Prichard:—and I had close ties with them.
Hellard:Tape—side two, tape twenty.
Prichard:And those ties have continued, but it’s, you know, my ties with Ford
aren’t as close, but I—I—yes, I was close to Wendell, and I was—always liked Jean, his wife, very much. Always thought she was a very decent, modest—not using modest in the sense of being shy or anything—but a very unpretentious, wholesome, decent person. And really there’s a lot about Wendell to like. I don’t think he’s totally honest. I think he’s got a shady side to him. You can look at his financial statements and see that, or you can look at what the papers brought out about the grand jury and see it. And I’ve told you before, that story, haven’t I?Hellard:I don’t think so.
Prichard:Well, I’ll wait till we get to him, then, and tell it, when he was
governor. I know the whole story.Hellard:Let me go back to—to Louie Nunn’s ability to get votes from the
Democrats, and ask you about—about two specific individuals—one of whom I think had his political career substantially hurt by voting for that, which was Bill Cox, our friend from Madisonville.Prichard:I’m not sure that Bill didn’t think it was worse than it was. If Bill
had kept his mouth shut about it—if Bill had kept his mouth shut about it and hadn’t gone around saying, “Oh, it’ll ruin me,” it wouldn’t have had that much effect. I always thought that Bill, you know, the trouble with Bill is, he’s so self-conscious, so thin-skinned. You know, he just knew this grand jury was going to indict him, for instance, just knew it. And I told him all the time they weren’t. Now, you know the story. Bill—there was a community college approved by the Council on Higher Education for Madisonville. Question was would it be funded? And—and Louie Nunn called him in there and told him, “No—no—no vote on the sales tax, no c—no—no college.” Well, my opinion is if Cox had defied him, Nunn wouldn’t have had the guts to stop it, but anyhow, that was—that was it. Now, who else?Hellard:Carroll Hubbard.
Prichard:Well, yeah, well Carroll didn’t vote with him, finally, as it works.
Carroll was just humiliated. I mean, Carroll, when he—I believe he was elected to the senate that year, wasn’t he?Hellard:Yes, sir.
Prichard:And he was—he went down there, he had a lot of—there were a lot of
Democrats on the payroll down in Graves County and Carroll was doing what he always does, trying to make a little hay with them. And he’d go to Nunn and say, “Now, Governor, if you’ll keep this ’un on, if you’ll keep that ’un on, I’ll promise to stand by you when you need me,” and all that. And so, ’course, he didn’t know exactly what was going to happen then [Hellard laughs], and the sales tax issue came up, and Hubbard went in there and knelt on his knees, literally, in front of Nunn and said, “Oh, Governor, I just can’t do this, I just can’t do it.” And finally Nunn just turned to him contemptuously and says, “You son of a bitch, get out of here. I don’t want to ever see you again.”Hellard:Were there any other legislators who agonized over that vote that you
know about?Prichard:Well, I don’t recall any that did. ’Course it destroyed some of them.
It destroyed Pearl Strong, or whatever his name was. It destroyed Cliff Ladder. It destroyed, in a way, Lawrence Wetherby. ’Course Lawrence didn’t have any further ambitions.Hellard:Going back to J. R., you said that you—you probably was more—more
assistance to J. R. than Wendell during this time ( )Prichard:Well, that’s ’cause J. R. was running the party, and, you know, I
was—Wendell was up there. I was probably more assistance to Julian than I was to Wendell. Julian was speaker and, of course, he and Cox were very close and I did, you know, did a lot of things to help Julian in those days. And Wendell and I got along all right. I wasn’t—don’t mean that. But most of the things I did to help him I did by helping J. R.Hellard:What kind of things?
Prichard:Oh, I don’t know, work on speeches, legislation, things of that sort. I
don’t know. No dramatic things, mostly working on matters concerning party organization.Hellard:Well, during that first and second legislative session of Nunn’s, th—was
there a Democratic platform or Democratic program or a Democratic agenda put forth?Prichard:Not really, uh-uh.
Hellard:What—what do you attribute that to? Was it disarray and trying to get reorganized?
Prichard:Well, in what issues were they going? You know, they tried that
consumer bill of Terry’s and of course they couldn’t get unanimity on it. And it’s awful hard for a party out of power to do that affirmative thing you’re talking about. It pert near takes a governor to—you know, it’s easy to mobilize a party out of power for negative things. And of course there were things like—yes, I worked with them on things like strengthening the LRC, we didn’t—we had some legislation on that time to do that—Hellard:That’s interesting—
Prichard:—or talk—
Hellard:—the interim committees, rewriting—
Prichard:—interim committees—
Hellard:—the rules—
Prichard:—that’s all those things I’ll—
Hellard:—redefining jurisdictions—
Prichard:—I worked with them on those things, yeah. On the interim committees
and the committee systems, strengthening the LRC and legislative audit—I guess that came in the Nunn, but—yeah.Hellard:Was there every any doubt from the time Wendell Ford was elected that he
would be a candidate for governor?Prichard:Why, I never had any doubt about it.
Hellard:And did he start right away building his organization, his campaign?
Prichard:Well, I don’t know. Yes, he did, in a way. J. R. did. J. R. did more of
it than Wendell, but Wendell— But you see, J—Wendell left a general impression of weakness during the tenure as lieutenant-governor as far as issues and so forth, you know. He was very careful not to jump on Nunn very much and he was very cautious about that. And of course, the Demo—a lot of the Democrats thought there should’ve been a more vigorous leadership, you know, that would take Nunn on on some of these things. And Wendell, you know, left an impression among a lot of Democrats of being a kind of a scissorbill or a weakling, not having much leadership. And Wendell hadn’t developed his ability to make these demagogic, rabble-rousing speeches that he has now. And so, you know, there was a—so that when Combs got in the race in 1971, the preponderant opinion was that he was a cinch.Hellard:The only issue I remember Ford taking any—any strong stand on was the
time issue—Prichard:Uh-huh.
Hellard—extension to the daylight—daylight—
Prichard:Hmm.
Hellard:—savings time.
Prichard:Yeah, well, you know that’s not that momentous. But Wendell—Wendell’s
general line was that he had earned the right to be governor by being lieutenant-governor and by being a wailing wall for all the Democrats that wanted to—to cry about Nunn’s mistreatment, but he had not been a vigorous leader on issues.Hellard:Sounds a little bit like Martha Layne Collins.
Prichard:Well, it—it was. Of course, hell, he was her mentor. Why wouldn’t he be
like her?Hellard:Well, I mean—
Prichard:She’s like him.
Hellard:—the way she’s developed, the way she has conducted her—her tenure as
lieutenant-governor and—Prichard:Uh-huh.
Hellard:—and the things that she’s saying that entitle her to be lieutenant-governor.
Prichard:That is right, that’s exactly Wendell’s—he—she copied Wendell. The
difference was, though, that Wendell did have some people around him that were capable of manning a government, people like King and West—Wester and—and Bradshaw and Fleming and she hadn’t got them. But Wendell was generally regarded as shallow in those days, more so than he is today. You know, he hadn’t developed the great constituencies—he had the Jaycees, that was his biggest constituency. But you know, he didn’t have the—the—today he has as his constituencies business, labor, coal people. He’s learned a great deal politically, don’t know that he has morally or intellectually, but he has politically.Hellard:Who were some of the outstanding legislators during that—that period? Or
were there any outstanding legislators from that period?Prichard:Well, the ones that I can think—
Hellard:I’m talking about the Nunn years.
Prichard:Well, Frymeyer was a right respected fellow. Curlen was a fairly
well-respected person then, much more than he is now.Hellard:He always impressed me as being a genuine person.
Prichard:Who?
Hellard:Bill Curlen.
Prichard:Yeah, I always liked Bill. But Bill has been discredited—
Hellard:Yeah.
Prichard:—you know, now.
Hellard:I hear it.
Prichard:But let’s see, who else was in the legislature then that I can think of
that of— Well, you know, when Sonny Hunt first came to the legislature, he was a reformer and was kind of respected, and the legislature corrupted him. And I’ve always thought his affair with Ann Shirley was a part of it, but— And you remember, he had to resign from the House and we—the state committee nominated Joe Clark.Hellard:Joe Clark. He resigned to go to work for a firm outside of Kentucky, I think.
Prichard:Kentucky Fried Chicken. Hell, he had a chief’s hat on. Went to Virginia
in a very minor capacity—had to get out of the state. Brooks was about half crazy and was threatening to sue him and expose him.Hellard:Was that over the girl?
Prichard:Yeah, over Ann Shirley. Now, what—trying—trying to think who were some
of the other legislators then, you know, that had great— You know, there was Freddie Morgan, but nobody had much respect for him. He was damned able, but nobody had any—thought he had any principles. He was a money man. Who was the other representative from Paducah?Hellard:Well, George Harris represented Portsmouth, didn’t he?
Prichard:Well, later. George was a money man. Naw, there was some kind of a
boy—kind of a fool that was elected and he beat a pretty strong fellow. Now, who— Maybe he beat Freddie Morgan—no, he didn’t beat Freddie. I’m trying to think of his name, he was kind of a jackass. Well, I’ll tell you a fellow that had some respect among people then and was a pretty good legislator was Johnny Hardin from Christian County.Hellard:Yes.
Prichard:Hmm?
Hellard:Yes, I remember Johnny.
Prichard:Johnny Hardin from Christian County. Bert Ed Pollett was reasonable
respected person.Hellard:Of course, in the ’70 session was when Bill Kenton came.
Prichard:Well, Bill—Bill became prominent, respected, yeah, that’s right. Bill
was elected in ’69 and—Hellard:Did things with the lobbyists continue as they had been? That is, did
they still go to the governor’s office?Prichard:Now, what was your first session?
Hellard:Seventy-two.
Prichard:Well, that’s right. And before you was Jim Alexander.
Hellard:Yes.
Prichard:And nobody had any respect for him. What about the lobbyists?
Hellard:During—during the Nunn years, when—did they still go down to the
governor’s office to get their—Prichard:Hell, yes.
Hellard:—interests taken care of or did they—they at that time start coming to
the legislature a little bit?Prichard:Well, they did a little of both, because Nunn didn’t control all the
Democrats, you know, and they had to play it both ways. You know, J. R.—J. R. raised some money for the party that way during the Nunn years. For instance, he raised some money for the coal people by promising them that the Democrats would not promote stricter strip mine legislation and they didn’t. I remember that.Hellard:Well, during this time that Julian Carroll was Speaker of the House,
what kind of Speaker was he?Prichard:Well, I thought pretty good. Julian—Julian knew parliamentary law, he
acquired a pretty good knowledge of state government, he had good rapport with the members. I think, in general, Julian had a pretty high approval rating, I’m talking about among thinking people at that time.Hellard:And of course Terry McBrayer was the House floor—majority leader.
Prichard:Majority leader, and Terry was well respected. Terry was certainly one
of the better legislators in those days, certainly. And you know, in his way, I. C. James was well respected, he wasn’t considered giant exactly, but he was honest and independent. Let’s see, when did Mac Walters come to the Senate?Hellard:Mac, I believe, was there during the Nunn years.
Prichard:I couldn’t remember whether he—
Hellard:I believe he was.
Prichard:Well, if he was there, he was just in the last session. He beat—didn’t
he—did he beat Walter Patrick? Aw, who did he beat? He beat Bob Hardy. You see, the Ford people backed Bob Hardy and Mac Walters beat him, beat him in Shelby County.Hellard:Yes.
Prichard:Probably stole it.
Hellard:Well, during that time, the sales tax was the issue, was it not? That’s
what Ford and Carroll—they announced their f—for the fall campaign really make that the issue.Prichard:Yeah, they didn’t promise to repeal it, though. You know, they didn’t
much make it the issue, they’d just say that proved Nunn was a liar, couldn’t be trusted and—and you know— And Ford finally, after the primary, took position that he’s for taking it off food and I think that helped him a lot in the fall. Course, [Tommy] Emberton immediately followed suit. But that—you know, that gave us a—an opening and I went out, spoke all over the s—different parts of the state and I had a little rhyme, you know, that when Nunn brought Emberton to Frankfort with him, he told him, “Tommy, put the tax on, Tommy, put the tax on, Tommy, put the tax on, we’ll all have tea.” And then when he nominated him for governor, Nunn told him, “Now, go tell them, Tommy, take the tax off, Tommy, take the tax off, Tommy, take the tax off and we’ll all have tea.” And that seemed to make kind of a hit in the campaign. Emberton was generally liked, though. He was a nice fellow. Now, we—we—we haven’t gotten into the Combs-Ford race or any of that yet—Hellard:I don’t think so.
Prichard:—so—and I don’t believe I want to get into that today.
Hellard:Well, why don’t we just stop right here—
Prichard:All right.
Hellard:—and we’ll pick—it’ll be a good point to pick up next time.
[end of interview]
1:00