A Democratic loss convinces Sanford to run a positive campaign
Sanford traces the impacts of former governor and Democrat James B. Hunt's loss to Republican Jesse Helms in the 1984 senatorial elections in this excerpt. The loss influenced his own decision to run for Senate in 1986, especially his relationship with his campaign advisers. He disagreed with Hunt's advisers' strategy of attacking Helms rather than emphasizing Hunt's record as governor, and in his own campaign against Jim Broyhill he tried to stay positive.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Terry Sanford, December 16 and 18, 1986. Interview C-0038. 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
- BRENT GLASS:
-
The first question I had was, "In your mind what was, did the
election in '84 have any influence on your thinking and how
you prepared for both the primary and the general
election?"
- TERRY SANFORD:
-
Well, I think if the '84 election had been successful, I
probably would have had less problems if indeed I had ended up being the
candidate. I might also have had less incentive for running and would
have ended up having somebody else to support. Certainly the Party would
not have been in a divided condition. Certainly the danger of continuing
division would not have been as deadly a threat as it turned out that it
was. So the very fact that we lost that election had a fundamental
effect on my campaign, or whether or not, indeed, there really would
have been a campaign. I suppose that I didn't think about
running until sometime after that campaign. That would have been in the
fall of '84. So the spring of '85 as I was leaving
Duke, certainly was the first time that it began to cross my mind that
it might be something that I might want to try to do, maybe.
- BRENT GLASS:
-
Not only the outcome but the conduct of the campaign, did that have an
influence on you? Thinking, to run, not to run, or how you
would conduct your campaign?
- TERRY SANFORD:
-
I hadn't any question about how I would run the campaign. I
had had some difference of opinion with the managers of the Hunt
campaign. When I would talk to Jim Hunt about it, he certainly seemed to
be inclined to be in agreement with me but stymied by the fact that all
of this expert advice and these pollsters and
people that are supposed to know were telling him that he had to do it a
different way. I suppose he would now be the first to say, as he later
advised me, "Don't let those people, that is
experts, run your campaign." Well, I learned that but I think
that I already knew it.
- BRENT GLASS:
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What kind of advice would they give you?
- TERRY SANFORD:
-
I never had operated with that kind of a battery of experts but I had
pretty well made up my mind from having seen them in several campaigns.
You just didn't do that when I ran for governor. You had an
advertising agency. We had a pollster. We put it together, and we made
the decision of what kind of a campaign to conduct and how to develop
the issues. I felt the candidate always has ultimately to do that. Now,
I don't think the candidate runs his own campaign because he
can't. I think he has to call the shots and set the style and
certainly decide how it's going to be run, especially in
terms of issues. So I had observed all of that, and I don't
know that had I observed it or not that I would have run any different
campaign. Obviously, I, having been through
that—the people of the state having been through
it made it all the more imperative that I run the kind of campaign that
I did. At least I thought so, and I suppose, coming out the way it did,
I have to conclude I must have been not wrong. Maybe
they…
- BRENT GLASS:
-
Well, what would be the contrast?
- TERRY SANFORD:
-
Well, the contrast of course was that they constantly went after Helms.
That was the advice he was getting—absolutely
contrary to the advice that I wanted them to
take— but that they had to
go after him. I felt they needed to build up Hunt's own
spendid record as Governor, that they emphasize that and ignore to a
considerable extent Helms. Now I don't mean ignore him
totally. I think some of my people during the summer misunderstood my
concept. I didn't think you ought to totally ignore them. You
couldn't. Neither could you let them dominate your campaign
and set the style of the total campaign, and set the agenda of issues. I
think anytime you can seize the initiative, you're better
off. So they were responding in kind. I was determined that we would not
respond in kind, and we didn't. I don't mean to
rehash the campaign but the negative elements of the campaign in my
judgment, in my biased view, were all on the Broyhill side. I
don't think we did anything that could be called negative. We
didn't fail to run some comparative ads. We didn't
attempt to take a little piece of his record and twist it, or at least I
hope not. We certainly weren't responding in kind and
weren't letting him set the agenda. Again, I hope
that's true. I'm fully cognizant of the tendency
to overlook your own flaws and not the opponents.