Rouse's outstanding job as chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party
Hawke describes Frank Rouse as the best chairman of the North Carolina Republican party in recent years. Hawke explains how Rouse gave total commitment to the Republican Party, ultimately to the detriment of his business career. Ultimately, his dedication and his innovative use of television for campaign purposes was instrumental in organizing the party in North Carolina during the early 1970s.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Jack Hawke, June 7, 1990. Interview C-0087. 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
- JONATHAN HOUGHTON:
-
Some of the stories you were talking about, some of the precinct building
techniques, he used television cameras and canvasing.
- JACK HAWKE:
-
No, I'm sorry, that was Frank Rouse.
- JONATHAN HOUGHTON:
-
Oh, that was Frank Rouse?
- JACK HAWKE:
-
That was Frank Rouse in the early '70s. Frank was probably our
first really full-time state chairman. He just took a leave of absence
from his business, and Frank's motto was total commitment,
and he gave it total commitment to the extent that he ended up with his
business going bankrupt and having some real personal, even eventually
personally declared bankruptcy. But he was a total commitment to the
party when he was chairman. He started the first real staff at a state
headquarters. He put in a T.V. room where he had a camera, and
he'd bring candidates in and let them practice and train and
do films for them. In those days, you could get away with having your
own camera and doing a news statement and sending it to the T.V.
stations and they'd use it. Today, you can't get
away with that. That ended in the early '70s. In the
'60s we used to do that too. So that way you could say what
you wanted to and send it to the news department and it would get on the
air unedited the way you wanted to say. Frank did things like that. He
probably started our first state newspaper that went statewide. He was
very strong in organization. Frank's weakness as chairman was
that he had foot and mouth disease, and he often said things that got
him into a lot of trouble. In the middle of his term as chairman there
was our first real primary for governor with Holshouser and Gardner,
and it was in the run-off, I guess, Frank stepped
down as chairman to endorse Gardner, and then, of course, Holshouser won
and determined that he was going to get rid of Frank Rouse. So we had
one of the most bitter conventions I can remember that year when Tom
Bennett ran against Frank Rouse. But Frank was an innovator. He was
probably the best state chairman that I've seen that
we've had in all these years, and I didn't know
Bill Cobb. So if you exclude Bill Cobb, Frank was, at least in my
opinion, probably the best we've had in the last twenty-five
years.