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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-0328-3, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
In 1972, James E. Holshouser Jr. became the first Republican elected governor of North Carolina since 1896. In his four-year term, Holshouser faced the unique challenge of reintroducing the Republican Party to a leadership position in Raleigh. In this interview, he describes that challenge, reflects on his term, and considers some of the changes that took place between his departure from the governor's mansion and the time of this 1998 interview. The most significant challenge Holshouser addresses is the personal strain of a job that demanded constant attention. He remembers disappointments such as his failed effort to shepherd Gerald Ford to the Republican nomination in 1980, and a deteriorating relationship with the media. After he left office in 1977, he observed as the influence of money grew, often disbursed by political action committees pushing an increasing number of different interests; he saw the Republican Party grow in complexity as ideological divisions replaced regional ones; and he watched the decline of the citizen-politician, as politics became a profession rather than a calling. Holshouser also considers his legacy, including his contributions to transportation, health, and the environment. As he reflects on these changes and challenges, Holshouser reveals himself as a consensus-builder and something of a pragmatist, a politician suspicious of ideology and in favor of a robust two-party system. This interview will be useful for students of North Carolina politics and those interested in one of the state's few Republican governors of the modern era.
James E. Holshouser Jr., North Carolina's governor from 1973 to 1977, reflects on his term, the Republican Party, and North Carolina politics.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
A) the medical school has been a good asset for the state and B) we ran a serious risk that by fighting that fight and losing we might have a serious chink in the armor of the structure open up; fortunately it didn't.
What do you see, if any, disappointments in your administration?
We didn't get the mountain area management act through. Because of the Watergate timing, we really weren't able to lay the groundwork for immediate competitive challenge by the Republicans for the governorship in 1976. David Flaherty ran a good campaign and is good a guy; but nobody could have won that year. I was disappointed about that. At the same time, you know I have a different perspective after twenty years. It certainly laid the groundwork. When we got past that, North Carolina went to Reagan in 1980 and 1984, we elected Jim Martin in 1984, and elected the Republican legislature in 1994. It has taken time, but we have crossed over barriers and you have to feel good about that. And again, not that I view myself as the builder of the Republican party so much as hopefully the builder of a two party system which is good for the state. And I feel pretty good about the fact that we did some, a second stage, jump start for the community college system with the extra capital dollars that was there and has carried over some practice to keep that energized. We are still ahead of a lot of states although we could do more out there.
So the mountain area management bill would be your major sort of substantive disappointment. Why did that happen?
Lost the Republicans from the mountains. Could not hold the coalition
together. Didn't have any from the coast to start with on the
coastal bill. We got the
A man's home is his castle.
That is right. And I look back. It is hard to know how much overall impact there is on things. We set up because what we called people's days to go around once a month to some place and just listen to people come in, first come first serve. Early on that had some good things but as it went on the last couple of years I say it seemed to be more people wanting their road paved or a son out of prison or wanted you to take out the plate that the FBI put in there and was listening to every thought they had. You had those three categories that seemed to become more and more of the thing. I didn't feel as good about it later on. It was a good ombudsman approach to give people a chance to get heard if they were just getting lost in the system.
Other than the people's day that was a program of your going out to various communities, you did set up the ombudsman's office within the Office of the Governor. Did you feel that it functioned better than the people's days in that regard?
Yes, very much so. Of course the staff in that office went out for
people's day and they had the job of following up on that.
Anything that came into the governor's office that looked
like a prior complaint hadn't been responded to at all went
over there. They had to contact the cabinet people. That is probably,
you were talking earlier about not necessarily a conflict, a control in
the administration. I think the folks in that office
One could argue that given the declining trust, in a sense faith, that people have had in government over the last say twenty or twenty five years that having that kind of an office with, even some energetic Don Quixotes, becomes an important antidote to that feeling.
That is right and there needs to be the right kind of attitude. You have got legal services set up in regions across the state who end up suing the government. I have always thought that some how that was wrong, to take public dollars and sue yourself. But at the same time you have got people who can be part of the administration in the broadest kind of sense but really have the sole purpose of keeping track of the problems that are just getting lost out there. Or in a few cases where somebody who was just, in one of the departments who was deliberately sitting on something because they just didn't want to do it. That wasn't often but sometimes.
I want to talk finally about the impact of being governor on you as a person and on your family. What do you see has been the impact of being governor? What was it while you were governor and what has it been since on you as an individual?
Well during the governorship you move from being just one of the fellows
to being the guy in the fish bowl all of the time and the family in the
fish bowl all the time. It has a serious impact on the wife and kids.
That is an impact that probably will last with them for a lifetime. In
one sense, it gives the governor something that you can't
lose, unless you throw it away and nobody can take away from you by the
fact that
You said it has a serious impact on family. Can you talk about that a little bit more?
Well, I think wives have the hardest time during the administration. The governor has lots of people pulling and tugging and people wanting him to do things. You have got things to keep you busy. When the newspapers shoot at you you either address that or ignore it whatever. But the wife can't do a thing but just sit there and take it. It is harder having somebody say something about the person you love than having it said about you in a way, at least that is how I feel. I haven't had many people say bad things about Pat so I'll speak from experience. That is how it seems. Over the years I have watched spouses have much more a difficult time with events than the people who are directly involved. For our daughter, the four years was a lot of good things. She got to see parts of the country and the world that she couldn't see otherwise. Had a whole different perspective about the highway patrol because they were around all the time. She considers them her best buddies. She also has no hesitancy about walking up to any state agency and walking through the front door or calling and saying I have got to come see you about something.
Now.
Yes. And she would not hesitate to pick up the phone and call Carolyn Hunt about something. I am not sure she has but I know she wouldn't hesitate.
It is the confidence to do that.
And yet she endured some things during those four years just because she
was always the governor's daughter wherever she went to
school and that set her apart. There were some down sides to that that
weren't serious fortunately. But it is things that I
I remember you saying earlier that whenever you finally decided to run for the office of governor you said to your wife, you either have to run for governor or get out of politics, things had come to that level. So I assume that your wife and by extension that your daughter was part of the decision to run for the office.
Well Ginny wasn't. Pat definitely was and she had been supportive all the way through. And my father, even though he didn't think I stood a prayer I don't think, once I decided that I was going to do it, supported me all the way. When I say all the way he signed a second mortgage on our house and he signed a note.
On the line for it?
That is right. Put your money where your mouth is or a risk of losing money. He and my mother looked after Ginny during the time that Pat and I were both on the road during the campaign. I am not sure that we appreciated how much effort that they put in during that year. Even after it was over with. It was one of those things that you do inside the family, just a normal thing that was happening. But looking back, they probably did as much for that campaign as anybody just in terms of looking after our daughter and looking after all the things that I couldn't look after and Pat couldn't look after because we were gone.
Did you take any special measures or decisions to try to maintain some kind of "normal" family life?
Well I suspect that Pat probably did more thinking about that than I did.
We made a point of having breakfast every morning together. That
wasn't the case at
Herself.
Yes. And I don't think that she had thought of herself as the first female governor. But I think she would love to run for the legislature.
So it did not create in her a negative attitude towards public life?
No. I have seen those tracks around. She has been involved in four or five nonprofits in Surrey, Stokes and Forsyth counties. Some of my Republican friends in Stokes say, "Boy your daughter is just a natural. She comes before the county commission for her agency. She is always the one they send over there and she says she gets up and makes her pitch. You just can't say no."
Isn't that wonderful. She learned from the experience.
Did you take any special efforts to, let's say for example, guarantee vacation time or things of that type?
Yes, we always left North Carolina the day after Christmas and went to Ft. Lauderdale and spent from Christmas to New Years as a family. We took two weeks off in the summertime and went to the western residence. When we went to Florida, we didn't have any security people, no staff or anything, just the three of us got on the airplane and went. When I say the airplane, commercial flight, probably could have got away with the other, just didn't. And Ned Cline of the Greensboro paper one time got on to a rumor that some business man was setting us up at his private abode down in Florida, thought we were on the take about something and snooped around and snooped around. I finally said, Ned I am not going to tell you where I go because I don't want any phone calls ever down there. But I can tell you this, we flew commercial, we stayed in a commercial motel, we have paid for ourselves, paid for the plane flight, paid for the meals and there is just nothing to it. He had traveled enough with me during the campaign that he knew if I had told him that it was so.
Is it the lack of privacy that you think is the most serious "negative," if there is a negative, or is it something else?
Well, for the wife there is going to be about as many demands on her. Plus, she has always got the governor's staff calling over saying you need to do this and you need to do that and most of the time…
Public functions she should perform?
Yes, or something that she ought to do. She probably knows as well as
they know whether she should do it or not. And when she gets criticized
and she got criticized a few times, three or four times in the four
years about something. Really upset her and it upset me too. Those were
just passing things. You just said. "It's a bad
It was not something that she could continue while she was in the office?
That is right.
The "office" that she occupied while you were in office.
She went back to nursing school the last quarter we were in Raleigh because I had dragged her out of nursing school and up to Appalachian when we got engaged. So she hadn't got her nursing degree.
Oh I didn't realize she had not completed.
Right. So she started then and finished that during the first year we were out of office and later got her masters in nursing in Chapel Hill, commuting back and forth.
My wife did something like that, it is not easy. Did she, let me rephrase this.
You mentioned it was the demands on the time. Were there other aspects of it that made it difficult?
Well, you really don't have a personal life during that
stretch of time and I think that is one of those things that I may have
said before. I learned during the campaign that I could push myself
beyond the limits that I thought I could go once as
You in a sense were on call for twenty four hours as governor.
That is right.
and in a sense your wife and probably not your daughter since she was so young. Is there anything that can be done about that to make being governor somewhat more possible?
I don't think so. I mean you don't have but one guy
who is head of the national guard, head of the highway patrol, so to
speak, if something is to happen. That is the reason that it never
bothered me much about taking a state plane or the highway patrol
wherever I was going even if it was for a political event. You
can't do that anymore I don't think because people
fuss at you. But they didn't fuss then. Jim Martin over did
it. He said if there were any politics involved in any part of the trip,
the campaign fund had to apy for all of it. Where I didn't
even stop at the other extreme of saying that if any part
So the job just has this sort of full time expectations and necessity.
That is right. There are things that you can do. There are times you would have appointments in the afternoons. Somebody would call in and say they had gotten tied up. All of sudden your afternoon opens up and you say lets run down to Pinehurst and play eighteen holes. And there was always something on the desk; the desk was never empty. But you do have the flexibility to get up and do that. And there is nothing says that you have to go to the office at all. It is not in the constitution. Lauch Faircloth when he was secretary of transportation swore you could do the job working three days a week.
I didn't realize that. His job or the governor's?
I said transportation. It was when he was in commerce he said that, that the secretary's job only took three days a week. And of course Lauch had been sort of a unique kind of individual all the time any way because he is always, he sort of knew what he could do and what he couldn't do and he just did it.
Would the addition of staff to the governor's office help in making it a more manageable responsibility?
I'm probably speaking out of ignorance now. It is hard to know
how much is coming into the Governor's office that has to get
into a funnel somehow and then come back out at the other end. When I
was there, Phil Kirk had all the mail sit on his desk that came in there
everyday. Some of it just needed an automatic response that
Moving it over to the Governor's office?
Yes. The Department of Administration always had the reputation of being sort of professional and insulated from politics. When they moved it to the governor's office I think it became the governor's tool in the minds of the legislature and made it, not less effective is the wrong word, it just changed how people perceived it.
Although actually prior to that move, the legislature had set up its own fiscal research
And I guess if you look at which came first that may have been a response to the legislative move rather than the other way around.
What about the first lady, should she be a publicly paid official?
Been a lot of talk about that particularly with Hilary Clinton.
Yes. I am talking about of course the governor's first lady.
Right. I am inclined to think not. You can make an awfully good argument about the fact that she is on duty full time too. She doesn't have to be. And I think Carolyn Hunt has spent a fair amount of time of the farm down at Rock Ridge particularly during the first Hunt administration. Don't really know that, I just have heard that. I think you can make a pretty strong argument for saying that if it is because her work is there and it has to be done as part of the governor's office that she could be paid out of the governor's office. It may change how she is perceived and may change it for the worse. The strongest arguments you are making for doing that is that it treats her as an individual apart from the governor and says that her role is defensible. You can make that pretty legitimate now.
Would it be politically difficult to make such a recommendation?
Actually from a legal and political standpoint, the governor could put her on payroll from the governor's office. It would have to come out of his/her budget. And it wouldn't be anything illegal. You might get a few quips editorially when you first started but I think if the governor just said this lady is working 56 hours on an average a week for the state and she is due to be paid. Now the political side of that is it looks like you are feathering your own nest as a couple. That would be the only down side.
What were the most difficult times you had personally as governor?
We went through a stage, it seemed like to me about the last six months, where it seemed like the media got much move inclined to not give you the benefit of the doubt, that they assumed you were guilty until proven innocent kind of thing and decisions got questioned.
Got questionable?
Got questioned. I mean the head of the highway patrol got stopped by one of his own folks for speeding coming back from Asheville. Some thought I should fire him but I didn't. And that kind of thing just made it hard. I found early on, this is getting a little on the side of it when I told the media I wasn't going to answer any questions starting with if because we cross the bridges, as they came. That cut off about three-fourths of questions that they normally ask. One said to me later we use to sit up nights drinking beer just trying to think how you could reword these questions trying to get the answers without saying if. But most of the times you don't have to cross those bridges, you don't try to guess what is going to happen here and say if this happens I will do this and if this happens I will do that. That was particular true in trying to deal where the legislature is concerned. You couldn't use that vehicle to say that if the legislature will do this then I'd be willing to give on this. That is better said in private anyway.
In negotiations with the legislature publicly. Any other difficult times?
Well the last six months looking back I know my hemoglobin was dropping
because of the kidney disease and I was more tired than I realized
physically. I had that accident right after I left office and they came
in and took a quick blood run and saw the hemoglobin and thought that I
had some internal bleeding going on and got scared to death. At the same
time looking back I don't think the schedule slowed down a
bit because I have been very much involved in trying to help Gerry Ford.
Of course once the election is over, you start trying to focus on what
you are going to do with yourself and also trying to make sure that the
people in administration got help if they needed it in terms of locating
out of the government. Because I told them that Bob Scott had asked all
So it was a personal and political disappointment.
Yes and I had put out and pulled out all the stops in trying to help. That was really disappointing.
What is the most satisfying thing about being governor?
Well I told people that it probably is pulling the car right up in front
of Reynolds Coliseum or Kenan Stadium and getting out and walking in.
Actually that is not so; although it is pretty satisfying. I think being
able to get some things done that I wanted to do as a legislator but
couldn't which is the reason I ran to start with. I
didn't really run just to be the first Republican governor,
given that little clip about I thought they needed me and I think, that
part was just really good. Got to do a lot of travelling, saw a lot of
the country, going to governors' conferences. The Irish
Government invited the governors to the First Church bicentennial. Being
part of the bicentennial was also a very special thing that nobody but
me got to do as governor. That had a lot of meaning particularly the
time in the last year of the administration when you were moving into
serious lame duck status. That was something that was energizing in
itself and I really enjoyed that. We had the national
governor's conference in Hershey a week before the
Some perquisites of the position that offset the lack of privacy and the demands of time.
Yes. They are because you have got all of these planes and helicopters and patrol cars that you can use to go places. You have got things that people do for you because of the office, not because of you, because of the office that are just always very genuine. I am not talking about the …sort of giving you themselves in a way just makes you feel good. It was satisfying in being able to say let's do this and seeing it happens. Because if you say it to the legislature let's do this you have got to go and persuade at least 61 people in the house and 26 in the Senate to do that and it still may not come out like you want it depending on how it gets implemented.
But you have numerous occasions you are implying where you could say we are going to do it and it happens?
That is right.
Policy and governmental.
Well, and little things. I had always thought it was crazy to have new
license plates every year and so now you get that little sticker and of
course that cuts down on the number of plates that were made by the
inmates. The correctional people were saying what are we going to do
with all those people all the day and there is always the argument
against that. I thought we had a disjointed way of handling the budget
in
I remember that.
I still think that is a good thing but I don't think you will ever see the legislature relinquish their right to line item.
I was thinking the other day I don't know whether I mentioned to you before but I am trying to accumulate a list of the "firsts" each governor had done. I put down that you were the first and the last governor to ever have a program budget.
That is right. I believe you have got that right. It will have to be after everybody who was there at the time has died before anybody would even try that again.
And there is no such time, or not likely anyway. Well Governor we have reached the end of what has been a wonderful set of interviews. I feel like you have made a real contribution to our understanding of the office and I know you made a real contribution as Governor of North Carolina. I thank you very much.
Well I told you before and I will say it again. I have enjoyed it and the visiting has been good just with you personally. Governors and past governors always like to talk about how great they were and that part has been fun too.
Thanks a lot.
At that point you had a fairly well defined model of when—of
people who came out of the mountains and went way back as Republicans,
but for different reasons than those who came in later. It
wasn't just the mountains; you go down to Wilkes and Yadkin
counties. You had Sampson County with its own peculiar thing down east.
You had the people who came into the party from the
north—they moved into the state as industry came in.
That's one of the legacies that Luther Hodges and Terry
Sanford started; they brought in industry, and they brought Republicans
in, too. Not that that's what they intended
How important was it for you to control the party itself? You mentioned earlier the well-publicized row over the selection of the state chair, and obviously you wanted to have your chair in there. How important was that effort to control the organization of the party?
Probably not nearly as much as it appeared from the effort that went into
getting it; more personality conflicts there between the state
chairman's office and the people who were involved in the
administration. I'm not sure I'd do it again,
looking back. It's hard to say, because you don't
know. Sometimes memory tends to get a little blurred as to exactly why
you decided this needed to be done.
…Other than having in the chair a person who was sympathetic to your administration—or compatible, let's say, to your administration and your way of leading the Republican party, what other aspects of the party organization and resources were you able to try to control as governor?
Of course, at that time the party was a different creature than it is
now. You didn't have the tax check-off, or a significant
source of on-going funds. So the party organization as such really
wasn't much of an organization as such. It was almost totally
volunteers, including the chairman. From my recollection, when I became
state chairman
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
…So both parties are better funded now than they were in the
sixties, I think. It's usually easier for the party
that's in control of the governor's office, to
have the governor's presence help the party draw a crowd at
fundraising dinners and that sort of thing. But both parties have gotten
much more sophisticated (Republicans may still be a little more
sophisticated) in terms of fundraising and campaign techniques.
We were discussing the ability of the governor to control the resources of the party, and you were saying that parties are much better off today, and that the Republican party might well be more sophisticated than the Democrats.
And there's another factor in this, too. When a new
administration comes in, invariably the people who had been involved in
the campaign and got their adrenaline running come to Raleigh. Well,
that political adrenaline doesn't automatically turn off when
they become a state employee. With both parties having their state
headquarters in
How important would an ability to be re-elected have been in your control of the party? In other words, would your relationship with the party have been different if you had been able to be re-elected?
Yes, I think so. I know I agreed to co-chair the drive for the constitutional amendment on second terms, partly because I felt like it would keep the governor from being a lame duck while still in office. That goes right over into activities with the party. If the governor is getting ready to run for re-election, he probably has a stronger tie, although he probably shouldn't, if he faces a primary in particular. If he doesn't that's a different matter. But you don't find many governors or many presidents who don't control the party at the level that they are involved in. Now sometimes you have states where there's no governor and have a United States senator. They'll be the ones to control the party, although it's been my experience that people in Washington don't want to be bothered with the state party.
Was that your experience with Senator Helms?
Yes. Some of his supporters in-state were involved and interested, and
have been since that time. At the same time, the role of the party has
been diluted so badly by the formation of PACs—and when I say
PACs I mean political PACs, not R. J. Reynolds
You mentioned PACs, and you were talking primarily about what you referred to as political PACs. I guess this means PACs of political leaders rather than PACs of industrial groups or labor unions, or whatever they might be. Do you think that's become an important factor in North Carolina politics. Was it whenever you were governor?
It was nonexistent when I was governor; it's very important today. I mean, you see the president pro tempore of the senate, you see the speaker of the house, you see several members of the house and senate having separate PACs. They get people to give money to that, which they can either use in their own campaigns or in somebody else's campaign. It definitely allows money to become the vehicle through which individuals gain political power within the spectrum through which they are working at the moment. I suspect it's much easier now for a political leader in the legislature to stay in that position of leadership than it ever has been in years past. Of course, we had traditions for a long time—you weren't speaker but one term, for example. That changed during Mr. Ramsey's time, and I think it's changed for the worse, probably.
Many people say it's changed at least in part—maybe a major part—because the governor can now serve a longer term.
That's when it happened. When gubernatorial succession came in the legislature decided if they're going to do it on the executive side we ought to do it on the legislative side, or we'll be at a disadvantage.
But you said it may well have been for the worse. Could you talk about that a little bit?
Well, I believe that to the extent we've moved away from a true citizen legislature, it's removing the possibility for a great many people who would be good legislators to be able to run and serve. It's not just what we've been talking about. It's also the length of terms and the amount of service between them. I was talking to a legislator this past week, and I think she said she was on thirteen interim committees and commissions. She was spending about half of every week in Raleigh.
When the legislature is not in session, you mean.
That's right, when the legislature's not in
session. I mean, you can't hold a regular job back in your
home county and be in the legislature anymore. Most lawyers
can't do that. When I was in the legislature, I went to
Raleigh five months and then was home the rest of the two years, with
rare exceptions. We had probably twenty-five percent of the legislature
who were lawyers. Right now we don't have enough lawyers to
staff a judiciary committee, even though you've got bill
drafting going on and even though you've got draftsmen to
help individual legislators who want to write amendments. When
you've got someone sitting down, scribbling one out and
sending it up on the floor on the spur of the moment or in committee,
the absence of lawyers who
Have that dispensable time that they otherwise would not have?
That's right. It doesn't mean that there aren't some good people there, and there are certain companies that encourage employees to run if they want to. In fact, that's part of not only their need to be publicly involved but it also means that their approach to things gets heard. You have teachers who run and take leaves of absence; you have university employees who run and take leaves of absence, and some of them are very articulate. Like Paul Luebke from Durham, who teaches over at UNC-G. His philosophy and mine are not the same at all, but to the extent that the legislature needs good minds, that's an example of a good mind.
In terms of the legislature's relationship with the governor, many would argue that this makes the legislature a more effective partner with the governor. In that sense, it provides a kind of restraint on excessive executive power. Is that a fair statement?
It could be. It's a little. It may be that my whole thinking
about this is simply an intellectual effort to hold back the wave of the
future. Modern society has gotten much more complex. It may be that
volunteers can't deal with those problems anymore; that
there's not enough time to stay up to snuff. Some of
them—you take Betsy Cochran. She doesn't have a
job she has to go to everyday, but she works almost
Let's sort of reflect on this idea regarding the role of the governor and his relationship with the political party. Has the Republican Party in North Carolina evolved sort of the way you anticipated it would when you were governor, or has it not done as well—or gone in different directions—from what you thought?
Let me back up on one thought. I think the Republicans have not accepted
the Democrat tradition of having the governor simply name the state
chairman. Legally it's done by the state executive committee.
But when Jim Hunt says who he wants to be chairman, that's
who becomes chairman. Jim Martin and I both had to fight for our
selections as chairman, and that's probably just the
difference in the backgrounds. How the parties are run. Moving on to
your other question, it's a little hard to know…
Anybody who thinks about it for very long realizes that if
you're going to have a viable party, you've got to
have a big enough umbrella to have varying philosophies under that
umbrella. If you don't, you're just not big enough
to win. We still have a coalition put together that's not
that different than it was in the sixties and early seventies.
It's just gotten larger. You've got the business
Republicans. You've got the country club
Republicans—and there's a lot of overlap there.
You've got the Populist Republicans who grew up in the
mountains; and rural Republicans, who have a mixture of Populism and
social conservatism. You also have a group of intellectual
And good reporting, probably.
That's right.
Has the party made as much progress here in the 1990s as you would have expected in the 1970s?
More, I think. I always thought the hardest thing to do would be to get a
majority in the legislature. Frankly, when I was talking with the state
chairman about one o'clock in the morning on election night
in '94 and he told me we were going to take the House, I just
really couldn't believe it. I told a lot of people in Raleigh
that I thought that was a much more important step as a party than if I
had been elected governor. It might not have happened if I had not
gotten elected governor. You never know about these things. I think the
state is a two party system. It's not to parity on
registration yet, but that's about the only place. The
delegation in Washington is split right down the middle, while
we've got two Republican senators now. The fact that the
state can elect Terry Sanford and Jesse Helms to the Senate says that
it's still a state that you can't exactly put
And that's healthy for the state?
I think it is.
Certainly part of what you hoped for when you started building the two-party system back in the 1960s?
That's right, because it wasn't to build a one party Republican state, it was to have a state where people got to listen to different ideas. I have to admit, though, that listening to them in thirty-second commercials is not the best way to get them. I also know that as much as that gets criticized, if you do a thirty-minute talk to the people—you look at the Nielsens on that and the numbers go way down in terms of people who will watch that long.
That's amazing, and somewhat disappointing.
When you look back over your administration as Governor of North Carolina, how much were you in control of the administration?
Well, it's a little hard looking back to know for sure. We did
some things that were deliberately set up to keep control
programmatically in that we had what we called a policy council where
all the legislative proposals had to sift before they went to the
legislature. The budget, too. I think I talked about this before, but
I'll get on with it and say that I might take a different
view today, but probably not. I took the view that these people [Council
of State members] were constitutionally elected by the people, and they
were the ones that had constitutional responsibilities. The place where
that runs into joint interests is with the Department of Public
Instruction, because you can't be governor
You mentioned the policy council, and then the sort of control in so far as you could over appointments. Would those be the two principal mechanisms that enabled you to maintain some kind of control, or were there others?
That's the main thing. We had a cabinet social about once a month that'd rotate from house to house. Never had it at the mansion as I recall. Each cabinet member would be host. I think that was very important, looking back, in terms of building that sense of camaraderie and teamwork. So it wasn't a sense of control—governor's office versus the departments—as much as it was everybody feeling like they were part of the same team. You didn't have circumstances for the most part where a cabinet member says, ‘I think we ought to do this,’ and the governor saying, ‘No, we're not going to.’ It was pretty much—it wasn't an administration that had seriously different points of view. So there wasn't a lot of pull and tug. You had some things on personnel that were either changes that needed to be made or cabinet members who didn't feel the time was right for them.
What about beyond the administration to the state government? You were obviously in a position as the first Republican governor to come into a governing structure—a bureaucracy, if I may use that term—where people had gone about their business to the tune of Democratic governors. Did you feel that you could control that larger government?
Well, I went in nervous about that because of an experience I had had in
the previous four years sitting in the Oval Office. President Nixon
would give a direct order to the secretary of HEW, and her field man in
Wilmington six weeks later would say just the opposite. That sort of
reminded you of Eisenhower's statement that ‘You
push the
You said at one time that everyone should be subject to summary dismissal
by a president or a governor, although you do see a down side to this.
Could you talk about this a little? You said this in an interview that
you did in a volume called, On Being a Governor. Could
you talk about that?
Well see, at the time I was in the legislature we had a state
employees' personnel system that had appeals from dismissals
that ended up in the governor's office. There
weren't many of those cases that got hauled into court,
because there weren't any rules. That changed during the time
I was governor. I think that was a mistake in that despite the fact that
it sounds logical. None of those people got elected by anybody. When the
governor gets elected, you may have people not deliberately disobeying
orders
Let's in these final minutes reflect on the legacy of the Holshouser administration. What do you think, looking over twenty-some years, are the most important accomplishments of the Holshouser gubernatorial administration?
Well, the passing of years probably gives you a different perspective. If
you'd ask me in 1977, I would have said the Seven Year
Transportation Plan was one of the most important things we did. I find
if I look at what's out there today in terms of
transportation that even though it's on paper and more public
than it was in 1972, that you've got umpteen zillion projects
in that plan that can't be funded anytime in the next ten
years. That's exactly what we'd been trying to get
away from. For awhile I thought it worked pretty well. It's
hard to say how it has changed and who's responsible. I have
a feeling that what's happened is that legislators and DOT
members, influential campaign people, want a project. Rather than saying
no, they just put them into an early phase in the plan. This
isn't necessarily bad because eventually it's got
to start some place. But when you put more in the front than
you're ever going to be able to put out the back, that leads
to a lot of disillusioned people. So I discount that. Rural health
centers have
You mentioned things that motivated you to be governor—and
things that you sort of wanted to accomplish—in an earlier
interview. You mentioned that maintaining the university system was a
very important goal that you had. And
Let me say one thing to follow up on previous things. I think North Carolina has not been plagued like other states. I think we've had a history of good government, Democrats or Republicans, and that's been helpful for that state. It probably—when you've had somebody who has had a decent four years with little scandal, it gets easier to build on that. Now, it was very clear in documents that came out with the highway contractors during Jim Hunt's term that some of that had been going on—price fixing—during my term, and Bob Scott's term before me; maybe even in the term before him, to be honest. It didn't look to me like it had much to do with the administration; there wasn't anything showing state officials were involved in any of that collusion. That was something that was an exception to the rule at that time. Now, let me come back to the question you asked.
The question I asked was that whenever you were reflecting about what you wanted to accomplish as governor, you wanted to maintain the university system.
I'm sure I said in an earlier interview that I thought my
involvement with the creation of the university in 1971 was more
important than anything I did as governor. I may be overestimating my
own role in that, but that's how I felt. I thought it was
good from the standpoint of the university that you had this governor
from 1972 through 1977, those first five years, somebody that knew not
only the history of why it was created, but knew some of the nuances and
players, and pitfalls. Even though we lost the battle on the East
Carolina Medical School, being able to get through that four year period
with the university structure intact. I'm not sure if I look
back in 1976, I did a television speech
Maybe I'm reading you wrong, but are you implying that there were efforts to try to undermine that system?
No, I don't think there were. Part of that was in sort of using the pulpit with the legislature; you know, saying ‘Let's give this thing time to work. Don't be meddling around like we've done for the last decade or so.’ I may have been seeing a shadow that wasn't out there, but it had been so frequent a problem since I had been involved that I thought it could be.
And I know that you and others who were involved in getting that legislation certainly had to fight hard to get that legislation in the earlier General Assembly.
It was a very difficult. It's still just a miracle that that legislation passed, because there were just so many competing voices there. If you had a concept that you were trying to hold in place and yet build a consensus behind it, it meant that you had to have your core theme but also you had to keep fringe issues mediated. As long as you could keep mediating those issues rather than losing the core, you were okay. I still think that will be one of the most important chapters in the history of the state.
You mentioned that you'd lost the East Carolina issue, talking about the medical school at East Carolina. Did you see that as an attack on the core of the university system?
Yes. Yes, although you had to put an asterisk by that before calling it an attack. That was something that predated the creation of the single university…
END OF INTERVIEW