McCrory should look to Kerr Scott for inspiration
Published January 28, 2015
by Doug Clark, Greensboro News-Record, January 28, 2015.
Gov. Pat McCrory should read the new biography of a predecessor by Julian Pleasants.
It’s called “The Political Career of W. Kerr Scott, The Squire from Haw River,” and it might inspire the present governor to step up his game.
Scott, a dairy farmer from Alamance County, ran for governor in 1948 on a progressive platform of improving schools, paving roads and extending electricity and phone service to all parts of the state.
Pleasants, a professor emeritus of history at the University of Florida, devotes most of his book to Scott’s campaign and his term as governor.
North Carolina was a one-party state in those days, with Democrats firmly in control. But it was far from politically monolithic. The party was deeply divided between its conservative and liberal wings. That would remain the case until many of its most conservative adherents — most famously Jesse Helms — bolted for the Republican Party over race and civil rights.
North Carolina was a backward state in 1948 — 45th in the nation in per-capita income, with a poor education system, many schools lacking electricity, muddy rural roads that prevented farmers from getting their crops to markets, few quality medical facilities and a black population denied equal rights and opportunities.
Scott, charismatic and outspoken, challenged the political establishment and won a stunning victory. He continued his surge into 1949, bullying a conservative legislature into putting two bond proposals on the ballot — one for schools, the other for roads — and promising it would raise the gasoline tax by a penny if the road bonds passed.
With Scott campaigning for them all across the state, both bonds were approved overwhelmingly.
McCrory has outlined an ambitious transportation initiative but hasn’t proposed any way to pay for it. He can expect opposition from a conservative legislature when he does. He should follow Kerr Scott’s lead and demand more revenue, appealing directly to the people if necessary. Like Scott, McCrory also knows education needs more funding to make sure North Carolina children can compete in a changing world.
To be sure, McCrory is very different from Scott. He worked for Duke Energy Co. and was mayor of Charlotte, a banking hub. Scott was agriculture commissioner before running for governor, and he constantly attacked banks and utility companies as enemies of farmers and common people.
Scott also was politically fearless, never ducking a fight. McCrory needs to emulate that trait, instead of letting the legislature dictate the state’s agenda. Although the governor had less power in his day, Scott was not one to back down, even in the face of defeat.
McCrory might know that Scott’s successes of 1948 and 1949 provoked a powerful backlash from conservatives. His candidate in the 1950 U.S. Senate primary, Frank Porter Graham, was defeated by Helms-backed Willis Smith in a campaign that hinged on race. Graham was portrayed as an integrationist who supported Supreme Court rulings opening graduate schools at public universities to black students. Graham also fell victim to the Red Scare stirred up by Wisconsin Sen. Joe McCarthy.
Graham’s defeat weakened Scott in the 1951 legislative session, as lawmakers rejected his call for teachers’ pay raises, a state minimum wage, highway safety measures and a voting age of 18. He castigated lawmakers for not supporting “education and hospital care for the aged, infirm and mentally ill.” He called the Senate Appropriations Committee the “Do Nothing for Nobody Club.” He found legislators “defeatist” and having “short-sighted vision.” In moves McCrory would recognize, the legislature tried to exert unconstitutional authority over the executive branch by taking away the governor’s appointments to the Highway Commission, the Advisory Budget Commission and for judicial offices — unsuccessfully.
Scott completed his term in 1952 as a lame duck snubbed by his own party, which moved further to the right, fueled by opposition to progressive politics and civil rights. A conservative Democrat, William B. Umstead, was elected in 1952. Soon, many right-wing Democrats would abandon the party altogether — although Republicans such as James Holshouser in 1972 and Jim Martin in 1984 and 1988 would be elected governor as moderate conservatives.
McCrory came from the Holshouser-Martin tradition, but he’s been controlled by a legislature like the one that stymied Scott in 1951. Yet, the progressive victories Scott won in 1949 began to pull North Carolina out of its backward ways and should encourage McCrory to fight like Scott in 2015.
