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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-0336-2, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Robert W. (Bob) Scott was elected governor of North Carolina in 1969, serving until 1973. Although he was the son of former governor W. Kerr Scott, he had never seriously considered a political career until he found himself in the lieutenant governor's office. In this interview, however, as well as the other interview in this series, Scott reveals a political acuity and a thoughtfulness about his office that certainly did not spring from disinterest. The focus of this interview is Scott's term as governor. He considers the relatively constrained powers of North Carolina's chief executive—Scott did not have veto power during his administration—and how that power affects the relationship between the executive and legislative branches. He traces the root of his ethics back to his upbringing and describes the challenges and temptations of holding political office, or having the power of the state within reach. He ponders the role of the governor as administrator, and how that administrator must interact with the many people around him or her, from loyal aides to political rivals. Along the way, Scott reveals himself as a nonideological, nonpartisan governor who was not interested in building the Democratic Party organization past the point where it would win him elections and had little passion for the game of politics. This is a dense interview, thick with opinions and recollections, and will be useful to researchers and students interested in the operation of state government in North Carolina as well as Scott himself. Researchers and students interested in further material should look to the first interview in this series, C-0036-1.
Former Governor Robert W. (Bob) Scott discusses his time in office, reflecting on subjects like the power of the governorship, his accomplishments and disappointments, and the effect of the job on his family.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
An interview with Robert W. Scott of North Carolina, for Wake Forest
University and the Southern Oral History Program at Chapel Hill, as part
of a series of interviews with North Carolina's living former
governors. This is the second part of the interview. It was conducted on
February 11, 1998, at the home of Governor Scott, in Haw River, North
Carolina. The interviewer is Dr. Jack D. Fleer, Department of Politics,
Wake Forest University. Tape number 2-11-98-RWS.
Governor, when we completed the interview last week, we had gotten you elected to the position, and it might be an appropriate time to ask you: why did you want to be governor of North Carolina?
To use a well-worn phrase, that's a good question, and
I'm not so sure that I knew why, or that there was any
clearly-defined reason or motivation to seek the office of governor. It
probably was more a combination of factors, one being the
Secondly, as far as the office of governor was concerned, having served as lieutenant governor, or—at the time the decision was made to run for governor, I was lieutenant governor—it's sort of like getting a promotion in a company, I suppose. You know, you've done this job, and you think you've done it reasonably well, and there's an opening at the next tier, and so you apply for it. It was a logical progression, although no one in North Carolina had ever moved from the office of lieutenant governor directly to the office of governor. In fact, I didn't know better at the time, and I don't think it would have made any difference, but I thought—obviously, having been lieutenant governor, I could see and understand more clearly the role of the governor and the ability of the governor to make things happen and to provide leadership. I guess subconsciously I felt that I did have something to offer, I'm not sure what—leadership, commitment to do a good job. And I think it was just a blend of those things.
I did not have, initially, an agenda; that evolved during the latter part
of my term as lieutenant governor and as I began to more and more get
into the role of a potential candidate for governor. When I say that,
I'm talking about in my public
One of the newspapers at the time that you were elected and inaugurated commented that you may well have been the best prepared person for the governorship in the history of the state. But I wonder, as you were taking the oath, what thoughts went through your mind about the tremendous responsibility which you were about to assume?
It's interesting you should ask that question, because even before you framed the question, the thought was going through my mind at that very moment. And I have said publicly several times, not in speeches but in talking with other people, that I did have strange feeling come over me as the chief justice Hunt Parker administered the oath of office. Yes, there was the excitement of the moment, and I knew that following my taking the oath, I had to step to the podium and deliver the talk that I had prepared. But there was a feeling, very difficult to describe, and I can only use rather generic words, but a feeling of weight. Not burden in the sense of a painful burden, but like, "OK, you asked for it, you got it, and now what are you going to do with it?" You can't just walk off the court and say, "I won the ball game." And I realized that there was an awesome responsibility.
And perhaps that thought came to me too as the words—the oath was being administered by the chief justice, and those words: "upholding the laws and the constitution", not only of the state but federal. And the importance of that sunk home to me. It also occurred to me later, I'm sure, that day, or very soon, I thought, "Well, I've taken the oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States and of North Carolina. One of these days I might get around to reading it!" I had never read the constitution.
Of the state.
Of the state, and only parts of the federal one, whatever the occasion might have been that caused me to want to read that. And I read it, and not only that, I got real interested in it, and I went back—this was some weeks later—I went back and got copies of the previous constitutions that had been written and adopted. It was interesting to read some of those earlier constitutions, and the amendments attached to them. One being that at one time you could not hold public office if you were a minister, if you were a preacher. I always thought that was interesting. Such things as that.
Did you have, obviously despite your service in the lieutenant governorship and therefore a close look at the way government operated, did you have any second thoughts at that time?
About why I did it?
About anything like that.
No, no. One of the advantages of youth, and as a governor I guess I was considered young, is that you don't really think there's anything that you can't handle. I've said, tongue in cheek, a number of times, people would ask me: "Well, if the constitution had permitted you to, would you have run again?" And I said, "Well, I probably would, but you know, I always would have some reservations about anybody who, having once served as governor, didn't have better judgment than to run again. I would wonder about whether they were competent. One should know better." But that's not really the truth.
And incidentally, as a little side note, if one is elected governor and does have an opportunity to serve a consecutive term, subject to the voters, would you run for a second term? Well, assuming that you hadn't really created terrible political mistakes, so that there was objects to build on, yes, you'd probably run again, because of two reasons. First of all, there's always unfinished work that you want to continue to do, and this is particularly true in your first term, you learn how to handle the levers of power and learn the job, then, by the time you get your program underway, you want to see it through, and there's always something new coming up and you'd like to fine-tune what you've already done, perhaps.
But there's another reason that is perhaps equally compelling,
and this is a purely political reason. All those people out there who
got you into office, many of whom you have tried to place in government,
in key posts, they want you to run again, because they, too, want to
retain their positions. It may
Right. It wasn't possible in your particular case. Having been inaugurated, taken the oath of office, I suppose that one of the things you must have felt was that, here you were, the tribune of the people, in a sense, elected to the highest position in the state—in the executive branch anyway, some would say generally—the most visible position in the state at that time and today. And you become in a sense a public leader, and people are depending on you. How did you feel, during that time and during your period as governor, that you could know what the people of North Carolina wanted you to do with that responsibility and that power that you had? How could you come to know what the people of the state wanted you to do?
Well, one way that you know that is you assume that, having been elected, they agreed with what you proposed in your campaign, things that you wanted to accomplish if they would elect you governor. You would talk about roads and education and all the things that governors talk about, whatever the items of interest are at that time. So you assume that that's what they want you to do, and so you get on with it. You incorporate these into your first budget, your first message to the General Assembly.
In addition to that, one's values come into place here, I think. These people who supported you have faith in you. They do not want you to disappoint. They don't want to have to explain to their neighbors and others, you know, come back later and apologize for having helped put you into office. I felt that very strongly, and I think I mentioned this in my previous interview, that the last few paragraphs of my inaugural address, I focused on the fact that I wanted to conduct myself and to fulfill the responsibilities of office in a way that would merit this confidence and support of my family, my friends, my church, my community.
And all that comes back to values. People expect you to provide
leadership, they want you to be a leader, they want you to act like
their perception of what a governor should be. Now, that varies from
person to person, of course. They don't want you to do
anything that's going to embarrass them for having known you,
as I said. They don't want you to do anything
that'll bring a bad light on the state, like going off and,
say, gambling or something like that, even though it's in
another state and you're on vacation, you still represent the
state. There's no getting away from it. In your public life
and your private life, they want you to be somebody they're
confident in.
So all of those things came into being. And if you will look in the book,
you may have, it's a photo journal called The
Governor.
I have seen it.
That letter I wrote to my son. That goes back to your earlier question, what feelings came into to mind. I don't know why I did that. That really was true—the first act I did, after the inaugural ceremonies, I recall very well that I was in the office alone, and I guess staff was getting set up—they knew perhaps I wanted to be alone for a minute and think. I recall sitting there, in the chair, and I indulged myself for a short period of time by reflecting on my father having sat there, not in that particular chair, but in that office. Well, truth of the matter is, they had changed the office, changed rooms. As I recall, my father had the corner office, which when I came in was the outer office, that's where the immediate staff sat out there. I was back near the center of the building.
But anyway, nevertheless, the feeling came there, and that's why I thought about my son, and I just pulled out a piece of paper from the desk drawer that had already been prepared and was already filled with stationery and all that kind of stuff, and penned that note, while it was on my mind. And that of course was a personal thing, very personal. And later on when Mr. Roberts and his wife did the book, they wanted that in there.
Well, that's a wonderful piece, because it does indicate some of your early thoughts and some of your thinking about what you would do.
I guess I've always had a sense of history that my mother instilled in me, and gosh, I keep everything in the way of paper and letters and all like that, when two thirds of it probably ought to be trashed.
You just don't know which two thirds.
That's exactly right. And you know, what's of interest to me may or may not be of interest to a professional historian. On the other hand, they may be very much interested in something that I might consider irrelevant.
So you knew about your background and the expectations that the public had—
I might inject right there that another factor that entered into this, I think, was just what you just alluded to, that many people out across the state knew of my father and knew of his record, and for the most part had a positive viewpoint of that, and I felt a need to live up to that. Not necessarily to exceed or even to equal, but to be an activist, to show that I could get things done, and always I felt very strongly that a person ought to be as good as their word, and if you say you're going to do something, at least you have an obligation to try and get it done.
So, trust.
Yes.
Now, as you were governor for those four years, how could you be reassured—or were you reassured, and how was it that you were reassured, that you were in fact doing what the people of the state wanted you to do?
Well, a lot of that comes into political instinct. You just have a feel
for it. I tried not to become too insulated. That's the thing
that any governor has to constantly battle. I kept having to feel the
need to push staff away, so
And of course, one gives up that opportunity when one seeks public office
and becomes a public figure. I understand that, but it
doesn't take away the yearning to be anonymous in a crowd.
And you can never do that, even on, quote, vacation, endquote, because
at that time you still had security. Not like the President of the
United States, of course, but still. Everybody, somebody has to know
where you're—I guess the most remote I ever came,
I went to Utah when I was governor, at the invitation of the governor of
Utah, to speak out there at a political function. Well, that was my
reason for going; they paid me to come, they
And I asked him, I said, "Governor, how can you do this, come up here, just you and I and two of your friends"—who were sort of guides for us, and we had horses and we rode, hunting for elk and moose—and he said, "Oh, they know where we are, and they can get ahold of us. There was a forest ranger camp about five miles away, they could have a copter in there, and we could be at the capital in forty-five minutes if we had to."
But you had a sense of freedom, at least.
I had a sense of freedom, at least, and he says, "Your people can get ahold of you too, if they had to." So, you know, you never really—you have that responsibility, you take that oath. So that sense of responsibility is always with you.
So what do you do? You're separated from the people, to a certain extent, by the office and by the security that you have, and yet it's very important for you to know what the people are thinking and how they're feeling about what you're doing.
Extremely important. And back then we didn't do polling like
we do now. When I ran for governor, I think we did maybe two polls. When
I ran for lieutenant governor, I piggy-backed on somebody
else's poll and didn't even know what questions to
ask. So, once in office, we didn't worry about polls. We
would read those perhaps done by Newsweek, something
So how did we do this? It was done in two or three ways. Obviously, by reading the media, newspapers primarily, and to some extent watching television. Secondly, feedback from your political supporters. They'll say, "Governor, folks are saying you're going too far out on this environmental issue." So you'll get feedback from your political sources, and you do stay in touch with them.
Thirdly, you make speeches around, and you speak to the North Carolina Educator's Association, or some other group, and you get reactions, try to spend a little time mingling with the group, either before or after, shaking hands, pressing the flesh as they call it, and again, your political instincts come in. You can tell, if you are astute at that sort of thing, whether your agenda is flying or not. So those were something.
And then you always—a good governor—a successful governor, let's put it that way—a successful governor will always have at least one person, maybe two, on his staff, who will tell it like it is. And they're not there to please you, necessarily. I always said—you gotta have one SOB on the staff. And that person will tell you the bad news.
You name that SOB? You choose that person? They don't become it?
Oh, yes. It was Ben Rooney, in my case, and I think under Jim Holshouser,
at least from an outsider's viewpoint, I think his was Gene
Anderson. Everybody thinks Phil Kirk for Jim
You've mentioned several ways in which you tried to keep your finger on the pulse, and I want to talk about each of those in a little bit more detail. One of the ways that you mentioned was meeting with and talking with association members, like the North Carolina Association of Educators. You did on average about 125 of those kinds of public appearances a year, during the four years that you were—
I wondered what I was doing all that time!
During the four years that you were in that office. Would you say that that was, by and large, a useful way for you to maintain some kind of contact with the public? What did you gain from those particular—
I felt it was a useful mechanism, and I would suggest it still is. Now, one has to be careful and realize that this is a special interest group, and they're rather narrow, but keep in mind, too—I'm talking about talking to more people than just the leadership of the organization. Because they have a vested interest, they have an agenda too. Always realize that somebody's got the agenda, generally speaking.
But if you can mingle with the rank and file, and if
somebody's got something on their mind, it may be about
something else that you as governor and your administration are doing or
advocating or opposing, and they just don't think
that's right.
Now, I tried to have my staff mingle, too, where it was appropriate. You have large groups of people, you can't get out and spend the time walking around the mall so much anymore, and standing at the factory gate, like you did during the campaign, but this is—those association meetings, professional organizations, other larger groups, are ways that you can stay in touch with large groups of people, in a way.
And secondly, along that line, I made an endeavor, and I'm not so certain how successful I was in doing it, to get out of Raleigh. And it was a known fact, clearly apparent to me, the further you got away from Raleigh, the more the public appreciated you. I loved to go to functions in communities in the mountains or down on the coast, because they don't get to see the governor out there. This was, again, before there was all that much television. They had television, but they weren't following you around like they do these days.
So I organized a tour—this was during the latter part of my
administration—I think it started down in Gates County, took
the state limousine, and just went from county to county, Gates on
A little remembrance.
And we'd give them a little certificate, to show that the kids had ridden in the number one car, or something like that. But I found that you don't necessarily hear specifics, although there's always a few people in the crowd who are going to tell you really what they think, and they got something that's really burning on their mind. But you sense whether there's a mood of disappointment or resentment—for one thing, you wouldn't get them there to see you. But if they're feeling that things are going fairly well, generally the mood of the people is fairly happy.
One of the specific things that you, in a sense, went to the people on, was the tobacco and soft drink tax. You did a sort of whirlwind helicopter tour, some kind of airplane tour, of the state. Can you talk a little bit about the responses that you recall receiving from the people in that particular experience?
As I recall, the response was, I guess, somewhat as you would expect. The response was cool among the growers of tobacco who depended upon it for a living. And this is one case where the organizations, the farm organizations, if you were working through them, you were really going to catch a lot of heat. Not long after I advocated that tax, I spoke to the state Farm Bureau convention, and you could cut the air with a knife when I walked into that building and walked down the aisle to go up to make my talk. There was hostility, almost open hostility. And yet you move into Charlotte and that area where I knew of no resistance to give a talk, there's nothing wrong with this, this is a good way to raise revenue.
And I tried to convince the farm groups at that time that the thing that they had got to be concerned about was not paying a little tax on their product. They had best be concerned about the health issue. Because it was already being talked about, a little bit, in the medical profession. And I said, "That's where your problem's going to come." But they weren't willing to accept that. And they felt betrayed by me, because I had an agricultural background. Although I did not grow tobacco, we did not grow tobacco here, still, I should have known better. They really felt betrayed about that.
So they had a reason to be hostile to me about that, and incidentally,
one of the things I want to put in the book I want to write, after you
write yours, is: Not many times that a decision is cut and dry. But this
is one that was cut and dry, and it was made in the phone booth on the
side of the road in
Well, of course the tobacco industry was very much opposed to that. The people in opposition, the leaders of the legislature who were in opposition to this tobacco tax, shrewdly devised a scheme whereby they reduced the amount of the cigarette tax, tobacco tax, and added a soft drink tax to it. Which would give me the same amount of revenue. But their strategy was that the revenue coming from the soft drinks would kill the proposal. Number one, because that would bring the soft drink industry also into opposition to it. And secondly, my campaign manager was Jimmy Johnson, who was head of the largest Coca-Cola bottling plant in the state and in the Southeast, that was in Charlotte. And he had been my campaign manager. He was a former state senator.
And that strategy very nearly worked. We lobbied the legislature, I had
my people there working on it, and it went to a committee. The
phone—I was making this trip down east, and the word came in
on the highway patrol radio to call the office. Back then we
didn't have mobile phones. So we pull over to the side of the
road at a country service station, and there was a pay booth out there.
And I got in. It was hot in that booth. And it was Ben Hunt, and I
believe, let's see, Tom White, who was my legislative liaison
in the second go-around, second
And I got to thinking about it. My purpose was to get a hundred million dollars, or close to it, for the purpose of starting the public school kindergartens, and I remember thinking about it for maybe half a minute, and I said, "Well, we'll take it." Because the legislative leadership thought that I would turn it down. They said, "He'll never accept that." But then I said, "Let's go for it." And so that's how that decision was made. I would've thought the archives of history ought to put up a historical marker down there, at that public booth by the side of the road, wherever it is.
Another way that you said you kept in touch with the people was through the media, and I wanted you to comment, if you would, on the question of how adequate and fair you felt the media's coverage of your administration was.
I did not have a close working relationship with the media, and at that
time, I thought they were being a little unfair. In retrospect, they
were not, I don't think. They were doing their job. Sure,
they editorial biases were there. But like so many office-holders, I
think I got along pretty well with the reporters and so on, but the
editorial piece of it, I didn't. I didn't take the
time to lobby the editorial staffs, if you
And one of, I guess, my barbs, when I spoke, I think, to the Associated Press Council of some editor's group—I think it was down in Wilmington—and I made the statement that, "I read newspapers every day, I read the two morning dailies, I read an afternoon daily, and I read my local county weekly." And so I said, "I generally read pretty thoroughly. I always read the comics, because I think there's great philosophy in some of them. And I always read the news accounts and so on. I don't pay too much attention to the women's section or the classified ads. But in any event, the last thing I read are the editorials, at night, so I can go to bed with nothing on my mind."
Well, not really. These were editors. And I think a lot of
the—I would have to go back and review them, but again, with
all the tension going on, I had the responsibility, I felt, to try to
keep the lid on and preserve law and order, and I had
On the relationship with the press, what was your general policy as far as access that you would give the media to you? Would you hold news conferences periodically, would you—
Yes, we tried to hold news conferences either once a month or twice a month—I'd have to go back and look at the schedules. And the way I would do that, if a news conference was scheduled, say, at ten o'clock in the morning, at nine o'clock we would have a briefing, me and my staff, and they would sit around and fire questions at me. The idea being, they knew what was likely to be asked. Particularly my two guys that worked that, C. T. West—he's dead now—and David Murray, who's still living in Raleigh. But they mingle with the press and they knew what was on their minds and they knew what was happening in the legislature and out across the state, and they would take the newsmen's perspective and fire questions at me. So that when the actual news conferences began, I was fairly well briefed. It was pretty rare that a question came—
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
—a question that would come out of left field, that I had not been prepared for, that came out of the blue somewhere. As a matter of fact, David Murray sort of kept a running total of that, and he told me, shortly after the end of my term, that 97 percent of the questions that were asked in my news conferences, we had talked about. Which I thought was pretty good.
Also, most news conferences in those days, the governor read off-he had a statement he wanted to make, an announcement he wanted to make, anything like that. I also learned—well, I knew this—that when a question is asked, the longer you talk, the less likely they're going to have a follow-up question. So I'd filibuster. But the news media—the print media, the television media, and the radio—we got on pretty good. One difference now, I think, today, is the turnover of the reporters is much greater than it was then. Some of those fellows had been around capitol hill a long time. They knew where the skeletons were. And they had developed other sources of information. So when they asked you a question, they probably already knew the answer.
A good reporter does, huh? The other side of the media is your use of them to try to get your message out, in a sense, to the public. Did you feel that you had adequate access to the media in order to tell your story, to promote your policies?
Yes, I felt I had adequate access. In fact, I probably didn't
utilize it as well or as effectively as I could have or should have.
Someone who practiced a few more skills
And sometimes I would arrange to have a news conference before or after, particularly if I was promoting something. When I was trying to build up the support to restructure the university system, and all, the tobacco tax, and flying around over the state—these were kind of hurried tours, and it very apparent to everyone what I was trying to do. But the media was—it was a matter of public interest, and they were generally covering it.
I want to move on to talking about your relationship with the legislature and your role as an executive leader, but before I do that, and in order to do that, I wanted to get you, if you would, to identify maybe five of what you thought were the most important issues that you dealt with during your administration. I assume the tobacco tax was one of them, and probably the restructuring of the higher education system in the state. But what would you say were, say, four or five of the most important issues that you dealt with?
Those two that you mentioned, of course, and another was the
reorganization of the executive branch of government, where we went
from, essentially, the commission form of government to a cabinet form
of government. Not much attention is given to that, it didn't
seriously impact programs, as such;
I think we would have to say that, of course, education is outrageously important, and the public school kindergarten—although in my administration, we didn't really get going on it, we had to get that revenue first. And when we found out that I wanted to put it in place—and I said, you know, I did my—this is again where I probably didn't do enough research ahead of time. I was focused on getting the public school kindergarten program going. Well, I found out we weren't ready. The schools of education in the state hadn't turned out kindergarten school teachers. They didn't have them trained. The second thing was that kindergartens require, like any schools, more than just a room; they require different equipment, for little kids. And a different environment, if you will. And so there had to be—and we weren't all that skilled at, not only being ready, but knowing how to get ready. So what we did was put up, I think, five pilot projects, one in each school district around the state. And that's as far as we got with that administration. And in the meantime, the schools of education at the universities were starting cranking out the kindergarten teachers.
So I think even though—that was an issue that we dealt with
which I thought was very important. Another was the environmental laws.
By today's standards, I don't guess, it probably
looks like pablum. But it was sort of breaking new ground, back at that
time. Oh, golly, I don't know. Again, I
Well, let's use those to talk about your relationship with the legislature and your management of the executive branch of government. Generally speaking, how would you describe your attitude towards the legislature? You had been, in a sense, a part of the legislature as the lieutenant governor, though you had said last week that you didn't think of yourself as a member and they made that clear to you. But did you think of the legislature as an equal to the governor, as superior or inferior to the governor? How would you describe your attitude towards—
I think I viewed it as an equal. Being lieutenant governor, I understood the process clearly, and the inner workings of that process, and which buttons needed to be pushed to accomplish your goals and get moving legislation along. Where the power lay in the legislature. So that was immense help to me in understanding it. And having been lieutenant governor and understanding that line between executive and legislative branch, and respecting that line, I always viewed them as an equal.
As a matter of fact, I always thought the legislature was the most equal
of the three branches of government in North Carolina. I've
said that many times. We were taught in the old Civics class, social
studies I believe they call it now, that each branch of government is
equal, checks and balances. But in
Now, on perhaps the other side of that coin, where I viewed the legislature as an equal, and I knew that they could run roughshod over a governor if they chose to do so. During that period of time, there was a camaraderie, if you will—same political parties in power in the executive and the legislative branch. And the governor was expected to provide the leadership. The power did not reside in the president pro tem and the speaker of the house. Well, it was there, but they did not exercise it as they do today. Yes, there were differences of opinion, sometimes strong differences, on individual issues. But overriding that was also the willingness to cooperate, and they would never entertain any thought of bogging the process down, to where you would adjourn, for instance, without a desk, or anything of that sort, as I mentioned above. And there wasn't those differences between the house and the senate of the legislature. They worked together. And I dealt with the legislature as the legislature, not so much as the governor's office with the house and the governor's office with the senate. It was almost just the one entity.
When you dealt with the legislature, did you deal primarily through the leadership, or did you try to establish a more personal relationship with individual members, or how did you go about doing that?
Well, one tried to establish a personal relationship, particularly with
some, but you always respected the leadership.
So that individual comes to talk to the governor about it, make their case. And the governor listens, and he says, "Well, you know, I appreciate that, and I will take it under consideration. By the way, I sure would like to have your help on such and such a bill." And so it's, in some ways, and I know this sounds distasteful to the purists, you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours, and if there's nothing wrong ethically with it or if you don't have any strong feelings about it and they don't have any strong feelings, you know, you'd reach an accommodation. And that's the way our government works. Compromise is the name of the game. You don't get everything you want all the time, nor do they, but you seek accommodation.
And yes, we invite the wives over to the mansion for coffee or tea, or if there's someone you really—I had a legislator came to me, his wife's parents were coming down from New England, and wanted to do something special for them and so forth. So we invited the legislator and his wife and her parents to have lunch. It took a little time and effort, you know, but you try to maintain the friendships, then call on them sometime.
Could you take one of those issues that you thought were important and give me some insight into how you went about developing a policy and securing support for the policy in the legislature? Say, the tobacco tax, or the university restructuring? I know those are two very big and somewhat contentious issues that you dealt with.
I don't know. I think the policy was determined before it ever went to the legislature. That is to say, I didn't talk to legislative leadership and say, "I'm thinking about doing this", for the most part, I didn't. I guess that was not true, though, with the restructuring of the university system, because I knew that would take legislative action and a constitutional amendment. So I think we talked—it wasn't so much about whether to do it or not, as how best to do it.
Now, is this the restructuring of the university, or the restructuring of the executive branch of government?
The restructuring of the university. I don't think that would
ever have happened, I don't think I would ever have been able
to get that accomplished, except that these friends at the university
who opposed that—at the University of Chapel
Well, for example, on the university restructuring, there were a number of different options that were considered, and you had, if I recall correctly, a sort of study commission headed by Lindsay Warren, who came forth with a proposal. I assume the selection of that study commission was an important part of the process of trying to, not only develop a proposal, but develop support for the proposal. Is that fair?
Well, yes. I was hoping, of course, to find a way to bring sort of a consensus on what this new structure needed to look like, and trying to get—through my public appearances and speeches, I talked about the need to do it. And then of course, getting the public's attention, and in effect saying, "Well, yeah, it looks like there ought to be a better way of doing what we're doing now." And then the legislators picked that up from the public, and they want to respond to that on the part of the public, so they're interested enough to talk about it, willing to talk about it, and the question is, how?
And my original thought was that, in the perfect world, and on that
issue, I would have patterned it pretty much after the University of
Georgia's Board of Regents, which was a small
And so, you know, one of the ways you do things, if you don't know what to do, is appoint a study commission. That's why that came. And we tried to put people on there that had the respect of the various interest groups concerned, the universities held them in high respect and the members of the legislature held them in high respect. And they had Senator Kirby of Wilson, also, he was chair of the Senate higher education committee at the time. He was a proponent of doing something to restructure the university system. He also had a lot of respect among the legislators, as well as outside.
So I was hoping that whatever this group came up with, if it was
something I could live with, then it would be a package to be
considered. In that sense, yeah, I knew that I couldn't just
make a frontal assault on the legislature. Although it got down
As I recall, some of these discussions occurred in the regular session of the legislature, but then you and the legislators agreed to wait for a special session later in the summer, or early fall, probably October. Was that because you didn't have the support at the time, or was it just too much for the legislature to deal with in the regular—?
Some of both. It was a lot to deal with. But part of it was a delaying
tactic. The opponents did not want to have a special session, they
simply wanted to put it off till the next regular session. And I would
have been out of office, and I knew that nothing would happen
Now, in between times, of course, I kept lobbying for it, and when we did
have the special session, we had meetings of key legislators over at the
mansion, you know. There was one late-night thing that went on until
after midnight. Bill Friday was there, and
What would you say, of the various issues that you did deal with, were the most difficult issues in terms of getting support from the legislature?
The tobacco tax and the soft drink tax, that's the most
difficult one. Well, I don't know, I guess one could say the
restructuring of the university system. They were both emotional, strong
feelings on both sides. And I had to expend a lot of political capital
to get those through. We almost—and I say
‘we’ and ‘they’, my position
on those was to
And what kept that from happening?
Well, just persistent hard work and pulling out all the stops that you
have. The saying is today, when you have a senator or a house member
that you need to convince to switch their vote, or what they say is
going to be their vote, or to persuade to come with us rather than going
to the other side, you find out what it is they want—of
course they're going to have some things they
want—you find out who they'd listen to. Then you
call your political folks back home, or the governor himself does the
calling, to get legislators' close associates and friends, or
a business person in that community, and say, "Can
Were there any cases, in your relationship with the legislature, where if you had had the veto power, you would have used it?
Yes, I would have vetoed the retirement plans for legislators that they installed for themselves. Not that I disagreed with the retirement plan for the legislators; it was the kind of plan that they had which I felt was far more beneficial to them than the state retirement plan the state teachers and state employees. In other words, it was a better plan. And I didn't think they ought to do that, ought to have a plan for so much, so I would have vetoed that.
And this was still back in the days when there was a part-time legislature. I just wasn't quite sure that that was, that they needed a retirement fund. Because once you get into that, you know, there's some other duties that you want to give the legislature, you've invested in their time.
Is there any possibility that you could not become involved in that because that was seen as a legislative issue and you were not a member of the legislature? Was it sort of a forbidden area for you to try to influence?
I didn't try to stop it, but I would have vetoed it on that basis. Another thing I probably would have vetoed was a relatively small thing in retrospect, but at the time it irritated me. We had reorganized the executive branch of government and created a cabinet, and I had, as one of the cabinet positions was the department of local government affairs. And the idea was, we would take from the other agencies of government and put all the dealings with local government in that agency in that one agency, a sort of one-stop shopping for local officials and so forth.
Well, that stayed in effect for two years, and then Representative Robert Jernigan of Ahoskie moved to abolish that, for reasons that I don't know to this day. For some reason, he couldn't get the service out of it that he wanted to, and so he had that department abolished, after it was set up for two years. I probably would have vetoed that. That's the only two I can think of right now. There may have been a few others. But I respect the will of the legislature, and it would have to be something that I felt was important before I would do that.
As an executive official, as the chief executive official of the state, did you conclude your relationship with the legislature believing that the legislature was too powerful?
No, I wouldn't say that I felt they were too powerful,
although I was beginning to get a sense—and the legislature
was moving that way—that they were exercising more and more
power than they had historically. They were acting more and more like
the Congress of the United States, and distancing themselves from
So I could sense that they were moving that direction, and it was inevitable. The legislative sessions were getting longer and longer, they were more prone to come back for certain things, and I just felt like they were moving in that direction. I didn't particularly like it, but I also accepted it.
Did you have any thought, during your service as governor, to try to improve the power of the governor with either the veto power or the right of succession?
Well, I thought about it, but I realized it was not doable, so I
didn't extend any capital on that. In fact, I was surprised
when Governor Hunt got it done, because I just felt like the
legislature's not going to give up that much power to the
governor. But I'm glad that the legislature would, except the
state itself is changing, people coming in from other states, you know,
and we were coming more and more out of isolation, if you will.
I've often said, tongue in cheek, that one of the biggest
mistakes in the whole scheme of government in the United States was when
they started having the National Legislative Conference. The legislators
would go, and they'd find out what
But on the governorship, they would have found that they were the exception. I mean on the veto, excuse me.
That's right. When I addressed the legislature at the end of my term, we had a budget surplus, and I recommended that we give a small tax reduction, and something else, I've forgotten, but the legislative leadership at that time said, No, sir. But I was going to be out of office, I wasn't going to be there to defend it. You see, the outgoing governor proposes the budget, and I had that in there. I wasn't in office to defend that concept, so wasn't any point in getting exercised about it.
Let's turn to your leadership of the executive branch of government. What do you think makes it possible for a governor to be effective as a leader?
A governor has to pull people around and have the ability to be an
administrator. And I'm thinking now primarily of cabinet
posts. And he also has to have a staff that he has confidence in and
that can produce. It's true that the governor, or the
president of a country, the people that get him or her elected to the
office are not necessarily the ones that help to have as his close
aides. Now, I don't know of any that do not do that, and I
understand why—you know these people, you know their
strengths and weaknesses, you're comfortable with them, they
know you, they know your agenda, and you know they're loyal.
And so you stay with them, whether they have the skills or not. You
And for the most part I think that's true, but not necessarily true. And your campaign manager may or may not wind up on your staff. The point is, you got to have people around you that you don't have to be looking over your shoulder about, see whether or not they're really following you. You also have to have people around you who are not going to further their own personal agenda by virtue of the fact that they're on the governor's staff. You don't want people who are going to be going around getting things done and says, "The governor says he wants this done," when the governor doesn't know a thing about it. That's where you need a good chief of staff, a good strong chief of staff. They don't like to call them that, but that's what they are. In my case, it was Ben Rooney; I didn't have to worry about him at all, and he made damn sure that that staff didn't get out of bounds in any way.
In terms of the leadership of the administration, again, we generally
appointed, I did, people that I knew—they may or may not have
been active in the administration. But when I first went in, of course,
we didn't have the cabinet form of government. We just had a
huge number of boards and commissions. That was one of the reasons that
we did need to seek the reorganization of the executive branch of
government, is that I was appointing people that I'd never
heard of to boards and commissions I didn't know existed. And
thus there was no accountability. Some of those boards and commissions
didn't want
And on more than one occasion, staff people would say, "Governor, you got to make some appointments to the whatever board"—this is not a good example, but the Board of Cosmetic Arts, which controls the beauticians' licenses. And I would look at that, and I would say, "What is this?", they'd say, "Well, that's the Board of Cosmetic Arts, we've got three appointments to make off of that, and here's who's being suggested." And you know, you take ability, or you say, "Well, this lady lived in my community, I believe I'm going to do something for her, and I believe I'll put her on there, instead of this one." And there was no accountability. I couldn't be standing taking the Board of Cosmetic Arts, or whatever it might be, or the Parole Board, or the Board of Probation. So there were a huge number of lines, if you put in on a chart—and you've seen those charts—going to the other points.
So the idea, really, with putting in the cabinet form of government, was
the accountability issue. The idea wasn't going to save any
money, although we sort of promoted that idea, but actually what
you're doing is putting in another layer of government. But,
on the other hand, the governor could look that cabinet officer in the
eye and hold that cabinet officer responsible. Which in turn, on down
the line, would hold the board of whoever's running the
probation commission accountable. So it was more of a hierarchical form
of government. And it worked much better for me, and I think it works
much better today
And then of course the governor has—and this is another thing about the expectations of people out there, they think the governor is the Ayatolla of everything, but he's of course not responsible for the Department of Agriculture or Labor or the Auditor, all of those, even though many people out across the state think he can run that too. So the governor has to be sensitive to the role or responsibility, obligations of these elected Council of State members. I'll never forget, I ran afoul one time—I think maybe I told you this—when I was preparing my State of the State message to give to the legislature, and one of the things I wanted to do was to advocate an increase in the minimum wage law. Well, I had not thought about that, that was the Department of Labor. Frank Crane was the Commissioner of Labor at that time. And when I went to the legislature with my State of the State message, and advocated increased minimum wage, he just nearly went ballistic, and he said, "That's the only thing that I have that I can run on as an issue, and you've taken it away from me." All I could do was apologize.
By and large, did you have much influence over what happens in those departments that are headed by people who are popularly elected?
No. Very little. At least, I didn't try to exercise any. I
know that the commissioner of agriculture, Jim Graham, got real upset
with my predecessor in office, Governor Dan Moore, because Governor
Moore appointed, brought on his staff, Wayne
In formulating the budget, which you as governor had the responsibility for doing, would you pretty much accept the requests that came from those departments?
Yes, I didn't sit down with a red pencil and look at that much. As a part of that, you know, it was kind of a thing: "I'll put you in my budget, but if you want if you got to get over there and work for it yourself, you know. It's fine with me if you get it."
So you wouldn't expend any political capital on that either.
No, no. Unless—sometimes you know, if it was something that was extremely important to them and the citizens of the state would come to me and ask for my active support, I can't tell you case right now but it might have been new equipment—
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
You said selection of personnel was an important part of being an effective chief executive, and I wanted you to talk, if you would, a little bit about how you went about identifying people to serve in your administration, what criteria you used to make those choices, and why you think that's such an important part of being an effective legislator.
I think now it's more important than I thought then. I guess I knew that, but I realize now how very important it is. And I'm afraid I must confess that I didn't have any particular criteria or checklist. We didn't bother to investigate the backgrounds of people back in those days. They may have had skeletons in their closets. I think, first of all, that I feel that they're capable of doing the job for which they were being considered; secondly, were they people that I felt would be loyal to my agenda, my program. Usually, they were people that I knew—may not have known personally or socially, but I knew them. And third, were they politically correct? Fourth, fifth, whatever that was. Back then it was pretty rare to appoint someone from the other political party. It was a combination of those things.
In my own particular office operation, I had a person, whose name was
Wiley Earp, who was on my staff, served as my driver during the
campaign, and he wound up being the person who was in charge of
appointments to boards and commissions. Now, he didn't make
the decisions, but he had this big thick book of every post in the
government that had to be filled by the governor. And he would also have
all these requests from political friends,
But sometimes during that entry period—as a matter of fact I
did this, after the general election in November, I took a few
days' break. I took my campaign staff—Wiley Earp,
Ben Rooney, and I think Weldon Denny maybe, I'm not sure
whether Weldon was in on that or not. Anyway, we went down to Morehead
City, and there's a
When you identified people to be in major positions, like, say, secretary of the department of administration, which was in existence at that time, are major positions of a policy and substantive nature on your personal staff, did you have much difficulty getting people to serve in positions in the executive branch of government?
No, not really. Now, again, we didn't have all those cabinet posts, and what I did on the policy load, I got a lot of people doing policy, working, and I went out to NC State University to some of the people out there to do some work on environmental legislation I was interested in, and sort of worked that. Now, people who wind up on the highway commission, even as it is today, they were generally strong political supporters out there, these were people who generally had charge of several counties in my political campaign and raised money.
As you know, as we speak, Governor Hunt is dealing with the very issue
that you just mentioned, in terms of the composition of
what's now called the board of transportation, and there are
questions raised about how those people are selected
No, it was not. That was the way they did business then, if you will. Now, what you always hope for is that the people you put in these positions, even though they may have been active in your campaign, raised money or got votes for you or whatever, that when they get in, they're going to be people of personal integrity and will not use the position they have for their personal b