I didn't do it as well as Bert Bennett put together a team for Jim Hunt
this time, because we didn't know as much as we know now. I had been
gathering friends from around the state for a long period of time, not
necessarily with any political purposes, but simply in various
organizations and then when after the war, I pretty firmly determined
that I would run, I began to try to keep an account of them in a more
orderly way. So, the idea was, to some extent going back to our
experience campaigning in Chapel Hill where we attempted to get a key
person in each dormitory and then two or three key people around town.
We called them that, "keys." I didn't get too heavily involved in
politics at Chapel Hill but I was probably more engaged than the average
student. So, in Scott's campaign, I attempted to develop that kind of a
key, using primarily his people from the time when he was in the
governor's office, but realizing also that one of the reasons he got me
in the campaign was to bring in some younger and additional people that
he hadn't been able to reach. So, again we used a key system of a
dozen
Page 2 or so people who helped us in each county.
But obviously, we couldn't count on them to get the people in each
county, we had to get them, too. So, I would guess that my friends
county by county, where we wanted a good organization in each county,
were spreading out there into precincts. Theoretically, you would like
to have a little committee in every precinct and in large precincts, you
would like to have larger committees. So, my friends who helped in a
campaign came from a number of sources. Basically, friends who were
classmates or close-by classmates at Chapel Hill. Now, not all of them
were for me. I can think of two or three notable exceptions that very
much weren't for me, but most of them were for me. So, that would . . .
for example, meaning Henry and Marie Colton in Buncombe County and then
Bruce Elmore in Buncombe County would fall into a different category. He
had been more active in politics whereas the Coltons had not at that
time, but I had been in school with both of them. Bruce Elmore was more
politically active and I had known him as a Young Democrat. I just use
those two for example. In Charlotte, Paul Yountz, Colonel, later General
Yountz, very active in the American Legion and that's where I knew him.
He is a most powerful politician in Mecklenburg County and was largely
responsible for my putting a very effective team together. Another
person there was Senator Spencer Bell. Senator Spencer Bell had been one
of the leaders of the North Carolina Bar and I got to know him when I
supported the early efforts to reform the judicial system and I was
active in that and he became interested in me and so when I started
campaigning, he helped put together his part of the organization. He
happened to also be an ally of Colonel Yountz. But out of the American
Legion, out of such activities in the Bar, out of old school friends,
out of Young Democrats that I have
Page 3 mentioned . . .
now, in addition to that, I had been active in the National Guard and
the National Guard is not a political organization but it contains to
many people who have an active interest in politics. The general at that
time, Claude Bowers, became my campaign manager in his county, just for
example. In Wilmington, Colonel Hall, who had been a battalion commander
in the North Carolina National Guard became one of my key people there.
Sy Hall became my county manager in New Hanover County and he was a
classmate of mine at Chapel Hill and law school as well as elsewhere. I
had a number of people whom I had gotten to know because they were
lawyers. I mentioned Spencer Bell because of a particular project, but
there would be others who came to be friends just out of maybe
practicing law occasionally. So, there might be several dozen of those
around the state. Then, I was very active in the Jaycees. While I don't
think the Jaycee organization is too good as a political base and it's
not supposed to be, a great many of the leaders in the Jaycees aren't
very good at politics, but I can think of a number of places where I
picked up a supporter because of my association in the Junior Chamber of
Commerce around the state. Then, I ran for president of the Young
Democrats and I had all those connections. Now, take all of those
people, many of whom I knew or had in the card index prior to Scott's
campaign, then superimpose on that, or the other way around, the Scott
organization, what he called "The Branch Head Boys." They were people,
by and large, that I would not have been involved with. They were people
that I might have had some difficulty in reaching. They particularly
were valuable to have on my side when racism became a big thing in the
campaign, because they were out in the rural areas where they, by being
for me, would
Page 4 dispel a great many of those fears.
Then, you've got to remember that I was in the legislature and while
fellow legislators aren't very good in campaigning for you because
they've got their own local races, still I can think of some notable
exceptions where former legislators came very strongly to my support.
So, just over a period of years, you accumulated a great many people and
then putting them together in an organization that is political is
another matter, but the hard thing is not that. The hard thing is
acquiring them in the first place. You don't that accidentally and you
don't really do it by design, because I don't think that I could have at
all set out to have made those people friends purely for political
reasons. I just made them friends over a period of time and then when I
did decide finally to get into politics, so many of them joined with
me.