up maybe sort of
floating out there by itself simply because everybody was afraid to
touch it. But we had regular
By cabinet you're talking about appointed people not the elected people?
Right. People tell me we had a sense of togetherness in our administration that has been fairly rare. Part of that is just that we were all hanging on to survive. But part of it was because we really made an effort to be a team.
What was the reason that you didn't use that executive cabinet concept of bringing together elected heads of departments and appointed heads of departments?
Jack, I am not sure there was a conscious decision about that. If I made it, it was probably made unintentionally simply by not doing it or not by default. But it was also that I decided pretty early on that I was going to leave those Council of State people do their own thing. But anything I did had the potential to look like I was meddling in their departments, trying to grab power so to speak. Frankly I had my hands full of what I needed to do within the branches of government that the governor controls.
Now it goes unsaid here that your appointed people were substantially
Republican and the elected people were substantially Democratic. Some
people argue
I think probably not. It depends on the individuals. I don't think there is an institutional barrier that can't be overcome. There's a personal example. Jim Graham was Phil Kirk's second cousin or something like that. I had been in the legislature with several members of the Council at State. Jim Harrington for instance had been in the National Guard and he had been in water resources studies with people in the past. I had known all of the Council of State people when I was in the legislature just because they came over to present their budgets. Some of them were different than others. It has always been involved in personalities. I am not sure anybody was ever going to get John Ingram to be a team player about anything for instance. You saw a lot of laws changed that shouldn't been changed that was understood why the legislature changed them during the time he was insurance commissioner. At the same time Edwin Gill and Harlan Boyles since then always ran one of the tightest shops around and I had no trouble picking up the phone and calling either of them. I guess Gill who was there the whole time I was governor. I knew Harlan well. I would pick up the phone and talk with Ed Gill and have him bring some of his people over to talk about the state's fiscal picture and whether there were certain things that should be done or shouldn't be done. Because they had been there through thick and thin. Even though it had all been Democrats, they had dealt with bunches of governors. I think their first loyalty was to the state not to the Democratic party.
So the means of coordination that you found useful was simply personal contact with these people in these offices rather than getting everybody together once a month or something like that.
That is right. I mean we got together but not those two groups together and those agencies don't overlap in responsibility all that much. You have got Revenue and the Treasurer's office I think comes the closest. I am sort of trying to think. Agriculture and Natural Economic Resources to the extent that you had the conservation side of that had some need for coordination. And the fact is too that when you start moving down about three or four tiers in every agency you are going to find people there who has been there in and out through administrations who are going to know each other and know the people in the other agencies who were in the same levels. There is a fair amount of subsurface coordination of things that we have talked about people.
Another person or position rather that you have a relationship within the executive branch as governor is the Lt. Governor. In your case that was Jim Hunt. How would you describe that relationship?
It was good. I have told a lot of people that and they don't
understand it and I have teased him about it. Jim would stand up about
once a month and would just give me hell about something. I mean he had
to keep his Democrat credentials in. He was getting ready to run for
governor and somebody was going to challenge him in the primary. He
couldn't dare to be a Republican pawn. But most of the things
that he stood up and talked about weren't really all that
important. While nobody loves to be fussed at, everybody wants to be
universally loved. But when the chips were down, I could call and tell
him about a bill that either even needed to be killed or needed to be
passed and he
But you say that you actually could and did call upon him for assistance in the legislature.
Yes, and I didn't try to make an everyday habit of that. I mean you sort of picked your places where it makes a difference sometimes where you can't see any other way to get it stop. But I don't remember being turned down any. He has asked me since during his term as governor to do several things that were important to him and I have done them all.
Do you feel that based on your experience those positions should be a team in the sense of being elected on the same party, on the same slate so to speak?
Well I tell you can get day long seminars with people talking about that
particular issue. In my case it worked much better having a Democrat
there because of the things that I have said. Whereas if it had been a
Republican as my teammate, he wouldn't have been nearly in a
position to help. Now Jim Martin and Jim Gardner sort of ran as a team
in 1988 on the idea of having a Lt. Governor help the Governor. So a Lt.
Governor gets elected and they immediately stripped the office of his
powers in the
It was a good idea that was compromised in the process.
On the philosophical thing, it sort of made sense that you would have a
Republican team run. But people tell me in the states where that is done
that this a lot more complicated than it seems. That in places where you
have to run from the beginning as a team almost invariably a
gubernatorial candidate will pick his lieutenant gubernatorial
candidate, somebody who is different than he is in order to try to
expand the base for the primary which means you don't
necessarily have a total ally over there if you both get elected. The
more extreme those go the worse it is. On the other hand if the governor
picks a Lt. governor after he is nominated, if he just then decides to
pick a Lt. Governor candidate for the Fall, he may view a different kind
of equation but it is still going to be the same premise. Somebody to
help him get elected as opposed to help in
Now some people who make that argument that they should be a team think of the Lt. Governor as being a part of an administration.
And that was the argument with Jim Gardner in 1989, exactly. He was part of the executive branch.
And I assume you didn't take that position towards Jim Hunt.
No.
As Lt. Governor that is.
That is right. I think that was the case before and since until Jim Gardner came along. Because that was the first time you had had a Lt. Governor who wasn't a part of a majority party in the Senate. I think Pat Taylor and Bob Jordan hadn't been viewed as part of the executive branch. As a matter of fact until maybe Jim Hunt was the first full-time Lt. Governor.
That is right he was.
I always thought we made a mistake with that.
Making it full time?
It only passed the committee by one vote in the house and I voted against it. I still think it was a bad idea. Just not enough to do anything more than run for governor which is what you have got your mind on all the time just about.
That certainly has created a situation where it is an inevitable jumping
off point for a campaign. It has created a situation where, say under
Governor Martin, clearly it was the same party but I do believe there
was some effort to try to create an executive role
Well in that particular case you wouldn't become a competitor for reelection and if Martin was serving in the second term he wasn't going to be able to run. You have to worry at times whether they can be a competitor in the public arena and an influence in the legislature.
That is right and in that particular case I believe there was an example there where Lt. Governor Jim Gardner proposed at least some of a different budget than from what Governor Martin did. He had some different ideas about what should have been done there.
To tell the truth I can't remember.
I believe that is the case. So that in itself sets up some kind of competitive situation where you have got two different Republicans presenting different budget ideas to the legislature.
And I went up and worked with Gardner in 1989. Probably shouldn't have. Just sort of left my law practice half dangling.
After he was elected and became the lieutenant governor.
That was right. It sort of stunned me that he asked me given the fact that we had had that history and all. At the same time I tried to help in campaigns if I could. But during the time that I was there I don't recall this thing about the budget that you are talking about. But it may have happened after I left.
May have I don't recall exactly when it was.
He had some serious reservations about the tax increase Martin was proposing for the public schools and I told him at the time that if I were there I would be for that. But I had to tell him also I had never voted for tax increase in my life. Always easier to tell the other guy what to do.
Well that is really what I was referring to the differences in taxes is basically what I was referring to.
He eventually came out and supported that being dragged all the way just about. He really didn't want to do it.
Now we talked a lot about the role of the governor as an executive leader in budgeting and you made what to me is a very important comment and I wanted you to elaborate on it. You said, if I understood you correctly, that you thought the budget was the most important tool that a governor has and could you talk a little bit about why you believe that and how that is the case?
Well even though the veto has seriously changed the equation in terms of
the governor's participation in the legislative process
itself. He has got a lot more ability to directly influence the
legislature now than he did when I was governor. Because even though you
might veto something and have it overridden, the legislature has to get
exposed and experience serious scrutiny of things that they have done
and they don't like that. So it puts the
governor's lobbyist in a position to really negotiate on
legislation. And Clinton does a lot of that as well with the Congress.
So I think that has changed. But in the overall scheme of things, given
the limitations on the veto where the budget is concerned, to the extent
that the legislature will usually give you things that you want that
don't cost money, your ability to get money from the
legislature for things that you want
How much discretionary budgetary resources did you have as a governor in the sense that decisions really could be made without them?
You have the authority that is in the Executive Budget Act as the
director of the budget to move money around. There are some limitations
on that though. But it is much more flexibility than you have in some
states. I had one of my staff members go to work with Pete DuPont,
Governor of Delaware after we finished our term. She said that in his
office he couldn't buy a typewriter without the approval of
the legislature, I mean signed off approval. So if something broke he
went out and paid for it out of his pocket because he
couldn't wait for the next legislature to come around to do
it. North Carolina's executive budget act is the key to your
ability to get along because you always have things that happen
unexpectedly. CP&L or Duke raises their power rates and your
Was a nice offer wasn't it?
It was. And that again his folks, Dr. English the Chancellor down there,
President at the time, no Chancellor at the time, and some of the people
at Chapel Hill
It was useful as governor, I mean you do have that kind of discretion—
That is right.
There are political scientists who look at the office of governor in North Carolina and say that it is among the weakest offices of governor that exist among the fifty states. When you were serving and since then would you agree?
Legally I would agree. On paper that is how it was. But again coming back to my premise if you can control the budget and you have got flexibility to move money around, that gives you a great deal of power to do things that don't show up in the constitution or in the statutes or in the appropriations bill. When you have got that, that is a lot of power I think. If I had to choose I would a lot rather have budget flexibility than the veto. Because the budget flexibility there is no down side; with veto you have got to take the blame for everything too. Plus you can't directly influence nearly as much because that flexibility is not shared power.
Your referred earlier to these efforts.
If you will recall and this has to do a little bit with Bully Pulpit and
positioning. When Terry Sanford got the School of the Arts started with
foundation grant money, he came to the legislature in 1963 when I was a
freshman. I voted against it just because of the process in which it had
been done. We really didn't have any choice but to give the
money for the continuing operation but I just thought it was very bad in
principel.
You are one of the few governors of North Carolina in recent decades who had experience in both the legislature as a legislator and in the governorship as Governor. So you should have a particularly interesting perspective on the idea of whether the governorship, excuse me whether the legislature is too powerful relative to the governor?
Was, isn't now. I got along remarkably well I think given what
the law says. But I have always and I think it came to height during Jim
Martin's term of what he called "the gang of
eight." Because in that case you had eight people who had no
responsibility for the whole state. They had been elected by the people
in their districts only. But they were carving up the state budget
without any regard to the executive budget at all. His budget was dead
on arrival just about. They were, I think, way too powerful. It made
great campaign fodder because the press had beat the drums because
Well what about the fact that without succession you are in some senses an immediate lame duck?
Yes. That was the strongest argument and still is for it and people, Bob
Scott talked a lot about that. I suspect that if you talk to him about
that he would repeat what he told me is that he really had to work hard
to stay in control the last two years he was in office, particularly the
last year. He had some more colorful stories about the DOT folks. He
called them all in the auditorium one day and told them he was going to
fire them all if they didn't get off their duffs and get
busy. I think there is the potential for the state bureaucracy to start
looking toward that next election. But it doesn't happen
until after the mid term election as a rule. Theoretically you need to
get every, to get most of what you want to do done in that first
legislative term. But I have found that because the state governmental
process where the budget is concerned is not nearly so philosophical in
a way as it is in Washington. Up until 1995 it's much more
likely that you can get cooperation during that third year, in
particular the first, second and third year than you might think. Now in
1995 we unfortunately elected some Republican crazies
You are taking about the state legislature now, not the national Congress.
Right.
I just want to clarify that for future listeners.
Gingrich has had some of that same kind of problem although some of them he created himself with the agenda that was set up early on although it didn't directly give a focus. But I think you can say in 1995 when they elected a Republican majority, we elected a variety of philosophical persuasions at least and it has made it extremely hard to keep all those kittens in a basket at the same time. But with that exception, I think, I guess I won't even say with that exception. I think governors become lame ducks during the campaign process for their succession and it largely depends on how early that starts that it happens. Right now I don't think Mike Easley and Dennis Wicker as potential candidates for governor in 2000 are making Jim Hunt a lame duck and we are in his second year.
Tell us what can do to keep an orderly relationship between the governor and the legislature. Its clearly caught up in all these changes that are going on both during the time you were governor and in the twenty some years since you have left that position. You said if I understood you correctly that when you were governor the legislature was probably too powerful but it is not any longer.
That is right.
And as I understand it, you attribute that to the change in the power over the budget.
Well, the power of the veto as much as anything. Because I think the governor's power where the budget is concerned has not increased that much. But the power of the veto lets you go in and, by threatening the veto or by the fact that the legislature knows you can you don't even have to say it, you can get legislation changed probably easier than you could before.
And it is primarily the threat of it more than the use of it that is important?
That is right. That is exactly right.
Would there be any other changes that you, having looked at the position from a position of experience but also not being in it, would make in the office of the governor at this time?
I think if I looked at the executive branch of the government, the change I make would be more for a short ballot, more appointed positions as opposed to elected positions, for the departments. Very few states have all appointed positions. They usually have the Attorney General, maybe a state Auditor, sometimes Lt. Governor, well most time Lt. Governor still there. But you find public instruction people appointed. You find commissioners of agriculture appointed often, treasurers, secretaries of state, sometimes, sometimes not. But you have got to have at least those sort of regulatory kinds of things. To the extent that the Attorney General has some responsibility for things that go beyond just being the state's lawyer and to the extent that the auditor has to be independent. Those positions in particular probably need to be independent. As far as the office of the governor itself, there is probably not that much I would change around.
I know that you were very active in the effort to secure approval of the constitutional amendment to permit succession and I know
That is right.
and I know that you also endorsed the idea of the governor's veto
Right
And probably supported that most of the time while you were governor I suppose and also since.
As a matter of fact I tried to get one or both of those while I was governor having it be effective for the next person so that it would not get my personality involved in it. Didn't get anywhere there either.
It is interesting because of course your successor did get it approved, did get it approved with his benefiting from it.
That is right.
And some people say that probably made the difference in his ability. Do you agree with that in his ability to get it approved?
I have heard the same things and I have heard that said in other states, in other situations, about their veto, or whatever, succession. Sometimes it usually has to do with the support that the incumbent governor is able to bring to it. Since he is going to do it he might as well do it for himself too and that encouraged people to help him along, his team so to speak. And Jim Hunt came out of the 1976 election with an extremely strong position within his party and within the state. That was the perfect time for that to be done.
END OF INTERVIEW