Terry Sanford - Gubernatorial Career

Gubernatorial Career

Sanford was an assistant director of the Institute of Government of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1946 until 1948, then began a private practice of law in Fayetteville. As a Democrat, Sanford served one term as a state senator (1953–55), and chose not to run for a second term. He ran for governor of North Carolina in 1960, defeating I. Beverly Lake, Sr., Malcolm Buie Seawell, and John D. Larkins in the Democratic primary, and Robert Gavin in the general election. Elected to a single term (as North Carolina governors could not at that time be elected for more than one term), Sanford served from January 1961 through January 1965.

Driven by his belief that a person could accomplish anything with a good education, Sanford nearly doubled North Carolina's expenditures on public schools. He began consolidating the University of North Carolina system to ensure its solvency and strength and oversaw the creation of the North Carolina Community College System. He conceived the idea for the Governor's School of North Carolina, a publicly funded six-week residential summer program for gifted high school students in the state. He established the North Carolina School of the Arts (now University of North Carolina School of the Arts) to keep talented students "in the fields of music, drama, the dance and allied performing arts, at both the high school and college levels of instruction" in their home state. He fought for racial desegregation, and even sent his son to a desegregated public school at a time when such a position was politically unpopular and possibly dangerous. He also established the North Carolina Fund under the leadership of George Esser to fight poverty and promote racial equality across the state. Controversial tax increases were made to finance these educational programs. One such tax, on food, roused much opposition and was decried as regressive by many, including by some of the governor's most loyal supporters. The food tax, nicknamed "Terry's Tax", and other taxes implemented by Sanford diminished his popularity and were heavily criticized by his political opponents.

Governor Sanford was a close political ally of President John F. Kennedy, a fact that disturbed some North Carolina Democrats who were suspicious of Kennedy's Catholicism. According to President Kennedy's personal secretary Evelyn Lincoln, Sanford would have been Kennedy's choice for vice president on the 1964 Democratic ticket, had Kennedy lived. In her 1968 book Kennedy and Johnson she reported that President Kennedy told her that Lyndon B. Johnson would be replaced as Vice President. Lincoln wrote of that November 19, 1963, conversation just three days before Kennedy's assassination:

As Mr. Kennedy sat in the rocker in my office, his head resting on its back he placed his left leg across his right knee. He rocked slightly as he talked. In a slow pensive voice he said to me, 'You know if I am re-elected in sixty-four, I am going to spend more and more time toward making government service an honorable career. I would like to tailor the executive and legislative branches of government so that they can keep up with the tremendous strides and progress being made in other fields ... I am going to advocate changing some of the outmoded rules and regulations in the Congress, such as the seniority rule. To do this I will need as a running mate in sixty-four a man who believes as I do.' ... I was fascinated by this conversation and wrote it down verbatim in my diary. Now I asked, ... 'Who is your choice as a running-mate?' He looked straight ahead, and without hesitating he replied, 'At this time I am thinking about Governor Terry Sanford of North Carolina. But it will not be Lyndon.'

Additionally, Sanford used his leverage with the White House to further expand the Research Triangle Park (RTP), which sparked an economic surge in the state, eventually luring IBM and the United States Environmental Protection Agency to the Triangle area.

Sanford was also a staunch opponent of capital punishment. His "numerous statements against capital punishment were so well known that prisoners on North Carolina’s death row pointedly referred to them in their clemency appeals."

After his term in office ended, Sanford opened a law firm. He had agreed to serve as Lyndon Johnson's campaign manager in 1968 just before Johnson's withdrawal on March 31, but later took over as the campaign manager for the Democratic nominee Hubert Humphrey in his race against Republican Richard Nixon for the presidency. President Johnson wanted Humphrey to pick Sanford as his running mate. On one occasion, the Humphrey campaign asked Sanford if he wanted to be the vice presidential candidate. Sanford declined and Humphrey ultimately picked Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine. Though Sanford received a number of legal and business offers from the private sector during this period, he was interested in a position that would allow him to keep his political prospects open.