James Holshouser

Holshouser declared his candidacy for the office of Governor of North Carolina in the 1972 election on November 15, 1971.[17] Suffering from kidney disease, he ran in spite of his doctor's concerns about his health.[18] In the Republican primary he faced Jim Gardner, a conservative U.S. Representative who hailed from eastern North Carolina and had run as the Republican candidate in 1968. Holshouser focused his campaign on the traditionally Republican counties in the mountainous west and the urban Piedmont.[19] Gardner won the first primary by a small margin, 84,906 votes to Holshouser's 83,637, while minor candidates took 2,040 votes. Holshouser called for a runoff, and in the second round voter participation dropped, giving Holshouser a victory by 1,782 votes.[20]

Holshouser campaigned on a platform of raising teachers' salaries, reducing class sizes, expanding the public kindergarten program, building new roads, supporting a war on drugs, and opposing taxes on gasoline and tobacco.[21] Despite the reservations of his wife, he authorized the broadcasting of an ad declaring his opposition to desegregation busing at the encouragement of his media consultant, Roger Ailes.[22] He narrowly defeated Democrat Skipper Bowles in the general election, 767,470 votes to 729,104, likely benefitting from the coattails of Republican Richard Nixon's large victory in North Carolina in the presidential election.[1][23] Holshouser led in the traditionally-Republican mountain and western Piedmont counties, while also gaining a majority in the Charlotte, Winston-Salem, Raleigh, and Wilmington metro areas.[24] He performed well among women and younger voters, while also appealing more to black voters than more conservative Republicans such as Gardner and U.S. Senator Jesse Helms. Bowles had also been harmed by a fractious primary.[12] Both Republicans and Democrats generally considered Holshouser's victory a "fluke".[25] He was inaugurated on January 5, 1973.[5] At age 38, he was the state's youngest governor since the 19th century and the first Republican governor since Daniel Lindsay Russell was elected in 1896.[12][1]

Holshouser (third from left) with a North Carolina economic delegation in Moscow, September 1973

Holshouser lacked executive experience upon assuming gubernatorial office, and had a tendency to react to others' proposals rather than create his own.[26] Upon taking office, he fired many incumbent state employees to accommodate the awarding of patronage to hundreds of Republicans who had been unable to work in the state administration under Democratic control;[12] 100 employees in the Department of Transportation were removed.[13] Holshouser's first executive order established the Governor's Efficiency Study Commission. After months of study the board recommended 700 cost-cutting measures, including five-year license plates, use of compact cars by state agencies, and centralized printing services.[1] Holshouser's administration adopted about 600 of the suggestions,[27] and he later estimated that the changes saved the state government $80 million annually.[1] Holshouser also pursued a much more active role in the state budgeting process than his predecessors, regularly attending and presiding over sessions of the Advisory Budget Commission.[28]

Holshouser issued a total of 21 executive orders during his tenure.[29] To mitigate the effects of the 1973 oil crisis, he issued instructions to lower speed limits and reduce heating in government buildings.[1] Citing the governor's constitutional prerogative to reorganize departments, he moved the Office of Child Development from the Department of Administration to the Department of Health and Human Services.[30] In 1975 he established an office in Washington, D.C., to coordinate actions between the state and federal governments.[31] During his tenure the Executive Mansion underwent renovations, and for nine months he and his wife lived in a private residence while the work was completed.[18] He also declined to use the governor's office in the North Carolina State Capitol aside from ceremonial purposes.[32]

As governor, Holshouser served as a member of the National Governors Association, chairman of the Southern Regional Education Board, co-chairman of the Coastal Plains Regional Commission, and chairman of the Southern Growth Policies Board.[21] Concerned about citizen confusion and disillusionment with the increasing complexity of government, he created the Office of Governor's Ombudsman on March 21, 1973, to field questions and complaints from the public about state administration.[33] He appointed Grace Rohrer as Commissioner of the Department of Art, History and Culture, the first woman in a cabinet-level position in the state's history,[34] and designated a special assistant for minority affairs.[27] He also appointed a commission to raise money to restore the Old Main building at Pembroke State University following its destruction by fire.[35] Holshouser publicly supported the federally-backed planned community of Soul City to improve economic opportunity for blacks and boost minority electoral support for Republicans.[36] He led a trade delegation to Moscow in September 1973.[16] He appointed Republican James H. Carson Jr. to serve as North Carolina Attorney General in August 1974 following Democratic incumbent Robert Burren Morgan's resignation[37] and appointed Republican Thomas Avery Nye Jr. to become North Carolina Commissioner of Labor in September 1975 to fill a vacancy created by the death of the previous Democratic incumbent, William C. Creel.[38] He also filled two vacancies on the North Carolina Court of Appeals and four on the North Carolina Superior Court.[39]

With no veto power over the Democratic-dominated General Assembly, Holshouser tried to avoid political conflict with legislators except over explicitly partisan issues.[26] Party association aside, Holshouser maintained a good relationship with the Assembly, as most of its members had known him when he was a state representative,[40] including Senate majority leader Gordon Allen and Speaker of the House James E. Ramsey.[25] He enjoyed a good working relationship with Lieutenant Governor Jim Hunt, who held sway in the legislature, and during their first two years in office they minimized partisanship in dealing with each other.[41] In some instances the legislature attempted to weaken the powers of his office[40] but Allen, Ramsey, and Hunt—all aspiring to be governor one day—stopped these challenges.[25] The legislature rejected his 1973 proposal to authorize governors to run for a consecutive term.[13]

Holshouser came into office when North Carolina had a $265 million budget surplus, which enabled him to fulfill some of his campaign promises.[26] He consulted Hunt on budget proposals and incorporated Hunt's plan to expand kindergarten in the state educational system in his January 1973 budget.[41] The plan was passed into law, and was gradually phased in so that by 1977 all children in North Carolina would be enrolled in kindergarten.[42] His budget also expanded funding for state parks[43] and he worked with Hunt to create the Coastal Area Management Act to control development along the Eastern Seaboard.[44] Holshouser supported a similar bill for mountain regions, but failed to secure the support of Republican legislators to pass it.[45] The two encouraged the state legislature to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment to the United States Constitution, but it failed approval.[42] New legislative proposals from Holshouser decreased after the state's budgetary situation tightened in 1975.[46]

During his time as governor, Holshouser was engaged in an intra-party rivalry with conservative followers of U.S. Senator Jesse Helms (pictured).

In the mid-20th century the two major political parties in North Carolina had little ideological basis; party identification was generally a matter of generational descent tracing back to loyalties from the American Civil War.[47][48] By the 1970s the national Democratic Party had drifted leftward on economic and social questions, leading some southern conservative Democrats to join the Republican Party.[48] Since 1964, the Republican Party had nationally diverged into a moderate wing and a conservative wing.[49] Holshouser governed as a pragmatic centrist, and his control over the state party was tenuous.[50] In the 1972 election he had campaigned independently of Helms.[24] The two maintained cordial relations with each other, though the tensions between their respective wings for the party strained communication between them for decades.[51] Whether they were truly of much different ideological persuasions is unknown, though public perception of each man was different. State Senator Phil Kirk opined, "Holsouser is probably as conservative as Helms but not as vociferous."[52] When asked about his beliefs, Holshouser said, "I find people on the left view me as a conservative and people on the right view me as a moderate or maybe moderate conservative. I have never viewed myself left of center."[53] A feud began in June 1973 when one of Holshouser's close aides, Gene Anderson, fired several conservative Democrats from state office, even though they were ideologically similar to Helms' supporters.[49] Republican Party chairman Frank Rouse, a conservative who had supported Gardner and Helms, visited Holshouser to ask him to fire Anderson. The governor refused, and successfully backed Tom Bennet to replace Rouse in the autumn of 1973.[54]

In 1974 an electoral backlash against Republicans—in part due to the Watergate scandal—ousted many legislators in North Carolina. Holshouser's interim appointee for attorney general, Carson, was also defeated.[55] All of his judicial appointees, save for a single Democrat, lost re-election.[56] The governor continued to maintain good relations with Democratic legislators, but began experiencing more opposition from Helms' wing of the Republican Party.[46] This was in part due Holshouser's backing of William C. Stevens—a relative of Republican Congressman Jim Broyhill—for nomination in the 1974 U.S. Senate race, instead of Helms' choice, State Senator Hamilton C. Horton.[26] Holshouser and party regulars supported Gerald Ford for president in 1976,[57] with the governor serving as Ford's southern campaign chairman.[1] Helms supported the more conservative Ronald Reagan.[57] Reagan won the North Carolina presidential primary with Helms' backing, and the Republican state convention refused to appoint Holshouser or Broyhill as a delegate to the 1976 Republican National Convention.[58] Holshouser was booed when he addressed the state Republican convention.[59] He attended the national convention anyway, but did not sit with the North Carolina delegation.[13] Legally restricted to one term,[27] Holshouser was succeeded by Hunt as governor on January 8, 1977.[60]