Full Text of the Excerpt

JACK FLEER:

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 obviously, you did maintain it. Was that a difficult thing to maintain during your term? Was it under duress?

JAMES E. HOLSHOUSER, JR.:

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.