Former GOP Gov. Jim Holshouser, who broke decades of Democratic rule, dies at 78
James Eubert Holshouser Jr., the first Republican governor of the 20th century and a champion of education, the environment and health care, died Monday after several months of declining health. He was 78.
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At first glance, Holshouser seemed an unlikely political leader. A boyish-looking, mild-mannered man with chubby cheeks and an aw-shucks style, he seemed more like your next-door neighbor than someone who could help transform the state’s political landscape.
While prominent conservatives such as Helms and former U.S. Rep. Jim Gardner thundered from the right, tapping into the white backlash against civil rights and the anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, Holshouser represented a softer brand of conservatism.
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But even during the years of Democratic domination, North Carolina had one of the strongest Republican Parties in the South. And most of the party’s strength was concentrated in the mountains and foothills in the west – a holdover from the Civil War when many non-slave-holding mountaineers remained loyal to the Union.
One of those lifelong mountain Republicans was Holshouser’s father, J.E. “Peck” Holshouser, who was U.S. attorney in the middle district during the administration of President Dwight Eisenhower, and later an elected District Court judge.
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Holshouser’s advancement was quickened by the 1964 Democratic landslide led by President Lyndon Johnson, which depleted the GOP’s leadership ranks. While the Johnson landslide hurt the Republicans in the short term, it helped plant the seeds for a Republican revival across the South. Many conservative Democrats had crossed party lines for the first time to vote for Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater in 1964.
Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/06/18/2970402/former-gop-gov-jim-holshouser.html
I only learned of this recently. I wonder if Holshouser would be appalled at what Pat McCrory and Art Pope are doing to the Tar Heel State. Towards the end, the obituary reports that Holshouser supported Gerald Ford instead of Ronald Reagan in the 1976 Republican convention and was thus "openly booed and denied a place as a delegate to the national convention."
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