John Jay Hooker - Later Life

Later Life

Hooker served as chairman of STP Corporation from 1973 to 1976. In 1976 he entered the Democratic Primary for Brock's U.S. Senate seat and was at first perhaps favored to win the nomination, but was defeated by the previously-little-known Jim Sasser for the nomination. (Sasser was well known by Tennessee Democratic insiders, however, as the manager of the last, unsuccessful campaign of Albert Gore Sr. six years earlier. Sasser defeated Brock in November and went on to serve three terms in the Senate.)

In 1979, Hooker arranged for the sale of The Tennessean newspaper to Gannett, which had earlier purchased the Banner but preferred to own morning rather than evening papers. At the same time, his own investment group purchased the Banner from Gannett (the two papers were linked by a joint operating agreement) and Hooker became publisher of the very paper that had so tormented him only nine years earlier. In retrospect, he has called this perhaps the greatest single moment of his life. Hooker, however, sold his portion of the Banner in 1982 and became chairman for a period of United Press International, the historical but faltering competitor to the Associated Press in the wire-service news business.

Hooker's fortunes seemed to ebb and flow in the 1980s. At one point, he became rather prosperous again. He promoted a new fast food chain, named for himself, which sold hamburgers from small, drive-by only buildings, operating this venture from 1984 to 1986 before selling it, for $3 million. One of these outlets was built in the Nashville area and several in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. He remained friends with many prominent persons, however, including former heavyweight boxer Muhammad Ali and became friends with H. Ross Perot. Hooker always claimed to have been the first and primary counselor in Perot's decision to run for President of the United States in 1992.

Hooker began to file to run for various political offices including governor, Senator, Congressman, and others, for the purpose of acquiring the legal standing to sue all of these persons running for the office for taking campaign contributions from "out of state" contributors, which according to his legal theories were both illegal and unconstitutional, and Hooker continues to bring lawsuits in that regard down through the early part of the 21st century. In 1995 he even sued President Bill Clinton, as well as all of the other presidential candidates, for accepting certain campaign contributions, which according to his theory were unconstitutional. He sued the Tennessee Supreme Court, saying that their elections under the "Modified Missouri Plan" were unconstitutional, eventually forcing them to recuse themselves from their own case and require the empanelment of a special State Supreme Court to hear the charges. (This panel dismissed Hooker's claims.) Although his later campaigns were basically efforts to draw attention to the amount of money which came into Tennessee politics from "out of state" and its alleged corrupting influence, he unexpectedly received the 1998 Democratic nomination for governor. No other prominent Democrat had filed to opposed incumbent Republican governor Don Sundquist, and Hooker defeated a field of other "token" candidates as well as the supposedly "serious" candidate with union backing, Mark Whitaker, who was the selected "sacrificial lamb" of the party leadership.

Hooker won the nomination based on tremendous name recognition among older Democrats, who are in Tennessee generally the most reliable primary voters. He ran best in the rural areas and with urban blacks, who had always provided him with a core support group. While not formally disavowing him, the regular Democratic Party organization did almost nothing to promote his candidacy, and Hooker had disavowed the formal fundraising process as unethical and immoral. Hooker received about 30 percent of the vote in the November general election. At this time Governor Sundquist had a 72 percent approval rating. Hooker remains a political activist, running for Congress in 2002 and again suing all his opponents, and then for Chancery Court judge in 2004 as an Independent against Chancellor Claudia Bonnyman and sued her for taking campaign contributions from lawyers who practice in her court, which lawyers attended fundraisers held by her where she, according to Hooker, gave them food and drink prohibited by Article X Section 3 of the Tennessee Constitution.

In 2006 Hooker filed to run for the Democratic nomination for both governor of Tennessee and United States Senator. Despite refusing to raise or spend any money in these efforts, Hooker nonetheless finished third in the senatorial primary and second in the gubernatorial primary held on August 3.