The Wicked Wine of Democracy: A Memoir of a Political Junkie, 1948-1995

7. Revenge in Kentucky

7 REVENGE IN KENTUCKY 88 earle chester clements did not spend much time savoring the great Senate election triumph of 1958. He had a big score to settle back home in Kentucky. The Bluegrass state’s Democratic gubernatorial primary was on May 30, 1959, and there was no time to waste. Clements had been defeated for re-election to the Senate in 1956 by Republican Thruston B. Morton by 7,200 votes out of more than a million cast. Actually, it was Governor Albert B. “Happy” Chandler, a fellow Democrat, who had done Clements in. For decades, the two had been feuding in Kentucky Democratic politics, the political equivalent of the Hatfields and the McCoys. Kentucky Democrats were for one or the other, with little room in between. At the time, Lyndon Johnson was hors de combat with a heart attack, and Clements was acting majority leader in the Senate, a role that limited his usual careful attention to his home state. Chandler had attempted to take advantage by running his handpicked candidate in the primary, but Clements had beat him two to one. Nevertheless, Happy was tenacious. With President Eisenhower running—he was remarkably popular in Kentucky—the general election might be the place to trip up the unsuspecting Clements. It was, and Chandler openly exulted in the political demise of his longtime rival. Chandler, serving his second term as governor (his first was 1935–1939), was ineligible to succeed himself in 1959. His handpicked candidate was his able lieutenant governor, Harry Lee Waterfield, who came from western Ken- revenge in kentucky 89 tucky and had much strength in that Democratic stronghold. Clements’s candidate was the same one Chandler had upset in 1955—Bertram T. Combs, a taciturn “mountain man” from the Big Sandy River country of eastern Kentucky . A shrewd lawyer and highly regarded former judge, Combs nevertheless gave the impression of being fresh out of Butcher Holler. But there was a wild card in the picture—Wilson Wyatt, former mayor of Louisville, President Truman’s housing administrator, and national campaign manager of Adlai Stevenson’s 1952 presidential effort. Wyatt had little chance of being elected despite the support of the Louisville Courier-Journal, but he could be a spoiler. Clements had hired Louis Harris to survey Kentucky ’s Democrats, and the result confirmed what he already knew: if Wyatt stayed in the race, Waterfield would be an easy winner. Wyatt, a wealthy corporation lawyer, had an ego as long and broad as the 400–mile length of Kentucky itself—and he could talk. He stayed outwardly confident that he could use his mellifluous, musical baritone and urbane charm to beat Kentucky ’s political arithmetic. Clements’s dream of revenge depended on dealing Wyatt out. The “Old Coach,” as I called Clements (who in the 1920s had coached Morganfield High School to within a touchdown of the state championship), had more than his share of political guile. He came up with a scheme based on our success with Senate nominees Byrd and Randolph in West Virginia in 1958. Clements reasoned that Wyatt could be induced out of the gubernatorial race and into the lieutenant governor’s contest as Combs’s running mate with a ploy aimed at his ego. Accordingly, our layout artist Rudy Bundas designed a series of billboards and poster and newspaper display ads that featured Combs and Wyatt in portraits of equally heroic size. The slogan or—as I called it, tent-line—was “The Team You Can Trust to Build a Better Kentucky.” In late January, lugging our layouts, I accompanied Clements to Louisville ’s Standiford Field airport, where the two groups were to meet at a nearby motel. The outcome was a foregone conclusion, I thought. As the talks wore on endlessly, Wyatt’s eyes would surreptitiously slip to the posters, undoubtedly imagining them dominating the highways and byways of Kentucky. There is nothing more surefire than appealing to a man’s vanity. What finally emerged was the Combs-Wyatt ticket—Bert for governor and Wilson for lieutenant governor. I thought Wyatt came out of it pretty 90 revenge in kentucky well. The post of lieutenant governor had some authority and carried with it all the trappings—personal staff, a limousine, and even a mansion—and it was the traditional one-term steppingstone to the governorship. Everything in the campaign—staff, headquarters space, advertising—was to be divided equally between...