Well, Sam Poole, whom I've already mentioned was the campaign manager and
did a spendid job. The campaign manager is in charge of everything. He's
in charge of picking the television consultant. He's in charge of
picking the pollster. He's in charge of picking the staff. He's in
charge of getting the counties organized. He's in charge of getting up
the money. He's in charge of everything. He's in charge of dealing with
the press. Well, obviously, one person can't do it all. Obviously, he
consults with the candidate on all those things. You have to let a
campaign manager make those decisions if you are going to hold him
responsible. Now, they certainly told me what they had in mind for the
television and the pollster. I could have said, "Don't do that." But
even if I had said don't do that, go somewhere else, when they went
somewhere else, it would be their decision. Those people who are
responsive to him, they didn't
Page 43 think they could
by-pass him to me cause I didn't hire them. So Sam Poole was the
manager, and he held all that together, as you must, loosely in a
campaign. You don't have time to tighten everything down. When I ran for
governor, I had about five or six highly competent people. I had Bert
Bennett doing what Sam was doing. I had Henry Hall Wilson, a very
competent lawyer who later became administrative assistant to both
Kennedy and Johnson, working in there. I had Joel Fleishman working in
there. I had Tom Lambeth working in there. I had Hugh Cannon working in
there. All of them doing what Sam was doing in my campaign. So we had to
get him some help. We did have Paul Vick on pretty much a full-time
basis though he was still doing some other things. He was an adviser and
a consultant who dealt with the television people and took in all the
money and was the controller. That is, more important than taking it in,
he spent it—saw to it that it was conserved, very tight management, and
also his political advice. He was, for the primary in the summer, Sam's
number one consultant—not totally, formally in the campaign—but he was
too, he was the controller. He dealt with the television people. They
pretty much took the advice of those, followed the instructions of those
two. But again, looking for somebody to take the part of all these other
folks about August I got, Sam got, Bill Green who is vice-president of
University Relations at Duke, a highly regarded journalist, to take
leave and come to the campaign full-time to work with the issues, with
PR, with editors. That made a tremendous difference. It gave Sam some
mature support. It gave Paul Vick
Page 44 mature
collaboration. It made a tremendous difference. I also brought Martha
McKay in to put her hand on fund raising mostly, fund raising out of the
state, but generally fund raising as well as issues and using her
political judgment. At least we got her involved in the campaign. We
didn't have the same worry about raising money that we'd had in '60
because we then just sort of raised it as we could. We had three or four
people that were finance chairmen but we needed much less money then. So
we had John Bennett, who had worked full-time in Hunt's campaign,
working full-time in our campaign after the primary. We needed to be
available and to follow up, at least we had somebody doing that. Then I
could spend less time on fund raising than Hunt had spent on fund
raising. That was a distinct advantage. We went into the wrap-up really
with that leadership. Now we had some good people in there, Angie
Elkins, a good person on the telephone and knows people everywhere, very
efficient. We had Bill Bost to come in—Sam Poole's law partner.
We just decimated that law firm to put together our get out the vote. We
had some other good people working, very good people but we had a fairly
lean staff at the top. Really, you'd have to say Paul, and Bill Green,
and Sam Poole were running the campaign.