Pearce Explores Life of Jim Hunt, Classic Overachiever

• Gary Pearce, Jim Hunt: A Biography, Winston-Salem: John F. Blair, 2010, 316 pages, $23.95.

My father worked in North Carolina state government in the 1970s, so I was dragged to more than a few government functions as a kid. At one such function I was surprised to see none other than the lieutenant governor working the room.

“How are you, good friend?” Jim Hunt asked as he clutched my father’s hand. Even as a kid I had doubts about the lieutenant governor’s sincerity.

That memory was sparked 30 years later as I read Gary Pearce’s excellent biography of Hunt. Jim Hunt: A Biography explores the many contradictions surrounding arguably the state’s most masterful politician.

“As lieutenant governor, just as he was when he was in college, Hunt had an air of youthful seriousness,” Pearce writes. “The capital press corps routinely made fun of him. He had an exuberant way of greeting people that struck some as insincere. He called nearly everyone ‘good buddy.’”

OK, not the same as “good friend,” but surely a politician as astute as Hunt switched it up a bit. Still, Pearce makes the case that no matter what you might think of Hunt, his status cannot be denied.

“Dozens, hundreds thousands of people brought about the changes that swept the state,” Pearce writes. “But it was Hunt who held statewide office as governor and four as lieutenant governor. It was Hunt who was the dominant political leader of his time, who dramatically expanded the powers of the governor’s office. And it was Hunt who –through the vigorous exercise of those powers, through sheer longevity in office, and through his personal force and persuasiveness — set a new course for his state.”

But Hunt always had an image problem. Longtime Jesse Helms adviser Carter Wrenn said, as he prepared for his first meeting with Hunt, he expected a “milquetoast,” but instead was surprised not only by Hunt’s athletic build but his intense preparation before the series of debates during the infamous 1984 Senate campaign.

Pearce indeed shows there is much more substance behind the career politician most North Carolinians know. A classic overachiever, Hunt was student body president in high school and played quarterback on the football team, joining the marching band at halftime and playing trumpet while in shoulder pads.

Following graduation from N.C. State University, law school at UNC-Chapel Hill, and a two-year stint in Nepal as an agricultural adviser, Hunt practiced law in Wilson for a few years. But his political ambition — honed by his involvement in the state Young Democrats clubs —simply was too strong. Incumbent legislators from Wilson had no intention of stepping aside for a young challenger, so Hunt looked at pursuing statewide office.

When lieutenant governor was made a full-time position in 1970, Hunt went for it, winning by a wide margin in 1972, despite a nationwide conservative landslide that would sweep into office North Carolina’s first Republican governor in the century — Jim Holshouser — and the first Republican senator in the century — Jesse Helms.

After eight years as governor — Hunt would push through gubernatorial succession and then survive another conservative landslide in 1980 — he “spoiled for a fight” with Helms in 1984.

In retrospect, perhaps Hunt should have waited until 1986, when he could take on the obscure East Carolina University professor John East. Had Hunt waited, odds are strong he would have made the Senate; East would commit suicide while still in office, opening the door for Terry Sanford to take on and defeat Republican Gov. Jim Martin’s appointee, furniture executive and U.S. Rep. Jim Broyhill.

Anyone who followed the ’84 Senate race knows it was classic political theater — Old South vs. New South. Pearce, who worked for Hunt’s Senate campaign, recalls the division among advisers whether or not to play Helms’ game of rapid-fire negative advertising. Two then-unknown political advisers — Dick Morris and James Carville — were consulted.

The race peaked over the July 4 weekend when the obscure Chatham County newspaper the Landmark published a story saying Hunt had a “sissy-boy lover” while in college.

Pearce writes that while “(n)o sane person believed Hunt was gay… no reporter or editor in the state ignored the charge either.”

But when the Hunt team finally decided to play Helms’ game, it overreached with the infamous ad linking Helms to right-wing El Salvador politician Roberto D’Aubisson that showed graphic images of Salvadorans murdered by death squads.

The ad backfired.

“From the day we ran the ad to the end of the campaign, our attacks and Helms’ were viewed as essentially equivalent. The ad let Helms act the injured party,” Pearce writes.

After that bitter defeat, when Hunt acknowledged that he “had failed to show North Carolina voters who he truly was,” he gradually picked up the pieces. He joined a Raleigh law firm, made some money, got to know business leaders — and decided to run for governor again.

Hunt again was elected governor in 1992. And after years of working, reading, and learning, he was determined to improve upon his previous eight years as governor.

For four of those eight years, Hunt had to contend with something no other governor in the 20th century faced — a Republican House of Representatives. Hunt could have defended a liberal agenda, but instead he veered to the right, surprising legislators with a larger tax cut than even they had proposed.

It was also during this time that Hunt launched his Smart Start initiative, providing state funding to local agencies for preschool programs. This helped him gain the title “education governor.”

The ultimate question — which Pearce poses at the beginning of the book — was whether Hunt ever could have claimed the ultimate prize — the presidency.

“If Hunt had beaten Helms, he might have become president,” Pearce writes. “Hunt, not Bill Clinton, might have been the moderate Southerner elected to the White House.”

As we learned in 2008, anything’s possible in politics. But given the image problem Hunt suffered among North Carolinians during the Helms campaign, it’s hard to imagine he would have been able to capture the imagination of voters nationwide.