New questions about fundraising arose with the advent of television campaign ads
The proliferation of television ads since 1960 has altered the face of political campaigning. Candidates had to develop new ways to raise funds, and they had to address ethical questions in receiving money from campaign contributors.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Terry Sanford, [date unknown]. Interview A-0140. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- TERRY SANFORD:
-
I think . . . I don't really think since Scott's time that . . . that
that vague group has been very conclusively influential. Robert Hanes
was head of Wachovia. He was the focal point of that establishment, that
is an establishment. He was the biggest banker. He was the most
political banker. He was the most skillful fund raiser, in or out of
banking. He could put together a sizeable sum of money and make that
available to the candidate of their choice. Obviously not just his
choice. And as . . . certainly up until 1960, the pattern of campaigning
was that he got that big sum of money and he sent a few thousand dollars
to every county. Of course, you didn't have television then. And that
helped control it, that influenced the local politicians. It supplied
the money. Scott couldn't get that kind of money, and on a very modest
budget won anyhow. In 1960 we changed the pattern of fund raising in
this state by giving the quota to the county to send us money. And it
worked extremely well. And so that in itself . . . campaign money had a
lot to do with diminishing the influence of such a group. And, by and
large, that's not an extreme conservative group anyhow. There's . . .
the conservatives may be all in that group, but all the people in the
group aren't conservatives. So you could see in the primary election
Charlie Cannon supporting me, and at the same time Millard Barbee, who
then was head of the AF of L-CIO, supporting me. The . . . a great many
of the tobacco people, Charlie Wade in particular, supported me. Now,
the rest of Reynolds didn't support me because I would not make a pledge
on the tobacco tax. The only thing I promised them was before I
recommended it I would give them a chance to argue me out of it. But I
wouldn't pledge not to propose it if I thought the
state needed it. The textile people . . . Spencer Love supported me. The
bankers almost all supported me, for reasons that I don't particularly
know except personal friendships. Carl McGraw, the head of the First
Union bank then, was my chief fund raiser in Mecklenburg County. Mr.
Jones, the old Edwin Jones, Senior, was my campaign manager in
Mecklenburg County, the head of the First Citizens Bank was for me. I
didn't have a whole lot of Wachovia support, but not strong opposition.
I didn't have a whole lot of what then . . . what now is North Carolina
National Bank support in Charlotte. That was because I had First Union
support, had nothing to do with anything else. The banks were more
concerned about not cooperating than cooperating. I'm not sure I proved
anything by that, though. Not a lot.