I don't see it going too many places, yet. He's proposed a new roads plan
and we'll see how it works out. Let me just go back to square one and
Page 10 kind of watch out about him. I don't know if it
would have been much different with Skipper. OK, obviously Skipper has
some stuff in education that he would have liked to have done that
Holshouser is certainly not going to do, whether Craig Phillips can do
it or not is another thing. It is obvious that Skipper would have
allowed Craig Phillips to do it, or would have sought the authority of
Craig Phillips to do it. And he, Skipper may not have wanted everything
that he wanted to, but he would have made the effort and the issue would
have come out in the public discussion much more forcefully. These folks
here in the editorial department would have still fought it, but I think
Skipper would have accomplished some of it if not all of it. There was a
lot of money last time, well, there still is a lot. The legislature was
in the mood to spend a lot of money for education, as they proved, but
if the Democrat would have been elected you would have seen the spending
on a different priority scale within the education budget.
I think if a Democrat would have been elected you obviously wouldn't had
the political, the seeming political turmoil that at least appears to be
enveloped [unclear]. I think a lot of the
fights would have been on the issues themselves as opposed to on whether
he's a Republican, of course, and all that kind of stuff. I think Bowles
would have given a different tone to the government under Bowles, but I
don't think it would have been the same tone as Bob Scott, but it would
have been different from what Holshouser has made it.
Now Holshouser—in my columns and everything I have probably
been fairly kind to him from this perspective—if you are going to have a
Republican, you might as well have one like him. I sense a sort of
tension within the Republican Party of the state. Nobody admits to it,
but it is sort of a tension between the bedrock
Page 11
Republicans—Holshouser from the mountains, you know, came up
through his father was a Republican and his grandfather was, I suppose;
and his grandfather before that. So you have that sort of old-time
traditional Republican. Then you've got the suburban Republicans who
split between the two camps that I'm getting ready to describe. And then
you've got the disenchanted Democrat types that Frank Rouse talked
about, Frank Rouse particularly wanted to attract to the party. I think
the suburbanites sometimes split between these two camps. There is some
suburbanites, you know, Frank Rouse types and some suburbanites do
themselves more of the traditional public types, many of them have moved
here from the North, I don't know how many numbers. Anyway, I sort of
sense a tension within the party over whether the party is going to be a
party of Democrats who don't like what the Democratic Party has to offer
and who have come to the Republican Party because they feel the
Republican Party is more in line with their . . . frankly, I think they
come from the Republican Party because they feel the Republican Party
will maintain the social status quo as opposed to a political status
quo.
Holshouser, on the other hand, the way he has acted, leads me to believe
that he sees the way to build a party is by running a fairly decent
state government, one that keeps things in order, that doesn't cause a
lot of trouble, that keeps away from as much scandal as it can, that
dispenses the goodies around, mental health gets its share, parks gets
its share, ports gets its share, teachers get their share. You know he
sort of runs a fairly clean ship, he gets business folks together and
they run an efficiency study, and he is out there for efficiency, and he
will put into effect some of the things that are in the report. He'll be
very honest
Page 12 about supporting the Board of Governors
in a fight even though it might lose him a lot of supporters, he's in
favor of that type of government organization. Good government, have a
board, set the priorities, and all of that.
Frank Rouse would ask, "Who else can we get party leader to build up the
party from? If its not getting Democrats to switch over." He might be
right, but there is a way of approaching that quest as I see as
different, so on the one hand you've got Jesse Helms's approach, though
I don't think Jesse is really interested in building a party and all of
that very much. He's the theology type and really not all involved in
party affairs. And you've got the Holshouser type proven so the people
of the Helms wing, let's say . . .