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Excerpt from Oral History Interview with Terry Sanford, [date unknown]. Interview A-0140. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) See Entire Interview >>

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.