Oral History Interview with Edward F. Prichard, Jr., June 29, 1983 Part 1

Hellard:This is side—tape seventeen, side one, of the Edward F. Prichard interviews. The date is June, 29, 1983. Are you ready, Mr. Prichard?

:Yeah.

Hellard:How was Ned Breathitt selected as Governor [Bert] Combs’ successor?

:Well, as always is the case when a governor is getting ready [microphone noise] for a selection of his successor, there was a whole lot of maneuvering and backing and filling as to who was going to be the candidate. There was some talk about Henry Ward’s being the candidate; there was considerable talk. And I’m not sure that some people that were close friends of Governor Combs hadn’t—didn’t move rather strongly in that direction. My recollection is that Bill May, Louis Cox, Governor [Lawrence] Wetherby, maybe one or two more, didn’t really push the claims of Henry Ward pretty strongly. Henry was sort of a strong character and sort of independent, but behind that—I wouldn’t want to call it façade—but behind that exterior, he was much more able to attune himself to getting along with some of the political people than—than some people might just from a surface examination have thought. And I’m trying to think who else might have been in the picture at that time. There really weren’t many others. The first thing I can remember about Breathitt’s candidacy was somewhere in nineteen and sixty-one. He had been the personnel commissioner during the early phases of the Combs administration. He had handled the implementation of the new merit system, a personnel act, while he was personnel commissioner. But he had not wanted to remain in that position permanently, and he went back to to his law firm. But he found, not in error—I believe, Bert appointed him on the Public Service Commission, isn’t that correct?

Hellard:Yes, that is correct.

:And he served on that, which of course at that time was a part-time appointment. So that brought him in and out of . But sometime in 1961, Bill Scent, who was the revenue commissioner, and I became firmly attached to the notion that—that Ned would make a good candidate for governor. And we got in Scent’s plane—Scent had him a plane, was a pilot, still is. And we flew down to the airport there at Ca-, . Ned met us, and we went over to some steakhouse there, ate us a big beef steak, and talked a long time. And we urged Ned to begin to put out feelers for the governor’s race. And I think that was the first beginning of a kind of movement for Ned to get in the race. Combs, of course, would have the ultimate say, we all knew. By that time Governor [Earle] Clements had become somewhat estranged. Have I gone through all the truck deal?

Hellard:Yes, we covered that last time.

:Yeah, I thought so. That had caused an estrangement between Governor Clements and Combs, and an even greater estrangement between [] Wyatt and Clements, estrangement between the Courier-Journal and Clements. And of course it was always a poss-, there was always a possibility that Wyatt would get into the governor’s race, which would complicate factors, and we thought that, that Clements would be very hostile to that. And some of the old Combs people who had been on the Combs side before the Wyatt [and] Combs campaigns merged in 1959 probably wanted somebody that was a little more an original Combs man. And so we also conceived the idea of trying to induce Wyatt to make the race for the Senate in 1962, which would—and I think Wyatt himself was so inclined. He liked the idea of being in . He had been there before during the [Harry] Truman administration, had some ties with the Democratic national establishment. So he decided to make the race for the Senate, which in effect took him out of the race for governor. He was not enamored of the idea of Ned’s getting in the governor’s race when he did. And we talked with Combs off and on. And Combs, I think, quite on his own—I don’t mean that we had such vast influence with him, although I think we had some—he decided that we needed a young candidate. He thought this was the day of younger men in the party. [John F.] Kennedy had been elected president, was a young man. And young people were emerging, young governors in the various southern states, Terry Sanford [in ], governors of that sort. And Combs, I think, pretty quickly decided that Ned was the right candidate. And as I recall, on Derby Day nineteen hundred and sixty-two, when Combs had his annual breakfast, Ned was trotted out with a sort of announcement, not a public announcement of his candidacy, but sort of a word emanating from Combs that Ned was going to be the administration candidate for governor. Because I remember Combs telling Ned, “Go downtown and get you a new dark-blue suit. Come up here to the Derby Day breakfast and we’re gonna unveil you as the administration candidate.” And Ned—and Bert used the breakfast, which in those days was not the mass event that it’s later become. In those days the breakfast was confined to, oh, two or three hundred people. Much smaller than the thousands who came, really beginning with the Ford administration, and then getting bigger and bigger on up to ten thousand or whatever it was. In those days it was two or three hundred people. And—and Ned circulated through that crowd in his handsome dark-blue suit. Told everybody he was going to be a candidate for governor. He didn’t make a formal announcement, but he—and Combs used that opportunity to electioneer with his supporters to line them up behind Ned. And I remember at a, an occasion a few days or weeks later than that, he had the labor people. Now, the labor people had not, you know, they’d had a little worry about Ned, didn’t know whether he was enough of a pro-labor candidate. And Bert had me over to the mansion with Sammy Zell and Scotty Smith and some of the other labor people to sell Ned Breathitt to them. And I think we did a good job. Of course labor was dedicated to Bert. Bert had been a very friendly government as far—governor as far as labor was concerned. And we put a right strong press on the labor people, and they pretty well got committed, primarily because of their loyalty to Combs. And that was the beginning of the—of the Breathitt campaign. This really irritated Wyatt, who felt that a gubernatorial campaign starting in the spring of 1962 would complicate his campaign for the Senate, particularly with regard to a possible support that he might get from the faction of the party. And indeed Wyatt had those complications anyhow because Harry King Lowman had announced as a candidate for the Senate in the primary against Wyatt. And while Harry King Lowman had always been a member of the Combs and the Clements faction, and of course Clements was instigating this in some degree because Clements didn’t like Wyatt, and he wanted to see Wyatt defeated or humbled. And James Gordon, who was very close to Clements and had started to move away from the faction, but had been very active in the faction during the administration.

Hellard:Of what county was Gordon from? Do you recall?

:Yes. , , now Judge—Judge Gordon, James Gordon, federal judge. He had been on the chairman of the Public Service Commission under Happy [Governor A. B. Chandler]. But he had begun to move sort of away from the faction and— Anyway though, Clements and Lowman persuaded him [Gordon] to become chairman of Lowman’s campaign. And they opened headquarters over in the—what’s the hotel across the street from the Seelbach—the Waterson—but the , the—the—the Lowman campaign sort of fizzled. They couldn’t raise money. [The Combs] administration was committed to Wyatt, was hard for them to raise any money. I remember that went to raise some money for them down in . And he brought them some money, but he charged them $15,000 for getting them the money. [Hellard laughs] I remember hearing Gordon’s [laughing] tell me that with disgust. He, you know, he said, “I got you $40,000 where it costs you $15,000 to get it.” And they were short of money. And it was awfully hard to defeat a candidate that was as well known as Wyatt, had the strong support of the Democratic organization, and the support of the state administration. So Lowman withdrew—withdrew.

Hellard:That’s when he contracted cancer?

:No.

Hellard:I thought he got—I thought he got sick, that was the reason that he withdrew.

:Well he did say something about his health, but I don’t believe he really had cancer that soon, but he did get it later. But he did withdraw. I’ve forgotten how long he lived after that, but he lived I’d say a year after that or almost. But he withdrew. And Gordon walked across the street and pledged his support to Wyatt and ma-—got in touch with Ned Breathitt and pledged his support to Breathitt in the coming governor’s race. Breathitt also made a contact with Wells Lovett, who has been a very active supporter. And he made a deal with Wells Lovett and he put him on the Public Service Commission if he got be governor. And I’m inclined to think that Combs at that time indicated to Gordon that when a vacancy arose in any federal judgeship in the western district, he would support—support the ambitions of Gordon to be a federal judge. So there were two former, prominent former Chandlerites who enlisted in Ned’s campaign. Now Ned continued to campaign all during the summer and fall of nineteen hundred and sixty-two. And this arou-, aroused considerable apprehension on the part of Wyatt, because at the same time, like some of these old fellows were coming over to Breathitt. Some other Chandlerites, including and Clements, were organizing a vote in the party against Wyatt and trying to help [Thruston] Morton. Mac Walters was very active in this. And one of the things that I recall that caused a of trouble was an ad that was running in the Hopkinsville paper by Golladay La Mote, a very prominent farmer and citizen, very well-to-do man down there, who was chairman of Wyatt’s campaign and had been an original Wyatt supporter for governor, in which he said, “If you give Wyatt a big majority, that’ll help—help elect Ned Breathitt next year.” Well of course the people copied that thing and sent it all over the state. And in addition to that, ’course the civil rights legislation was very much in the cards at that time, civil rights movement was beginning to come. And Clements and Mac Walters hired some black man to go all over western and go in every barber shop and say, “I want a haircut.” And when the barber said, “We don’t serve black people,” he said, “Well, just wait till Mr. Wilson Wyatt gets to the Senate in and we’re going to change that.” [Hellard laughs] And they used that all over. And the fellow that instigated that along with them was Louie Nunn, who was chairman of Morton’s campaign, and the— Wyatt had endorsed the Kennedys’ proposal for Medicare, and so they mobilized every doctor in the state, and the doctors were very effective, put up a lot of money for Morton that did a lot of work for him. In addition, of course, Clem-—Combs administration was still suffering some under the onus of the so-called truck deal, which I believe I’ve described, and a combination of all those things plus Wyatt’s unwillingness to mix it up with Morton. Morton conducted a very skillful campaign, and instead of going out and handshaking and exposing himself the way Wyatt did, he relied on a strategy instead. And they used all these sort of subterranean issues. And Wyatt was never able really to attack Morton. He was too dignified and genteel. And in consequence, Wyatt lost the race by 30,000 when everyone thought of him as the favorite, and indeed when he should have won it handily. Well, this sent shock waves through all the Combs Democrats, and it was really believed at that point, let us say in November 1962, that Ned Breathitt had only the most outside and remote chance to be governor. Now, those are the origins of the Breathitt candidacy. Audrey, let me have a cigar.

Hellard:Here, don’t have any there?

:And I remember walking down—coming down the elevator, either the night of the election in 1962, I stayed in the headquarters all during that election, helped Wyatt with his speeches. But we never could get him to take the offensive. He stood on his dignity and tried to be constructive. But he never really was willing to—to go after Morton. I remember we—we dug up an instance where Ballard and Ballard had been convicted of serious violations of the child labor laws, for instance. Actually, a young kid had been ground up and killed in their flour mill. And I begged him to go on the television and talk about this. One of the things I wanted him to say was about Ballard and Ballard, “Be he alive or be he dead, I’ll grind a young Kentuckian’s bones to bake my bread.” [Hellard laughs] He wouldn’t to that. [Hellard laughs]

Hellard:He couldn’t do that like you do it [laughing].

:Well, he didn’t want to do it. And—and he wouldn’t just get on him at all. And so I remember on the Medicare issue, the doctors were all against us, but Wyatt never was able to capitalize on it. And I said to him, “, the only way you’re gonna make capital out of this, is to go around to all these towns—

Hellard:I got your light right here.

:—and say, ‘course—course Thruston Morton’s against it, he’s a millionaire. He can pay his daddy’s doctor’s bills, or his father can pay them. But I was born the son of a street car motorman, and I know what it’s like to have a parent that needs some help in paying for his medical bills.’” But Wyatt didn’t want to do that. That wasn’t—didn’t fit his style. And I—we thought the only way he could capitalize on the issue is to draw the lines, go in these communities and talk about the doctor’s building themselves hundred—then hundred and fifty thousand dollar homes, which was a big price then, and owning big cars. But he just wouldn’t do it. Consequently, he lost from an excess of dignity and from being over-exposed. Morton hardly ever got out and shook hands with anybody. But he conducted a skillful campaign, and they played on the truck deal and they—they hung the pinko label on him because he’d been the founder of Americans for Democratic Action and tried to paint him as a pinko. And Wyatt just didn’t know how to fight back. But at any rate, his defeat left us all at a low ebb. I can remember coming down the elevator the night after election, and Jim Gray, of Cardinal Office Supplies, was in the elevator and he said, “Well, Prich, what’s the word?” And I said, “Reduce inventory.” [Hellard laughs] But a few of us got together, Foster Ockerman, Bob Bayer, Felix Joyner, Cattie Lou Miller, Bert Combs, a few like that, and we decided that the only way you were going to defeat Chandler was to turn 1955 upside down, to treat him just the way he’d treated Combs eight years before, just to destroy him. And we did. We did. We got up this picture that the advertising agency got out under spurious auspices, The Life and Times of A. B. Chandler, which had everything on it you could think of, including such things as, you know, he’d put a tax on ice cream cones and candy when he was governor, and we had a picture of a little child eating an ice cream cone and Chandler’s big hand came up and just threw it, mashed it in his face. And we got into the whole question of Chandler’s income taxes, and his house in Versailles, and the fact that the IRS, you know, had put a big deficiency assessment on him because most of the cost of that house had been borne by the contractors who built the medical center at UK [University of Kentucky]. And we just went after him hammer and tong, viciously and bitterly. Demanded that he have a certified public accountant audit his financial affairs. And then went back on every lie he’d ever told, every promise he’d ever broke. And Ned Breathitt was an ideal candidate. He was young and clean and eloquent and energetic and had plenty of nerve. And he’d walk into any kind of a crowd, hostile or otherwise, and electioneer with them, tell them “I want your support if I can get it. If I don’t, I want it after I’m nominated. And if I don’t get it then, I want it after I’m elected governor.” And he had the—the best electioneering manner. He was a good speaker. And then we concocted the idea of these telethons, which weren’t as old hat as they are now. And we put him on these statewide networks and let him answer questions and had him speak. And he was an excellent candidate on television at that time, not the thirty-second commercial, but the thirty-minute question-and-answer session. And we had his old schoolteacher get on and do an interview about him as a schoolboy. And we had his friend Dr. Gaither from down at and—distinguished old doctor down there—get on and talk about him. And we—we kept using the slogan, “He’s clean, he’s clean.” And we’d have people stationed all around his rallies, and when he came in, went up to the platform, we’d start hollering out, “He’s clean, he’s clean.” And Happy had begun to age, and he’d begun to—to slip. And everything in this campaign just clicked. And the schoolteachers mobilized behind us, and the labor unions mobilized behind us, and the—the retarded children families mobilized behind us—Combs had done a lot for them. Combs had done a lot for education. He’d done a lot for highways, built a lot of roads, the toll roads, and a lot of the business people thought that helped the state’s economy. So we really, we really had a— And Chandler had pledged that he was going to either repeal the sales tax or take it off food and clothing, something of those sorts. And we kept hammering him as to what he was going to do to replace it. And of course this scared all the groups. It scared the business people because they thought it was going to put more taxes on income and property. It scared the education people, and the welfare people, and the people interested in the mental hospitals because they thought he was going to shut down on them. And the thing—the first poll we took showed Ned with less than 20 percent, with, I don’t know, 60 or 70. didn’t have the name recog-—I mean Combs didn’t—Breathitt didn’t have the name recognition at that time. And we turned it around, and every poll showed us stronger and stronger and stronger.

Hellard:Wait a minute.

[end of tape one, side two]

This is tape number seventeen, side two, Edward F. Prichard interview. Go ahead, Mr. Prichard.

:And I—I played a very active part in that campaign. I was in the headquarters all the time, neglected my family, really created strains in our marriage and family life. I just lived down at that hotel, neglected my law practice. I—I wrote speeches for him. Foster Ockerman was the best campaign chairman I ever saw. He was a disciplinarian, orderly, kept a hold on everything, and Foster and I never had a cross word all during the campaign. We coordinated just perfectly. He had us in every morning at eight o’clock, right after breakfast, for a strategy session, and we went over every item. They had a good finance committee. You know, in the early stages, when they didn’t like the Breathitt idea, Bill May and Wetherby and some of them had even flirted with at that point. But they got in line, and they were Trojans. And Bert, May, Lewis Cox, people like that went out and raised the money. And was hard up for money after a while and got all his friends in debt, like Mac Walters and Martin Petty. And the thing just went from strength to strength. And you know, it was one of those campaigns you could just feel succeeding. You know, I never was in a campaign were I quite felt that way. You know, I’ve been in campaigns that I felt were always going to win, where nobody ever had a chance to beat the man I was for. And I’ve been in campaigns that I felt were just tight as a drum. And I’ve been in campaigns I could feel slipping away. But this is one where I just felt us getting stronger by the minute. And I was not at all surprised to see Ned Breathitt beat Happy Chandler by about 63,000 votes in that primary, one of the greatest upsets in the history of politics.

Hellard:Were there any other Democratic candidates in that primary?

:Well, if there were, I can’t remember them, so— I’m sure there must have been some minor, but so minor that you can’t remember them. Maybe Munn Wilson or somebody like that, but no serious candidate. And that helped you know. A three-man race always is complicated, but there was no real three-man race. Now, the lieutenant governor’s race gave us some—some problems. We did not slate in that race as Combs had slated with Wyatt. I suppose John Breckinridge, the attorney general and running for lieutenant governor, was probably more nearly affiliated with the Combs faction than his opponent [Harry Lee] Waterfield. But there was always a disagreement, or a divergence, inside the Breathitt camp. There were those who thought we ought to go with Breckinridge. But Breckinridge himself was never willing to commit himself enough. He wanted to have it both ways, wanted to be independent and yet wanted the strength of the Combs vote. Waterfield, on the other hand, while he was running with , had some of his old friends that were kind of with us, people like Wells Lovett, James Gordon. And there was always the feeling that we’d be better off in the fall to run with Breathitt and Waterfield than to run with Breathitt and Breckinridge. And Breckinridge was not the greatest candidate in the world. I mean, he had a fine name recognition and was able to attract publicity, but he never was able to play the political game in a very skillful way.

Hellard:Somewhat like Wyatt?

:Yeah, except he—he lacked some of Wyatt’s real abilities and persona, but he was a lot like Wyatt, yeah.

Hellard:What was the feeling that you’d be better off with Waterfield in the fall? Why was that?

:Hold some of the people in line, to keep them from bolting.

Hellard:You need to flick your ashes.

:But—and so when the primary was over, it was Breathitt and Waterfield, it was Breathitt and Waterfield. Waterfield won, won fairly easily, and—

Hellard:Well, now, Earle—

:—and when the primary was over, we immediately started to work for unity through Clements and Waterfield. But Waterfield was always edgy. He never quite trusted us. And we were willing to trust him, really, more than he was willing to trust us. And Clements was highly suspicious and very bitter. And I’ve always had a feeling that in that November campaign in 1963, Clements and a few of his allies were hoping a little bit for a [Louie] Nunn-Waterfield victory. And toward the end of the campaign, there began to be a little talk emanating from somewhere, and I always thought it was people close to Clements, “Breathitt’s beat. Let’s save Waterfield.” And, as you know from history, it was a very close race in the fall, much closer than we had expected. I knew there were things that weren’t going just right, but I didn’t realize how serious they were. And of course was doing everything he could to hurt us. Clements was kind of equivocal.

Hellard:What kinds of things weren’t going just right?

:Well, the thing that probably stirred up the most trouble was Combs’ executive order on integration, desegregation. At the—in the spring [of 1963], Kennedy had asked all governors to issue executive orders requiring statewide desegregation. Combs issued such an executive order. It was really carefully drawn, it just said insofar as the law permitted, you know, it just—it didn’t attempt to change substantive law. But it was portrayed as a dictatorial order superseding the role of the legislature. And Nunn made a big issue out of it, saying it was like “Castro’s ” and that it was a dictatorial order. And Breathitt got embarrassed and probably hurt himself by saying that when he became governor, he would rescind the executive order and recommend legislation to the general assembly. Well, that may have been an out, but I think he’d have probably been better off just to mute the issue, but that— And Ned never seemed to have the—the oomph in the fall campaign that he had in the primary. He didn’t have an enemy exactly the same. And it just turned out to be a close race.

Hellard:Well, it had to be—

:You remember that Nunn conceded very early when it looked like he was beat thirty or forty thousand. And when they got to counting late, he only won—lost by 13,000.

Hellard:Well, as far as Ned was concerned, it must have been a much greater thrill to beat someone like Happy Chandler, former two-time governor, than it would be to beat Louie Nunn. Would that be part of why he didn’t have the same oomph?

:Some of it—

Hellard:Uh-huh.

:—but I think probably we all underestimated the Nunn candidacy. Lee Nunn worked a pretty skillful campaign for Louie in that fall. I mean, you know, he raised every little sore toe, mobilized every little sore toe and, for instance, they got on the question of—of food in the mansion, you know, of getting food in the mansion out of the penitentiary, which we’d used against Waterfield [laughing] in ’59. And Ned just ducked right into it, and said the governor was supposed to have hospitality in the mansion and entertain Kentuckians and he was going to keep on doing it. Why, that may have been a mistake. You know, Combs did have some overhanging liabilities from the sales tax and other things that he’d done. And in the primary they didn’t hurt Breathitt, but in the fall they did. And Nunn began to run against Combs on a few things. And all of our polls showed Combs popular, and so we embraced him pretty hard, and probably embraced him a little too hard. But I just say, one can’t ever know what causes those things to happen. I think probably Combs, or Breathitt ran too much in the fall as the surrogate of Combs rather than as a new face. And that probably did something to mar the fresh image he had in the primary.

Hellard:Where was Wilson Wyatt in the fall? Was he actively supporting the party?

:Well, yes. He certainly wasn’t doing anything to hurt it. But in the primary, he never came out for Ned. He claimed that he ought to maintain a season of silence, and there was a lot of bitterness in the Combs camp about Wyatt’s—and I think this came from Ann Wyatt’s bitterness at Ned’s early candidacy in ’62, which she thought had interfered with Wilson’s race for the Senate. And I think they really were sort of malevolently neutral in the primary. And some of that may have carried over in the fall.

Hellard:Let me go back a minute to the—

:Another thing that happened that hurt us in the fall was that in 1961, in that foolish action that the Democrats took in nominating [William S.] Milburn for mayor on a segregationist platform, the black vote massively deserted the Democrats and elected [Marlow] Cook and [William] Cowger to take control of and . Which meant that in ’63, and to some extent in ’62, we did not have the strong, militant, and effective organization that we’d had in previous years. In nineteen hundred and fifty-nine, Bert Combs carried , carried by something like twenty-eight, twenty-nine thousand and his total majority was thirty-four, thirty-five. You could see what a difference it made. Well, by the time we got to, to ’61, ’62, things were changed. All the patronage was in the hands of the Republicans. And I think that made a big difference in Wyatt’s race, and a big difference in Breathitt’s race in the fall. Now, Breathitt carried pretty big in the primary, carried it eighteen, twenty thousand. But by the fall, the Republicans had the patronage and—and Nunn carried , I believe, by about thirty-eight hundred, which made a big difference. And in ’63, they carried .

Hellard:When Clements went over to Happy in this, the primary, Breathitt-Chandler primary, why is it that he couldn’t take more of his old guard with him?

:Clements?

Hellard:Clements, yes sir. Had the truck deal hurt him, or did the fact he had no way of getting patronage hurt him, or—

:All those things hurt him some. He was no longer in the Senate. He—he had been hurt by the truck deal, and in my judgment, as I’ve told you before, unjustly hurt. And many of the people that had been Clements’ close allies, had so much tie—so many ties with the administration, they didn’t leave him. People like Doc Beauchamp, like Judge Turner and Marie Turner. I mean, in most of the places you went, the old Clements guard stuck with Combs. He really took very few people with him—Carlos Oakley, Ed Farris—but mighty few. And Clements just never really was at home in the side. He just wasn’t as effective over there.

Hellard:Well, what was the relationship after the—well, no, I think you already answered that question, though.

:After what?

Hellard:I was going to ask you what a relationship Clements and Wyatt maintained after the—Wyatt’s defeat? It was—

:None.

Hellard:—pretty apparent.

:Pretty distant and has remained distant.

Hellard:Was there any kind of deal stuck be-—struck between Breathitt and Wyatt when Breathitt’s side ran for governor? Inasmuch as Breathitt’s pro-—did he promise to support Wyatt for—for the Senate if Wyatt would support him for governor?

:No, he just supported Wyatt for the Senate, period, wasn’t any deal to it. I mean, his view was that Wyatt was the administration candidate, that Wyatt was the strongest candidate, and he was for Wyatt. I don’t think there was any deal to it. At that time, we just assumed Wyatt would be for Breathitt. They were in the same faction on the same side. But I think Wyatt’s defeat tended to make him look for scapegoats, and one of his scapegoats was the early action of Combs and Breathitt getting Breathitt into the race, and he thought that complicated his campaign, and indeed, it may have. You know, I’m quite sure Wyatt would run better if there hadn’t been any governor’s race going on as early as nineteen and sixty-two. But I’m equally sure that Breathitt wouldn’t have run as well for governor if he’d waited that late. It was almost a necessary collision.

Hellard:What was your earliest association with Breathitt?

:Well, the first association I remember—first I remember that Breathitt’s uncle [James Breathitt Jr.] had been a candidate for lieutenant governor in 1927, and I was twelve years old. He had been a classmate of my father’s at Centre [College]. And Daddy and I were very active for him—much as a twelve-year-old can be—in that race. And that’s the first time I heard about the Breathitts. In nineteen—right after the war, when Breathitt was back in law school and I was practicing in , we had the fight for a constitutional revision, one of the first fights, 1947. I remember that we had a forum at the , and Ned and I debated Cassius Clay and somebody else on the new constitution. That’s when I first got to know him. And then I knew him when he was in the legislature, and all the way through, and we just had been close all that time, got closer as we knew each other better.

Hellard:That campaign was the one where you all used the slogan “Fill the sack for Jimmy Jack”?

:That’s correct.

Hellard:And you had a—a right powerful ally in Hugh Haynie?

:Hugh Haynie drew some vicious cartoons. He even printed a book of cartoons for us.

Hellard:I was going to ask you whose idea was that coloring book of—of Happy trained as a clown or using Haynie cartoons that—that appeared in the Courier?

:I’d say that was Ruth Murphy’s and mine. Well, he had two things: he had the cartoons in the paper, and then he had the coloring book, and it was devastating.

Hellard:Almost always portraying Happy as a barefoot clown.

:Clown.

Hellard:Or a buffoon.

:That’s right. And they were very effective.

Hellard:Oh yes, they were. They were.

:And the Courier-Journal, in the Breathitt race, was a great ally, and they didn’t have the pretensions of neutrality that they have later adopted. I mean, we could get anything in the paper we wanted, their reporters cooperated with us in breaking scandals about Happy. We broke a big scandal during the primary campaign about payoffs in which we got affidavits from Tom Catford, highway equipment man, about making payoffs to Frenchy [DeMoisey] and Harry DeMoisey and Harry Davis. The Courier-Journal ran them all on the front page.

Hellard:You need to flick your ashes.

:Yeah. The Courier-Journal was a great ally and wasn’t pretending to be so objective. John Ed Pearce was on the editorial page. Richard Harwood was a political correspondent. Everything really clicked that year.

Hellard:Was that the year that responded to a question about his—his sources of revenue, that he had a secret plan?

:That’s correct. I believe he said that up in either or .

Hellard:Was that—was that a—a true statement attributable to , or was that something you all made up [laughing]?

:Uh-uh, he said it. But we—we seized on it immediately. Everything he said we could seize on. He said it.

Hellard:( )

:He didn’t say, “I have a secret plan.” He said, “I know how I’m going to raise it, but I’m not going to tell you here, because it would just, you know, flash my plans to my enemies.” And oh yes, we played that—played a tune on that, demanded that he reveal his secret plan, that’s exactly right.

Hellard:What about Wetherby and May? You said that they were actually flirting with . What—what brought them into line?

:Combs, and a belief that Breathitt could win. They didn’t think he could win at first. See, there was a widespread belief early that Breathitt had no chance. Now, I’m telling you, don’t you think it—don’t you think it wasn’t a campaign against odds to start with. Here Combs had put in the sales tax, you know, it was always thought taxation was a political dynamite, but—but it turned around and that was the great thing about it.

Hellard:Where were some of the places you traveled during the campaign to make speeches for—for Ned? You want some water?

:No. Everywhere you got—ask her to get me a little of that juice.

HellardIt’s still on in here.

:Uh-huh.

Hellard:He needs some juice.

:I spoke at Hindman, Hazard, Prestonsburg, , Whitesburg, all through eastern , , and then I spoke around some in central and western . I remember speaking over at Shepherdsville. I went all over the state, probably made more speeches in that campaign than any one campaign I was ever in. We had a great rally at Prestonsburg in the high school gym up there, we had 5,000 people and— Then there was a speech I made on a flat-top truck up at Hindman, talked about Frenchy and—and Larry—Harry Davis and “Fill the sack for Jimmy Jack,” and I think Ed Easterly taped that damned thing [Hellard laughs].

[end of tape one, side two]