When James B. Hunt, Jr. died on Dec. 18, mourning in North Carolina for the genial, magnetic and brainy Democrat who served non-consecutive terms as governor was nearly universal.
Hunt, who was 88, was mourned in a moving funeral service in his hometown of Wilson and hailed by political friend and foe alike for what veteran political reporter Jonathan Martin characterized in The New York Times as "a zealous focus on public schools and state colleges, a friendly attitude toward business, and a nose for the middle ground on contentious issues of race and culture."
But Martin also pointed out that Hunt in 1984, having completed two successful terms in the statehouse, ran in a nationally-watched Senate race against one of the Democrats' biggest targets — Jesse Helms, conscience of conservatism in the Senate and a founding father of what was called the "New Right" in American politics.
Had Hunt emerged triumphant over Helms, as Martin noted, "that might have vaulted him toward the presidency."
But it was not to be. With Ronald Reagan sweeping the Tar Heel State with 62%, Helms — following a brass-knuckled campaign linking Hunt to Jesse Jackson and other left-of-center Democrats — secured reelection with 52%.
Hunt returned to private law practice and then reclaimed the governorship in 1992.
But the scenario of the centrist Democrat unseating the "white knight of the right" spawned numerous scintillating "what ifs?"
Would a "Sen. Hunt" run for president in 1988, when voters gave the office to Vice President George H.W. Bush as almost a third term for the popular Reagan, or would he and not Bill Clinton emerge as the centrist Democrat who could win (as Clinton did) in 1992?
Hunt himself told Washington Post columnist David Broder in 1987 that had he been in the Senate, he would probably be running for president.
This led Broder to write that Hunt was so close to what Democrats needed to win in 1988 that "he would surely be one of the favorites at this point."
"Of course, there's no way to know for sure," Carter Wrenn, one of the key strategists in Helms' Senate races, told Newsmax. "But if Hunt had defeated Jesse, he'd have been in a strong position to run for president – probably a stronger position than Clinton when Clinton started his 1992 campaign."
Phil Kirk, past president of the North Carolina Chamber of Commerce and a former GOP state senator, disagreed to some degree with Broder and Wrenn.
In his words, "Hunt actually had a higher national profile because of his leadership on education and especially early childhood education. Clinton probably had a stronger national organization than Hunt."
Clinton accepted out-of-state speaking dates almost immediately after becoming governor of Arkansas at age 33 in 1978 and was inevitably urged by listeners to run for president someday.
Like Hunt and other Southern Democrats, he calculated that a Southern Democrat who abjured the label and rhetoric of liberal would be the party's winning ideal. And his timing—to challenge Bush when the Republican president was dogged by inflation and abandoned by former supporters on the right—was spot on.
No one can truly say whether a "Sen. Hunt" would have been in the Democratic presidential mix in 1988 or 1992 and whether he and not Clinton would have emerged as the nominee. At most, one can conclude that among the cruelest words in politics are "if only" and "what if."
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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