Sometimes, what an elected official is at the state level is not necessarily what they are at the federal level. As an example, I’ll give you the illustrious Maine Twins. While we had/have no use for Snowe and Collins when both were there, and some said they might as well switch parties, by Mainer standards, neither could win a Democrat primary since the ME Democrats are practically a Stalinist bunch, and the two women are viewed as though they’re Jesse Helms or Sarah Palin (although when Paul LePage got elevated to Governor, one of the best in the nation, that shattered that, since a bonafide actual Conservative hadn’t occupied that office in the modern era).
Where this applies to Baker was that when he came on the scene, he was moving TN’s politics back a bit to the right, at least with respect to our Senators. 2 decades before, up until 1949, the state had two Conservative Democrats occupying both seats, Tom Stewart and Kenneth McKellar (who had been in the Senate since 1917 and the House before that since 1911, when Taft was President, and like Fred Thompson, was a native Alabaman). McKellar had been around so long that he probably could’ve been considered an old Bourbonite who politically came of age during the first Cleveland term and was still around for the cusp of Eisenhower.
McKellar would probably be at home in the Tea Party today (to some degree, at least). He didn’t like the TVA being a government-owned entity and wanted it sold (what was always bizarre to me was that his colleague, the Socialist Republican from Nebraska, George W. Norris, was obsessed with the TVA and pushing for it. Why a Nebraska Senator was so concerned over Tennessee’s affairs, I have no idea. One of the main TVA dams and lakes is named for Norris).
With the left-wing FDR disciples taking over the TN Democrat party and away from the old Boss Crump of Memphis, who mightily controlled the party for years, they had big targets in McKellar and Stewart. Elected in 1938 & 1939, respectively, were the young thirtysomethings Estes Kefauver from Chattanooga and Albert Gore, Sr. in the adjacent rural district to the northwest (ostensibly from Carthage by way of the tiny hamlet of Granville on the Cumberland). Kefauver decided to take the first lead to depose Sen. Stewart in 1948, which he was successful in doing, and was soon thrust into the national limelight. McKellar, by then, was in his 80s and became the President Pro Tempore of the Senate (which had him one rung closer to the Presidency during Truman’s first term).
Most states would’ve been proud to have and keep McKellar in a powerful position, but with a now forty-something Congressman Gore watching as Kefauver jumped ahead of him to the Senate, despite having a smidge more seniority, he decided to go for the brass ring in 1952, campaigning partly on the issue against privatizing TVA. At 83, it was hard for McKellar to outhustle the Old Gray Fox, who would’ve sold his soul for power (actually, he did, to Armand Hammer). The irony, too, was that Gore lived in some fancy hotel in DC, where Junior grew up, born during his time in the House in DC, and not Tennessee (I always surmised Junior affected his accent, which should’ve sounded no more “Southern” than Pat Buchanan).
With the defeat of McKellar and Stewart, two old-guard types, our poor state was saddled with two egomaniacs who coveted the Presidency with an almost unequaled ferocity. Both battled for the VP slot in 1956, with it going to Kefauver (I think even the Dems were put off by Gore, Sr’s rabidness, his pursuit to get the slot now the stuff of legend). Curiously, both managed to get the jump on a certain young Senator from Massachusetts, who was also jockeying for the slot. Mind you, none of them likely believed Ike would be defeated, it was all about who would get the slot for 1960. As far as I know, I don’t think JFK even considered either of them for 1960 to be #2, preferring the more subdued Stuart Symington of Missouri (only having to take that certain fella from Texas, whom they still couldn’t believe wanted the job).
Both Gore and Kefauver had to be mindful of the fact that TN was beginning to slip away from the Democrats at the Presidential level (although my state was fairly solidly Democrat, unusual as an ex-Confederate state, it had a solid Republican bloc in the Eastern counties (and some western TN River counties) going back to Reconstruction that held even after, and could serve as a good base for if the old Confederate counties in Middle & West TN were to soften up). Even in the 1920s, the GOP made gains and voted for Harding in 1920 and Hoover in 1928 (though it went for West Virginian Davis in 1924 over Coolidge). The Depression wiped out the gains, of course. By 1952 and even in 1956 with Kefauver on the ticket, the state went for Eisenhower. Kefauver, unbeknownst to him, ran his last Senate race in 1960 and was surely disappointed to see TN go with Nixon.
Gore, Sr., however, was already unpopular enough with the Conservatives that they recruited ex-Gov. Prentice Cooper (father of my current Congressman Jim Cooper) to challenge Gore in the 1958 primary, which turned into a fiasco (Cooper ran as a segregationist hardliner, which didn’t go over well — and made Sr. look like a pro-Civil Rights type, which was also not quite so). With Kefauver’s death in 1963 and seeing his own national ambitions to be President evaporated, Gore, Sr. was terrified at the GOP lurch in TN. Kefauver’s old House seat went Republican in 1962 with Bill Brock (his grandfather had briefly served as a Democrat Senate appointee in the 1920s opposite McKellar), after the Democrats decided to purge Kefauver’s successor, a Conservative Dem, Jim Frazier, sitting in the seat for a JFK liberal (whose own father had also once been Senator).
Making a play for at least two other House seats, as well as both Senate seats in 1964, to try to go for an outright majority, Gore, Sr., the “great racial moderate” decided to turn into a rabid hard-line seg to make George Wallace blush. Not only voting against the 1964 Civil Rights Act, but filibustering it as well, he tossed his Black supporters under the bus in an appeal for the ultra-redneck vote. It momentarily worked in defeating Memphis GOP Conservative Dan Kuykendall, but the sympathy vote for JFK/LBJ was more likely the reason that Gore and Ross Bass were carried across (LBJ getting 56% in TN, Nixon having gotten 53% in 1960, with a substantial % of the Black vote).
With Howard Baker’s ascendance in 1966 to the other Senate seat, he looked to be the ethical and decent alternative to the old pol Gore, Sr. (now closing in on 3 decades in federal office). One of the liberal historical myths pushed by the revisionist media is portraying Gore, Sr. as that great Civil Rights leader (more to bolster Junior) while ignoring that he totally shredded whatever credibility he had on the subject in 1964. By 1970, he was in big trouble, having tried going back to being a “big liberal” again now that the left held sway in the primary. Conservatives didn’t trust him, Blacks were very wary of him. He came within a hair’s breadth of losing renomination, and Bill Brock finished the job in November.
Add to the fact that in the 1970s, TN Democrats were rife with corruption, and it made Baker look like a tower of moral rectitude, locally and nationally (his 1972 opponent was none other than Ray Blanton, who later defeated Lamar! for Governor in 1974, and proceeded to turn his office into arguably the most criminal in the nation by selling pardons and other chicanery. The Dem Speaker of the House, frantic of the damage Blanton was doing, and worried he would pardon hardened criminals en masse in his last week in office, swore in Lamar! early in 1979). Lamar!’s opponent in 1978 was banker Jake Butcher (and friend of Jimmy Carter’s who helped to bring the World’s Fair to Knoxville in 1982), who himself would later go to prison.
With all of this going on with TN Democrats, it’s easy to see why Baker was revered and appeared to be the bulwark against the corruption (along with his performance during the Watergate schtick). Whatever his more liberal inclinations were on the national scene and privately, it never shook his standing in TN (although taking a closer glance at TN and where we were in the early ‘80s as a party, you begin to see the cracks showing, as the party’s leaders were statist and old, and our standing was below that pre-Watergate. Our three leading federal members in 1984 were Baker (elected in 1966), Rep. Jimmy Quillen (elected 1962) & John Duncan (1964), with the only other being freshman Don Sundquist (who had barely beaten Bob Clement for a Middle-West TN seat that was heavily GOP).
The state legislative class wasn’t much to speak of, either. When it came time for someone to step up and run for Baker’s seat, Lamar! outright refused, leaving a hapless Baker flunkie and legislator, Victor Ashe (future Knoxville Mayor and Dubya’s Ambassador to Poland), who was obliterated by then-Congressman Gore, Jr., running as a “moderate” in those days (but soon positioning himself to jump into the 1988 Presidential race to avenge his father, who was still alive then). The Dems in the ‘80s in TN had the younger blood and more go-getter types (Gore, Jr., Jim Cooper, elected at 28 over Howard Baker’s daughter Cissy in 1982, Bob Clement, Harold Ford, Sr., et al). The state was drifting back to the Dems because of the GOP atrophy, and by 1987 (to last until 1995), we reached a nadir unequaled since the 1950s, with the Dems in control of everything (save the Presidential vote, and that fell in 1992 with the Bush, Sr-Perot split).
Anyway, as you can see, I temper my remarks on Baker, and he was part of a much larger story of the time. While I would have preferred more hard-charging Conservatism on his part with an eye towards recruiting and growing a farm team of future players, the situation we faced in TN in that era made these characters a little more heroic than they should’ve been, especially looking at them via what we face at present (and this state was badly in need in ridding it of the corruption of the good ole boy Democrat system — much in the way we need to rid it of the GOP establishment statism and corruption now). Yes, we could’ve and should’ve done better, and some of the mishaps set us back 2 decades (and with the legislature, 4 decades), but it is what it is. Baker and his ilk were the good guys then, now not so much.
The building of Norris was another matter. Norris Dam was originally basically built to get more electrical power into Knoxville. It's completion was 1936 IIRC. But with the dam came the town of Norris then hose of a number of TVA Offices. It was supposed to be the modern model city and it was federally owned to start out with. City of Norris {a high school, post office, store, and gas station, at that time} had electricity. The persons living along the main highway US 441 running from Norris Dam to Knoxville was not allowed power. TVA claimed it would spoil the scenic quality. I'm talking persons living a half mile out of Norris all the way to Knoxville. After WW2 a local vet began a campaign to get electricity ran up the highway into rural homes near Norris. He had to write congressmen and senators to accomplish it. Power was finally ran in the late 1940's early 1950's to those and other homes. You won't find that history anywhere it was one of my family members involved.
Norris Lake and the boundaries of it including several dikes upstream up stream of the main dam were Civilian Conservation Corps built. Perhaps that can explain the Nebraska senators big interest. Even the high school was named for him and the graduates called Senators. Senator Snipe hows that? LOL. Lot's of supply contracts including huge cans of food, tools, and other goods were purchased. Lot's of money changed hands.
Norris Dam four years later would become a huge local player in the Manhattan Project and also considered a big risk. It's about 20 miles upstream of modern day Oak Ridge.
The War Dept became concerned that an enemy spy could come in and put together an attack using a stolen plane out of Knoxville loaded with explosives and fly into the dam causing a major flood at Oak Ridge. There are old gun placement foundations below the dam for about 2 miles and about a mile downstream a tower and cable still stretch across the river. It was used by the Army to take a hand powered cart across the river to relieve the gunners on watch on the bluff.
FDR's New Deal propaganda in this region was built on a lie portraying very self sufficient people who had been in the region before the nations founding as backward stupid poverty stricken peasants.
If a person understands what they are looking for they can go into the places where TVA bought the communities up and find factories, schools, stores, gas stations, you name it. The Powell and Clinch Rivers were well established thriving communities. It was one of the main water routes and lead to within a few miles of the Cumberland Gap Trail. When the dam was built it cut off a large portion of those communities.
Don't get me wrong. Everyone welcomed electrical power and understood what it would take to bring it. It was how it was done and kept being done that brought wrath upon TVA.
The last straw for many was the Tellico Lake Project in the 1970's & 80's which they built just because they could. This was also the first court test of The Endangered Species Act. Nobody cared about the snail darter. It was used as a tool to bring a federal agency back into control. TVA for decades had abuses much like the EPA today. They wanted and they took. Why Baker and Duncan pushed the bill we'll likely never know. Up till then the dam project was dead. TVA had conceded it wasn't needed. I do know this though. That land became very high dollar communities and the original owners had land taken away that was not a part of the lake.
Nice history lesson and being a MS native it was educating
Aside from the state intricacies....the South moved to the once hated GOP becuse Dems moved so far left on social issues creating a distinction formerly more gray
McGovern really cemented this and Carters fiasco betrayal
But there were already signs with Ike and Nixon and Barry and Nixon again
My parents were social with the Bakers..dad always said Howard was a lawyer first
Very informative.
Norris was a jag off, profile in courage my eye.