State and national candidates do not coordinate messages
Holshouser, Jesse Helms, and Richard Nixon were all seeking office in 1972, and Holshouser and Helms intertwined their campaigns as much as possible with that of Nixon, but the campaigns did not coordinate their messages, Holshouser explains. His focus was on ensuring that certain voter blocs made it to the polls and to win over Democrats wary of voting for a Republican.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with James E. Holshouser Jr., January 31, 1998. Interview C-0328-1. 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
- JACK FLEER:
-
When you devised this coordinated campaign or at least working together
with the presidential and US Senatorial campaigns, what kind of message
were you as a candidate or the Republican party trying to put across?
What do you think were your major appeals?
- JAMES E. HOLSHOUSER, JR.:
-
Well let me simply say that the coordination of those three campaigns
didn't have anything to do with what the president was going
to be saying, or what Jesse was going to be saying, or what I was going
to be saying. The candidates out on the stump were still doing their
things? This was just coordinating to make sure that the field men were
getting, were making sure that rallies that had to be done here were
well prepared, that the candidates got in to the right number of
counties and the right number of times and that again, looking at those
numbers, where the votes had to come. That is a little bit tricky
because Jesse's votes were going to come slightly different
than mine. He had to carry some large Piedmont counties. But he was
counting on a lot more votes east of Raleigh than I was because those
history books just didn't lie about what kind of votes you
could expect. We were counting on sizeble number of votes going down US
70 corridor from Raleigh to Morehead City, counting on the coastal thing
around Wilmington and Brunswick counties and then here and there we had
spots. But I knew if I was going to win it had to be mostly from Raleigh
West building up the majority to overcome what we knew would be a
minority vote overall east of Raleigh. Our people east of Raleigh just
had to do their very best to minimize that shortfall we would have.
- JACK FLEER:
-
So you did not try to coordinate appeals or messages in the
candidates' talks. Just looking at your own appeal, what were
you trying to do, what were you saying that you thought would bring
voters to your side?
- JAMES E. HOLSHOUSER, JR.:
-
You know it is sort of funny. Sometimes your recollection will play
tricks on you because you always remember the things you want to
remember I guess. I think, I think we, maybe without thinking about it,
talked about things in such a way that people knew that if I got elected
that the world wouldn't come to an end or state government
wouldn't be turned upside down by incompetence or radicalism.
But they didn't know what it would be like, but we wanted
them to feel comfortable with their votes, and we wanted them to feel
like it was time for a change. That the Democrats had been in too long.
No matter what any particular Democrat candidate might be like, he was
still ham strong by the fact that the whole structure of the state
Democratic party and the state government were so intertwined that it
would be hard to untangle for a Democrat. And in a sense, it was really
saying elect me because I am a Republican.
- JACK FLEER:
-
Now you said that you wanted to make them comfortable with you and that
you wanted to convince them if possible, that it was time for a change.
And yet presumably Republican candidates prior to you may well have used
a similar kind of appeal and no Republican candidate had ever been
successful in the century prior to that time. What made you think that
that was going to work this time?
- JAMES E. HOLSHOUSER, JR.:
-
Well all you can do is give it your best shot you know and hope that it
works. If I had to do it over again even knowing all of things that I
know right now I would still go about that same strategy. We
didn't know that Nixon was going to get about 70% of the
votes. But I told a lot of people that George McGovern was really the
best campaign issue I had without even knowing it. And when you are
carried in on a landslide, a lot of people get carried in that
aren't qualified. We saw that in the 1966, no the 1962,
elections. We got some people in the legislative delegation that
probably shouldn't have been there. It causes us problems.
But I have also been around enough that I have
seen an awful lot of really fine people get out and run a really good
campaign and just not seen the light of day. It just wasn't
the year in which you could do it and time wasn't ready. That
happened in 1970. Nixon tightened up on the economic strings and we were
in sort of a recession. People still vote their pocketbooks and their
kids more than anything else I think and always have. That is the reason
you see Clinton's poll still right up there is spite of
everything. You didn't know for sure, even in the summer when
we didn't have any money or didn't seem to be
raising any and the polls showed that we were down something about the
same we had been with Gardner about 52 to 26 in August. We spent most of
July just hitting every courthouse in eastern North Carolina because we
knew that we weren't going to get back to many of them until
after the first of September. Didn't want them to not have
seen me at all. Plus, there wasn't much else you can do in
the summer time. But I felt if you were going to be governor you have
got to be governor of all the people and you ought to give everybody a
chance at least to get a view or to ask you a question if they can. So
starting about the time of the national conventions, we saw the polls
start to move about 2% a week. We had spent about $15,000 for a
statewide poll back in February. It showed us that we were so far behind
that we should not do any more, shouldn't waste any more
money on polling. Just ran as hard as you could for the finish line and
concentrated on organization. Spent next to no money on advertising.
Maybe we had $50,000 in television exposure, which is next to
nothing. Had some really mean advertising that just never got viewed by
much of anybody. We came out of both of those, all three of those
campaigns, with the public feeling like we had run a very clean
campaign. But I have always been convinced that part of that is at least
because we had some hard hitting ads but nobody ever got to see
them.
- JACK FLEER:
-
A modest solace?
- JAMES E. HOLSHOUSER, JR.:
-
It is just honesty. But you could see the movement starting to close.
Remember you had a Democrat convention; no it wasn't in
'72, it wasn't Chicago nightmare, it was some
place else.
- JACK FLEER:
-
1972 was McGovern convention.
- JAMES E. HOLSHOUSER, JR.:
-
That is right. He just didn't have much appeal and I still
have memories that I can't understand. In Chapel Hill our
headquarters was right next to the McGovern headquarters. Every time I
came into our headquarters in Chapel Hill just to shake hands and give
people encouragement. You'd walk down the street from
wherever you parked the car and here are these cars with McGovern
stickers and Holshouser's stickers and I have never to this
day figured that out.
- JACK FLEER:
-
But you were grateful.
- JAMES E. HOLSHOUSER, JR.:
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Every little bit helps. Just like my hardware store guy said, once they
go into the ballot box they all look the same.