What Bill Clinton Learned from Jim Hunt and Why It Still Matters

It was a beautiful North Carolina spring day in 2000 at the governor’s mansion in Raleigh, and Governor Jim Hunt was sprinting down the giant ruby-red stairs. I was his then-young press aide, and we were running late because he had been on the phone with President Bill Clinton.

Naively, I noted something about their discussing a state issue. Without missing a beat, the governor said of Clinton, his fellow Democrat, “I was telling him what he was doing wrong with the country and how to fix it!”

So began my real education in politics, which I was quickly learning had even more to do with human interactions than I realized.

Last week, Hunt died at 88, a historic figure in North Carolina politics who served 16 years as governor. Appointed governors from the Colonial Era served longer, but no one has yet matched Hunt’s tenure as governor from 1977 to 1985 and again from 1993 to 2001.

The obituaries are full of his accomplishments and his most notable defeat, a 1984 bid to unseat U.S. Senator Jesse Helms. Hunt once told me his TV ads were “all wrong,” which may be true, but that was a bad year to be a Democrat, especially in the South. Ronald Reagan carried the state with almost 62 percent of the vote. Helms got 51 percent.

But I’m drawn to the dynamic between Hunt and Clinton, southern Democratic moderate governors who had to find a policy and political path forward as the South became increasingly Republican in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. They weren’t alone. Democratic southern governors like Ray Mabus in Mississippi, Richard Riley in South Carolina, Roy Barnes in Georgia, and Reuben Askew in Florida had similar dilemmas. They had a common goal, but they were all rivals in a way, too.

Clinton had real indebtedness to Hunt, nine years his senior. Hunt’s advocacy led to him serving as chair of the Democratic Governors Association. Clinton recalled “[I]t was the first significant national position of any kind I had.”

Clinton’s 1992 presidential victory aligned with Hunt’s return to the governor’s seat. Together, they used their bully pulpits in Washington and Raleigh to advance policies that could push the progressive envelope in a conservative era.

In 1997, when Clinton spoke before a joint session of the North Carolina legislature, as part of his crusade for national education standards and a testing plan, he called Hunt a “mentor and friend,” whose work was influenced by Hunt’s labors to create national teaching standards. Indeed, Hunt’s wilderness years outside elective office were spent as founding chair of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, which to date has certified over 141,000 teachers with the profession’s highest credential.

Hunt never missed an opportunity to promote this cause to Clinton, even if it meant being aggressive. A White House staffer once told me that Clinton always insisted on understanding how the federally supported teaching certification program was progressing because Hunt was sure to grill him about it.

Photos of Hunt and Clinton are like a time capsule from a bygone era. For instance, there was a joint announcement of a public-private partnership to bring Internet access to the state (and a bit of a tug-of-war over who should get credit).

There were their combined efforts to pass a “global settlement agreement” between tobacco companies and the feds, which faltered, and later a “master settlement agreement” with the states that was sealed. There was their mutual understanding that education had to start before kindergarten and that it was a winning issue with voters—something New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani latched onto over 30 years after Hunt.

The Clinton-Hunt friendship is a testament to the ideals of intergovernmental relations—that federal and state leaders should cooperate. One area that’s particularly telling about how things have changed is disaster funding. The Clinton years allowed Hunt to boast about securing federal dollars for North Carolina after devastating hurricanes; one wonders how Hunt would navigate President Donald Trump’s truculent withholding of disaster relief.

Just because both men were Democrats didn’t guarantee success. Hunt served as governor during Jimmy Carter’s administration, but that relationship was fraught, with fights over college funding and tobacco, the state’s cash crop.

January will mark a quarter-century since Clinton and Hunt last held elective office. North Carolinians should remember that their bond produced outcomes that benefited the Tar Heel State. So should the rest of us. Their relationship continues to serve as a national model during these divisive times.

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