Hellard:Testing, testing, testing. This is tape eighteen, side one, Edward F.
Prichard interview, June 29th, 1983.:You know, it was just marvelous to get the response one did from the audience.
I mean, it was really like a revival meeting, pretty nearly.Hellard:Now, had—had Ed asked you to go out and make these speeches for him?
:Who? Breathitt?
Hellard:Yeah.
:Why certainly. He and Foster Ockerman and Bert. Bert was having a lot to do
with it.Hellard:Well, Breathitt, then, wasn’t shying away from you like—like you said
that Combs was a little uncomfortable at the beginning of his administration. Obviously Breathitt didn’t—:No, no, indeed. Never, never. He did everything he could to put me in the front.
Hellard:What were the key issues in that campaign?
Prichard:Well, it’s pretty hard to talk about them in retrospect, but I suppose
the maintenance of the sales tax was one, continuance of the sales tax; Ed’s—Ned’s educations program, a $500-a-year increase for all the teachers, which was a very substantial amount in those days; increase in the old-age pensions and welfare payments. But I suppose the issue that dominated everything else was Chandlerism, just “Do you want to go back to Happy and Frenchy and Harry Davis?” So the cleanness and corruption issue.Hellard:Did Ned have a—a media consultant at that time? I remember you had a
very sophisticated, for that time, media campaign.:Who, Ned?
Hellard:Yes sir.
:Well, we didn’t have any national media consultant, we had—we had the firm of
Zimmer, McClaskey and Lewis in —in and Doe Anderson and Company. Now, they did most of it. The national media consultants were not as much in vogue then as they are now.Hellard:What was the relationship between Breathitt and Waterfield? You said
Waterfield was a little suspicious of you all, but was—they have a good working relationship during the campaign?:Moderate, moderate. You know, they were both running on the same ticket. But I
think Harry Lee, deep down, wouldn’t have been too miserable at his winning and Ned’s losing. But I don’t know that he wanted to take that risk because that’s a hards—hard piece of baloney to slice too thin. But Harry Lee is by nature very suspicious. He’s not a wide-open, or wasn’t then, a wide-open kind of a fellow. And I suspect that Clements, and Carlos Oakely, and some of those people were warning him not to trust Ned too much. But you know, when Ned got to be governor, his first impulse was to do everything in the world to get along with Harry Lee. You know, he turned the senate organization over to Harry Lee’s people in the first session of the legislature 1:00and they—they blocked a lot of his program. That’s why his first legislative session was not a great success. Because [] Cap Gardner was made the floor leader, and they wouldn’t pass his civil rights legislation, for instance. Didn’t pass any of his environmental legislation. And it really wasn’t until his second session 2:00that he passed a really massive legislative program, one of the greatest in the history of the state—the civil rights legislation, the creation of the Council on Higher Education, the first comprehensive water pollution legislation, air pollution legislation.Hellard:Let me—let me go back before we get into—into the Breathitt
administration accomplishments. You said at our last interview that—that you had—had some influence in having Bill Scent appointed revenue commissioner.:Yes sir.
Hellard:Well, how did that come about? Just because you had Governor Combs’ ear, or—
:I think that was with the assistance of Doc Beauchamp and—and Earle Clements.
You know, his allegiance—his first wife came from and he was a protégé of Doc Beauchamp. And Beauchamp and Clements wanted him to be appointed, and I think that Combs had some doubts about it, and I think I made the difference. And he made an excellent revenue commissioner.Hellard:Now you said that, also during the last interview, that your—that you
really built our ties with the press during the—in the Breathitt years.:Uh-huh.
Hellard:I assume that began in the—in the—
:Campaign.
Hellard:—campaign.
:Uh-huh.
Hellard:Did you—do you feel like you had any significant influence on—on
editorial endorsements of—of Breathitt during the primary?:No. I didn’t have to. They were quite ready to do it without any influence of
mine. My influence was, you know, I had close ties with John Ed Pearce, but John Ed Pearce was almost part of the campaign staff. And indeed in later years, this got him in trouble with the Courier-Journal because it was felt that he was too close to Combs. You know, Combs appointed on the park board, things like that. And Barry Bingham Jr. had a view, you know, that that was inconsistent with the objectivity of the press. And John Ed really kind of fell out of favor with the top management of the Courier-Journal on account of some of those things. I mean, John Ed would help us write speeches for Combs and Breathitt.Hellard:Were there other press people who took that active a role?
:Dick Harwood, certainly. Now, Hugh Morris was never that—Hugh always maintained
a—more objectivity, he wasn’t unfriendly— Where is Hugh?Hellard:Hugh is in and—
:I never see him.
Hellard:—he and Frances are—are raising orchids and going back and forth between
to visit their son, who’s with the Miami Herald?:Yeah.
Hellard:I believe it is.
:I never see him.
Hellard:He’s doing very well.
:Well, I like him very much, but I never do see him none.
Hellard:( )
:Hugh—
Hellard:Go ahead.
:—Hugh always had a certain independence, though. He was a good reporter, but he
wasn’t a, you know, he—he didn’t follow the party line.Hellard:During the primary between and Breathitt, does the name Annie B. Hall
ring a bell?:Yeah, sure.
Hellard:What do you know about Annie B.?
:She got mad at Combs for something, and I never quite knew what. She had been
in the legislature from , and had been one of Combs’ great protégés in the legislature. She made the great statement when they had the budget bill up, she said, “I’m like your little boy that dropped his gum in the hen house and didn’t know whether to pick it up or not, I pass.” [Hellard laughs] And that was a famous statement. And Holmes put—Combs put her on the tax commission, and she got to fooling with Happy, she thought he wasn’t good enough to her, and so he fired her at the beginning of the primary, said he’s tightening up the ship for the spring voyage. And she went all over the state speaking for Happy in that primary, said a lot of ugly things about Combs. Isn’t she still in ?Hellard:Oh yes. Yes, indeed. Uh-huh.
:Retired?
Hellard:Yeah. She’s active in so-—in civic clubs, that’s about it.
:Uh-huh.
Hellard:Now, Thelma was running for what that primary? Thelma Stovall. Treasurer?
:Yeah.
Hellard:What—was she an asset to the ticket, or was she just running her own race?
:Now, which primary?
Hellard:Well, the Chandler-Breathitt primary?
:No, she was running for treasurer in the Chandler-Combs primary, and she was
elected treasurer.Hellard:Well, then, she was running for secretary of state then [in 1963].
:That’s right. Well, of course she had all the people for her. And I will say
this for her, both in the Combs race and Breathitt race, Thelma was always a good Democrat, and when Combs won the primary, she got right active in the campaign, traveled around with a bunch of the women all over the state, campaigned for the ticket. Did the same thing when Bert—when Ned was nominated. Thelma, whatever else she was, was a good party Democrat.Hellard:What else was she?
:Well, she was pro-labor. She was very much attuned to the wants of little
people. She was a great person to help little people that had troubles with the state bureaucracy, would always go out of the way to help them. She had a network of sort of obscure people that idolized her. She always had pretty close ties with labor. And one thing I would say about Thelma, she’d always take a stand on things, and you know, she wasn’t the worst person in the world. There’s a certain primitive side to her, she wasn’t very sophisticated, wasn’t an intellectual, she idolized Hubert Humphrey, and she was basically a good kind of a populist working-class Democrat. Not much in tune with the intellectuals or the so-called thoughtful people, but very much attuned to the little people. And so far as I ever knew, just as honest as anybody could be. I never knew Thelma to take a dirty nickel. And I doubt if during all the time she was in public life, Thelma Stovall ever made a dime beyond her salary. And I think that’s a pretty good thing you can say about somebody.Hellard:Who else was on the ticket that year?
:Now, which year?
Hellard:The year that the—the year that Breathitt won the primary.
:Oh, let’s see.
Hellard:The Democratic ticket.
:Well—well, didn’t Beauchamp run for treasurer that year?
Hellard:I believe that’s right.
:And Thelma was secretary of state.
Hellard:Was Henry Carter on the ticket?
:Wasn’t Henry for audi-—wasn’t he auditor?
Hellard:Yes sir, I think so.
:Henry was auditor. Well, Wendell Butler was commissioner of agriculture; Harry
Sparks, superintendent of public instruction; I guess that was it. And of course, attorney general was Bob Matthews.Hellard:What was Bob Matthews like? He later ran for lieutenant governor against
Wendell Ford.:Just lost by five hundred votes. Bob Matthews was a—a charming fellow, easy
going, lazy, always took the easy route, not much initiative, not a heavy intellect, just an agreeable fellow with a good deal of charm.Hellard:How would you rate him as attorney general?
:Nominal, nominal. You know, went along.
Hellard:Who were some of—once Ned got in office, who were some of his advisers,
close advisers?:Well, I would say Felix Joyner, Cattie Lou Miller, Bob Bell, Phil Swift, Field
McChesney, they’re the ones I’d think of. I guess [Henry] Ward. You know, Ward was his highway commissioner, they always got along well. You know, Ned supported him very much for the governorship [in 1967].Hellard:What was the—we—we talked about the legislature a while ago, at least
the senate. What was the legisla-—legislative makeup?:In which administration?
Hellard:Well, the Breathitt administration, the first session.
:Well, the first session, you know, it wasn’t very—wasn’t very effective. Was
Tom Rhea the speaker or the floor leader?Hellard:Floor leader, I think.
:Who was the speaker? Harry King still?
Hellard:I believe it was Shelby McCallum.
:Shelby McCallum was, at least, the second session. I don’t know whether he was
the first or not. was close to Ned. Still is. Tom Rhea was a miserable floor leader, and Dick Moloney had to step in and kind of take over, really. Dick really rescued him. And you know, he picked Dick to be his floor leader in the second session, and Dick died right on the eve of the session, and they made John Y. Brown [Sr.] the floor leader, which was a poor choice. You know, John Y. was too much of a show off and individualist. Dick Moloney was the greatest floor leader that ever—whether he had the name or not—that ever operated in that house, in my opinion. Dick Moloney could take the young representatives and—and handle them better than anybody I knew, and he was just so skillful. And by and large, as the years went on, more and more public-spirited. I think Dick Moloney was probably the most effective legislator I’ve ever known. In the senate it was Cap Gardner, first session, and that just was a wrench in the machinery, and they didn’t get anywhere much that first session, particularly in the senate. So, if you recall, they had a special session right after the court’s decision on the hundred-percent assessment. And we took Dick Buck—[J. D.] Jiggs Buckman and Jim Ware, and we took over the senate, took Harry Lee out of the chair, reorganized the senate. Now was Jiggs—who was the floor leader in the second session?Hellard:Wasn’t it Senator Ware?
:Might’ve been.
Hellard:From was it n—n—northern somewhere? ?
:Yeah, that was Jim Ware.
Hellard:Yeah.
:Well, he’s from , Terry McBrayer’s father-in-law.
Hellard:Uh-huh.
:Well, he’d been the floor leader earlier. He was the floor leader in the Combs
administration, but I thought he got beat about that time by, no, maybe he didn’t. No, he didn’t. I thought maybe he withdrew. I’m trying to remember. But Jiggs Buckman was the de facto floor leader, I can tell you that.Hellard:Well, how did you—how did you come by enough votes to take over the senate?
:Just went out and took them. And of course when you got to the second session,
Cap Gardner had been defeated by Wendell Ford. He was defeated in ’65 by Wendell Ford, so he was out. And they just—they just put a combination together. And if Cap hadn’t been the floor leader, you know, we probably could have operated in the first session. But they just stripped Harry Lee. They took all the committee appointments away from him. Was Ware the floor leader or the pro tem? No, Alvin Kidwell was the pro tem, and he always was strong administration man. And then you had those two—two kind of drunks up there, John Raymond Turner and Billy Angle, and Ned always knew how to, you know, he had to handle them with trades and patronage, but he held them in line.Hellard:Who were some of the more effective lobbyists at that time?
:Oh, Harry Blanton, Jay Spurrier—Jay was his assistant then, you know. I don’t
know who else. I guess Mac Morgan was beginning to get active then, wasn’t he?Hellard:I—Mac spent a long time.
:Yeah, Mac Morgan, I always thought, was one of the most effective lobbyists.
Before him, Ivan Jett, remember him?Hellard:I remember the name.
:Ivan Jett, now he and Clements just pissed through the same quill. Ivan Jett
lived over at and represented the retail merchants and I guess Mac Morgan was his understudy and then came along. You know, what’s his name was never very effective—Associated Industries—at that time, was not effective.Hellard:Doug—Doug Wilkerson?
:Well, it was—you know who I’m talking about, the boy that came from down at and
is still up in , belonged to the John Birch Society. Oh, I know his name just as well, great friend of Wells Lovett’s— Clyde Watson was a very effective lobbyist. I guess he lobbied for West Kentucky Gas, some of those companies. Clyde Watson was very effective.Hellard:Is there any difference in how the—the lobbyists did their business in
1964 and how they do their business in 1982?:Yeah. 1964 they did most of their lobbying in the governor’s office, you know,
the g-—if the lobbyists could lobby with the governor, they didn’t have to worry about the legislature very much. I don’t think that’s any longer true, N—Vic, not nearly as true. The Julian Carroll administration was the last of that. But I don’t know what it’ll be like now.Hellard:Well, is it fair to say that in ’64 and—and in that era, that—that
lobbyists were really an extension of the governor’s office? Inasmuch as they would, you know, trade with him that they would legislators they had influence with?:Uh-huh. Either they were an extension of the governor’s office or the
governor’s office was an extension of them [Hellard laughs]. They—that’s where they did their lobbying. The lobbyists spent more time in the governor’s office than they did in any legislator’s chambers.Hellard:Well, what do you regard as—as—
:Now, they go to the speaker’s office. [laughs]
Hellard:And the president pro tem.
:That’s right.
Hellard:What do you regard as the major accomplishments of the Breathitt administration?
:Oh, I think they’re great and probably underestimated. I think certainly he got
through, and piloted through, more of what I would regard as good legislation than almost any governor. Although I think Combs did a lot, Clements did a lot, all of them did a lot. But just think of it—civil rights, higher education, the first really strong strip-mining law we ever had, which was a terrific fight to put through, water pollution, air pollution, I believe I said higher education. I—I think it was, particularly his second session, which was all of his legislation—was—was a—you know, many of—much of it was landmark legislation.Hellard:Well, what was your role in this administration?
:Oh, I guess I was an adviser of the governor’s. I helped him—I helped him draw
the strip-mine law, and—and—and Jack Matlick got sick when the thing came to the legislature, and Combs—and Ned kind of retained me, I guess put me on a little personal service contract for a while, to go up there and lobby it through, and—and you know, present it to the committees, so forth.Hellard:To what extent did you help him prepare his legislative agenda outside
of the strip-mine law?:Oh, I helped him on all of it, all of it. I suppose I was in almost daily
contact with him, as I was with Combs. You know, I’d be up at the mansion, and we’d stay up there and eat dinner, stay till late at night or maybe go up for breakfast and stay all day. I would travel with him some when he went places. I had a very close relationship with Ned Breathitt and his whole administration and had a close relationship with his, you know, cabinet leaders, like Felix Joyner and Bob Bell and Phil Swift and Cattie Lou.Hellard:Were there—were there any particular pieces of legislation that you
suggested to him?:Well, I don’t know what you would really mean by “suggested to him.” I
certainly urged him to go for strong strip-mine legislation and other environmental legislation. I certainly urged him to strengthen the Council on Higher Education and go for that. Probably the only thing I can remember that I failed with him on was on the question of teachers’ salaries in his second session. We had a meeting up there to talk about it, Dick VanHoose was then president of the KEA [Kentucky Education Association], Harry Sparks was superintendent, Don Mills was very close to him too, I forgot about him, he was much closer to Don than a governor would maybe now be with his press secretary. Don was really one of his advisers. And Felix Joyner was so afraid that the budget, if we gave too much, as he called it, to the teachers, we would get in trouble with his Medicaid package, which he was very much interested in, a large appropriations of s-—you know, comply with the federal requirements for Medicaid. And I believe they wanted to give the teachers $500 a year increase in the second session, they talked about that. The teachers wanted more. Harry Sparks and I begged him, and Mills begged him, to go to $750. And he—he didn’t do it because Felix won that argument with us. So we had a teachers’ strike and he appointed a commission, which was sort of phony, and they came in and recommended a $1,200 increase, which he gave them. And that’s what caused the financial crunch at the last end of his administration, which was probably the least creditable and least memorable phase of his administration because, if you recall, he had to impound a lot of funds right at the end of his administration to keep from having a deficit. And if Nunn hadn’t have put the sales tax increase in, the state would really have been in a financial pinch. And if he’d gone with that $750 increase, you wouldn’t have had the teachers’ strike, and he would have ended the administration with a modest surplus.Hellard:Well, what do you regard as your chief contribution to the Breathitt administration?
:Oh, I don’t know. I really wouldn’t say, I just think my contribution was just
to advise him. Most the things that he did and wanted to do were things that I wanted him to do, but I don’t know that he wouldn’t have done them if I hadn’t been there. I don’t know whether he’d have been quite as eager or quite as effective, but you know, I don’t think there are any things up there that I just invented. The strip-mine law was probably the nearest to it.Hellard:Well, when you s-—would you—it’s fair to say, is it not, that Breathitt
was—Breathitt’s administration was probably one of the more progressive, or liberal, administrations we’ve had this half century.:Oh, I thought so. I had a lot to do with his civil rights legislation. He was
always for it in principle, but I—I pushed hard for it, very much, and—Hellard:During his administration, what kind of problems did Harry Lee give him?
Prichard:Well, in the first session, he blocked him on the civil rights
legislation and on a few other things so that he really didn’t get anything cranked up, either because he knew Harry Lee would block it and therefore he just didn’t push it, or because he pushed it—as in the case of civil rights—and lost it. And then Harry Lee began to criticize him, publicly, all the time, claimed that he was, I’ve forgotten what, little things. Harry Lee, though, after the first legislative session, was not a major factor because once Bert unhorsed him in that special session of ’65, you know, the only thing we had to worry about then was leaving the state.Hellard:Did Governor Breathitt become involved in any legislative races before
his second legislative session?:Sure. He became greatly involved in Wendell Ford’s campaign against Cap Gardner
for the senate.Hellard:Wendell didn’t win that by much, did he?
:No. He won it by a few hundred votes, and Bert—well Ned—Ned was the difference.
I mean, he threw everything, patronage and everything else, into that. I remember Cattie Lou and I got up there in Breathitt’s office, we wrote some ads for Wendell and his campaign, “There’s a Ford in your future.” And I remember it very well.Hellard:You recall any other races that he became active in?
:Well yes, he was active for Alvin Kidwell in the race where Tom Harris beat him
for the senate. I’m sure he was active in a lot of legislative and senatorial races, I don’t identify any of them particularly, but every governor was always active in them, I guess mainly helping incumbents that had supported him.Hellard:What kind of fellow was Felix Joyner?
:Oh, Felix was a delightful fellow, extremely able, very astute, very practical,
knew government and knew state finances very intimately. I would say Felix was—was one of the top forces in the administration. Everybody trusted him. I mean, he was a master of state finances.Hellard:What about Phil Swift?
:Well, Phil, of course the aeronautics department was a fairly minor department,
but Phil was a kind of a minister without portfolio. And Combs—fr-—Breathitt used him on just a lot of things, political things, and had him in the governor’s office a good part of the time.Hellard:What about Don Mills?
:Don was very close to him. Don was a, you know, worked on speeches with me, and
then Don—he was a close adviser and, you know, I think people like that, Don and all, had a lot of influence on him.Hellard:What about Cattie Lou Miller? Of course, she had been around for some
time, had she not?:Yeah, but Cattie Lou Miller—Cattie Lou Miller was a power wherever she was. She
knew every little detail of everything. I used to accuse her of memorizing all the regulations of the personnel department. She, Cattie Lou was very good at picking up little things that might get you in trouble and stopping them before they got bigger. She was a great—she had a great nose for something that might be troublesome and that looked unimportant. And she would say, “Now, if this happens, this is going to unravel in such and such a way,” and she was almost invariably right. Very close to Breathitt and close to Combs. A little strain developed between Combs and Cattie Lou when she was active for Ford in his campaign against Combs [in the 1971 Democratic gubernatorial primary].Hellard:What about Bob Bell?
:Very close to Breathitt, very simpatico, I mean, they were all, it was such a
personally close, you know, almost like a little fraternity and brotherhood. Bob Bell, you know, he had Bob in revenue for a while, and he had him in parks for a while, he was deputy to Ward in highways for a while. Bob was a—a main—he was an important factor everywhere. And Bob was very articulate and had a lot of common sense, lot of imagination and—Hellard:Had you known Wendell Ford before he came to the Senate?
:Sure, after—
Hellard:( )
:—well, hell, he was in Combs’ office when Combs was governor, and he was in
Combs’ campaign. He had been the president of the International Jaycees, and he was in Combs’ headquarters.Hellard:What were your impressions of him?
:In general, I had the feeling he was kind of a lightweight. Very zealous, very
hard working, but I never thought he thought big. But he had developed, and did develop, a great gift for what I would call populist politics. You know, he was never the darling of what you might call the thinking people. But the sort of middle rank people out in the various communities swore by him. And he always kept his ear to the ground. Master of political expediency.Hellard:What about the presidential race?
:Little deficient in his ethics, grew to love money, wasn’t too careful about
how he made it. What did you say?Hellard:Oh, go ahead. I was going to ask you about the gov-—presidential race.
:Well, those were my feelings about Ford. He’s probably the most astute
politician of one kind that’s been in this state in a long time. He has a—a fine ear for just how the prevailing opinion is in this state, and what are the prevalent interests in the state, and he attunes himself very closely to them. He’ll never lead losing causes. He’ll never take up a battle on high principle. He’ll never go against the grain. And he’s greedy, but he’s not a fool. He has a great gift for a certain kind of politics and a great touch and rapport with the people out in the various communities that want something, something which he knows how to help them get.Hellard:Was [Walter D.] Dee Huddleston in the senate during Breathitt’s administration?
:Yes, he ran for the senate during Breathitt’s administration. I guess he served
during the last two years of Breathitt’s administration. I forget who was the senator over there, but it was one that was kind of an old Chandlerite, didn’t amount to much. And—and—and had been very active for Ned in his campaign for governor, and they always had a very close relationship.Hellard:What were your—your estimates of when you first met him?
:Well, I always said—thought that was a rather, in a mild way, articulate,
effective kind of a legislator. Intelligent, moderate, thoughtful, never too full of himself, never overblown with his own importance, had a mastery of what I would call low-key politics. He had the capacity, pretty much, to vote the way he wanted to and not make people mad. Look at the , you know, he supported the Panama Canal Treaty, but he never suffered from it the way some others did because he knew how to keep his head low when the bombs were bursting around him. On the whole, I think he’s been a good senator, probably not as effective in certain ways as Ford, but a better feel for the public interest.Hellard:What about Ron Mazzoli? Was he serving during the Breathitt years?
:I don’t know whether he came in during the Breathitt years or the Nunn years.
I remember when he got elected to the senate, state senate. Ron was a little bit
of a dissident locally, he wasn’t the organization candidate. He had a very great personal network, a lot of it built around his Catholic affiliations. But I always thought he was quite intelligent, sometimes a little quirky, but most of the time pretty intelligent, pretty thoughtful, made a good legislator. Now, if he served in Ned’s administration, it was just the last two years, and I wasn’t even sure of that.Hellard:Well, what about the presidential election in 1964?
:Well, in it wasn’t much election. I was active in the thing. Frank Paxton from
was the chairman, we had our headquarters in , we had no senatorial race that year, so we had the headquarters over in the state committee headquarters there on in . Frank did all right, but we could’ve carried the state without a chairman. Ned threw everything the state administration had into it and, hell, [Lyndon] Johnson was just going to win, although he carried the state a lot bigger that we thought he would.Hellard:Were Combs and Clements both active in that campaign?
:Yes, oh yes. Oh, certainly they were. Combs was, Clements was, of course, a
very intimate friend of Johnson’s, and he probably helped to—Ned pick Frank Paxton. But the campaign could hardly be called exciting.Hellard:Did—did Breathitt, once elected governor, kind of make peace with
Governor Clements?:Yeah, named him as chairman of the constitutional assembly, for example. That
was one of Ned’s great efforts that failed—but it was a very gallant effort—was for constitutional revision that—he really set his heart on that. And I, of course, was active in that, was a member of the assembly, and probably would have been considered, by some people at least, sort of the dominant force in that assembly. And I, you know, had a great privilege in that to work with a lot of good people—John Berry from Newcastle, T. C. Carroll, Tommy’s father, Tom Waller from Morganfie-—from Paducah—Hellard:I believe George Street Boone was in that.
:— Boone, Marlow Cook, Bill Cowger. And I thought we did a pretty good job. Jim
Fleming played a major part in that, you know. Jim was very active in that.Hellard:Tell me about Jim Fleming.
:Well, Jim is kind of a professional top sergeant drill-master, but he’s pretty
able. You know, he’s not what you’d call a big imaginative thinker, but he’s got a good deal of practical sense, somewhat of a cynic, I always thought pretty honest. I never heard of his being on the take. Worshiped Ford, but it never—that never came between him and me. During the Ford administration, which we’ll get to later, he was very kind to me, he and Bill Wester and some of them were very—Larry Greathouse—very kind to me. They employed me in several big lawsuits. And I never felt that I was frozen out of things in the Ford administration. And I always attributed that, to a great extent, to people like Bradshaw and—and King and—and Fleming, Wester. And I think they were responsible for a lot of the success of Ford’s administration because Ford—well we’ll get into that later, but you know, I think Ford made a pretty good governor in many ways. He was lucky, but—Hellard:Can you recall any humorous stories about Fleming?
:Oh, I’m sure I could if you hadn’t asked me. I remember once, Fleming and
Wester came down, picked me up, and they were talking, you know, Fleming would kind of talk [deep voice] this way, Wester had that little jimmy-jaw, and I said, “I never thought I’d live to see the day when the destinies of this state would be committed to the hands of Fred Flintstone and Archie Bunker [Hellard laughs].” Because Jim was a typical [Hellard laughs] Archie Bunker type and—and Bill Wester looks like a twin brother of Fred Flintstone. You know, Jim was always [deep voice] growling, his bark was worse than his bite, but I always thought he had a lot of ability.Hellard:Indeed. What about some of the other people, the leg-—
:You know, he operated LRC [Legislative Research Commission] in a very different
way from the way you would, or somebody else would, now, you know. It was a very much smaller thing. And he ran it, as I said, like a top sergeant, you know, he’d walk down the halls and look in and growl at all of them, he thought that’d make them get to work.Hellard:What about Jim Alexander? He served in the house during the—
:Yeah [laughing], I don’t know why you’d get so much on him [laughing]. He’s so
insignificant. I just thought Jim Alexander was just a shit ass, that’s all [Hellard laughs], just a shit ass, no ability, no personality, no nothing. Just a kind of a—of a nasty fellow around, always ready to say something mean about somebody. I never saw him do a constructive thing, Vic, or have a constructive idea.Hellard:How about a fellow named Fred Harris down at western .
:You mean George Harris?
Hellard:George Harris, George Harris.
:Well, George Harris was an entirely different article. George Harris was shady
as he could be, but he was a smooth operator, knew how to handle things, particularly things that had money in them. George Harris was kind of a Hessian, for sale to the highest bidder. He operated very closely with Fred Morgan from , they were kind of gold dust twins [Hellard laughs]. And you know, if you wanted a real deal to ease through, some sort of a turkey deal, they were the ones you’d get, and they were artists. They could get on that floor and monkey around with something. If you wanted to beat something, they were awful good at it.Hellard:What about Harry Caudill?
:Well, Harry wasn’t—he was—the last time I—he was in the legislature was about
1960. He was then considered something of a right-winger. But the major bill that I remember Harry’s offering was a bill to restore the whipping post. He hadn’t then got on his kick about the environment and his sort of radical chic. As a legislator, he wasn’t very effective.Hellard:Norbert Bloom?
:Well, can’t say he wasn’t effective. Nor Bloom’s one of the ablest legislators
I ever saw. He—he’s—he’s a master. I think he’s a little too much a lover of power, and when he gets the gavel in his hand or—or gets power, he can be rather brutal and arbitrary. But Nor Bloom, as a young representative, was a very, very constructive force. As I say, as I think he got more into the corridors of power, he became a little more selfish, a little more arrogant, a little more arbitrary.Hellard:You know a lady named May Street Kidd?
:Oh, yeah.
Hellard:What can you say about May Street Kidd, Representative May Street Kidd?
:Yeah, Honorable May Street Kidd, gets mad it you don’t put the Honorable in
front of it. Well, I think she’s really just kind of a, you know, has a lot of ego problems, likes to be noticed, not all bad, but has never been, really, a person of ideas, or of much constructive— I guess she did get through the Kentucky Housing Corporation, that was her baby. But I never thought she accomplished a great deal in the legislature, Vic.Hellard:Who were some of the more outstanding people in the—in the second term
of Breathitt’s administration, second session of the Breathitt administration?:In the legislature?
Hellard:Yes, sir.
:Oh—
Hellard:Now, Foster wasn’t there—he was there in the Combs years, wasn’t he—
:Oh, yeah.
Hellard:— years?
:No, Foster wasn’t in the legislature, not even during Combs’ administration. He
was there during the second administration. He was commissioner of motor transportation in the—Hellard:That’s right.
:—in the Clements and Breathitt—I mean, the Combs and Breathitt administration.
Oh, I don’t know. Really, I suppose Shelby McCallum to some degree. Really, there—it wasn’t a very strong legislature. You know, mostly they—Bre-—Ned just got them to do what he wanted to do. You know, I don’t think of anybody as being especially dynamic and forceful.Hellard:What about the court during the Breathitt years? Do you have thoughts on that?
:Court of Appeals?
Hellard:Yes sir.
:Well, it really was the same in the Combs and Breathitt years. It was Powell
Moore, Montgomery, some right strong people. Powell Moore, Montgomery, John Mormon, pretty able court—Hellard:During the—
:—largely dominated by Powell Moore.
Hellard:What kind of practice did you have during the Breathitt years—law practice?
:Oh, well just kind of general— I had a few personal service contracts, but not
many, really not any major ones. I—trying to think what I did do, mostly just general—general practice.Hellard:Did you have any significant cases during that period of time?
:Oh, I don’t—I don’t know any that I would recall, but I guess I did, but I—
Hellard:During the Breathitt years, did you spend any time in ?
:Well, I occasionally would go up there for Ned, or with Ned, on some matter. I
went up there to get some money for from my old classmate Jack Connor, who was secretary of commerce and had some money. I would occasionally go up with him to political things like national committee meetings. I’m trying to think what I did practice and do in those days. I probably had my share of cases over at the ABC Board—Hellard:Are you getting tired?
:No. —cases involving the highway department, and just sort of regular lawsuits.
I remember one case that I practiced was the rubber dollar case, you know, the case in which they said salary limitations would be construed in terms of cost-of-living indexes.Hellard:Can you wait just a minute? This is tape eighteen, side two. [microphone
noise] Start.:That rubber dollar case, of course, it stretched the law, just like the dollar,
but we did win it, probably saved a lot of county officials’ bacon.Hellard:Let’s go back to the constitutional convention that the senate—or
Breathitt had.:Yes.
Hellard:What—what, of course, that was defeated. Why was that, in your opinion,
why was it defeated?:General populist reaction against government. It was a combination of the
county officials fearing that a new constitution would jeopardize their constitutional immortality, a feeling that somehow it was tied up with cause of high taxes. I think one of the things that caused it to be defeated so badly was it came right after the hundred-percent assessment, and people somehow mixed it all up with more taxes. It was just not a good time for innovation in that kind of governmental matter. Breathitt himself, probably his own popularity was beginning to ebb some. Some people like Marlow Cook, who had participated in it, when they thought it was going to become a political issue in the next governor’s race, turned on it and—and abandoned it.Hellard:When, in your judgment, did the Jefferson County Democratic
organization—or the Democratic organization—really had—start to disintegrate?:When they lost the election of 1961 and were out of power.
Hellard:What were the reasons behind that loss?
:Primarily, their nomination of William S. Milburn for mayor at a time when
there was a great movement among the blacks for open housing or public accommodation ordinance, and Milburn came out strongly for segregation and the blacks deserted the Democrats in droves, and Milburn was not a very attractive candidate and Cook and Cowger were. And you know, she was aging, that style of politics was beginning to get a little out of date. And it took the Democrats probably six, seven years to build themselves back from the grassroots.Hellard:Had Miss Lennie infused, you know, younger people within their
organization or the—like , did it stay pretty much stagnant?:Fairly stagnant. She had her own inner circle which are all about her age or
little bit younger. How long we been talking?Hellard:About an hour and a half. Want to quit?
:I’m getting a little tired.
Hellard:All right, that’s fine. This is—is the end of side two, tape eighteen.
[end of interview]
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