By Michael Bitzer
News of the passing of former North Carolina Governor Jim Hunt came as I was driving home yesterday. Stuck in rainy traffic on I-85, I had time to reflect on the impact of this titan of North Carolina politics—one of two politicians who shaped not just the final decades of the twentieth century in this state, but whose legacy continues nearly a quarter-century after his last days in elected office.
During the 1960s and 1970s, North Carolina—and the once Solid Democratic South—was undergoing profound political transformation, as were the nation’s two major parties. Unlike many other Southern states (save Tennessee), North Carolina had long experienced a measure of political competitiveness. From the beginning of the twentieth century through its midpoint, the state featured a dominant Democratic Party alongside a meaningful Republican opposition, largely concentrated in the upper northwestern mountain counties and extending into the central Piedmont.
