The Secrets of the Hopewell Box: Stolen Elections, Southern Politics, and a City's Coming of Age

Rewards of a Long Shot

275 Rewards of a Long Shot From his prison cell in Alabama Tommy Osborn finally witnessed the legislative independence made possible by his triumphant Baker v. Carr lawsuit. By the time he went on trial for jury tampering in the spring of 1963, thirty-six of the fifty states were involved in reapportionment lawsuits. By the end of that year the number had grown to forty-two. Among the discriminatory practices stopped in its wake was Georgia’s unique “unit rule” voting system, a kind of electoral college for congressional primary elections in which the popular votes counted only inside individual counties, so an urban county with three hundred thousand voters had no more say about who went to Congress from the district than a rural county with fifty thousand. By 1966 the equal population rule had affected every legislative seat and congressional district in the nation, and within five years the political map of the country would be totally remade. All over the South reapportionment increased urban represen­ ta­ tion immediately, including more blacks and more Republicans. For the first time urban delegations were able to contest what had previously been cut-and-dried decisions, such as the election of legislative leaders. Nowhere, of course, did this happen more grudgingly or with more drama than inTennessee.In theTennessee GeneralAssembly, the decline in power of the Unholy Triumvirate created a giant vacuum just perfect for the “gorgeous little stooge,” Governor Frank Clement. Into it he promptly stepped in January of 1965, with the intention of naming Jared Maddux, a senator from rural Cookeville, as senate majority leader, or lieutenant governor, as the spot was then called. But the Tennessean, which was active on every front, had been Rewards of a Long Shot James D. Squires 276 instrumental in the formation of a caucus of independent Democrats, which selected its own candidate, a Nashville lawyer named Frank Gorrell. Gorrell was a new-breed politician. Attracted by the glamor and ideals of Camelot, he had stepped into politics from an unlikely stage—the social set of Belle Meade. Gorrell was literally the example frequently cited by the Vanderbilt law professor of the young lawyer who gets hired into the good Nashville law firm because he married the daughter of its best client. In Gorrell’s case it was the family who made Jamison Bedding. A big, gregarious fellow with coal-black hair, swarthy skin, and a barrel chest, Gorrell looked so much like an Italian mafioso that his friends called him “Gorrelli” and accused him of wearing his large horn-rimmed glasses so he would not be mistaken for a nightclub bouncer. But the dashing young Gorrell was more than just a pretty face who had married well. He was streetwise, too, and fun-loving, with a deep, guttural laugh that was infectious with good humor. Everybody liked him. On the evening before the fall Democratic caucus vote, Gorrell threw a party at his fashionable home at which he signed up thirteen of the twenty-five state senate Democrats on a petition. He had enough votes to win, but included among them was another dapper urban state senator, a Memphis bachelor named Charlie O’Brien, who the next day failed to show up, leaving Gorrell and Maddux tied at twelve votes each. Overnight, O’Brien mysteriously disappeared, leaving only a message that he had been taken ill and had gone back to Memphis, where he had been admitted to a hospital and given sedatives for what administering physicians said was a stressful situation. Stressful indeed. Charlie had his mind changed by Governor Frank Clement’s most potent and charming political weapon, his lovely sister Anna Belle, who not only kept O’Brien from voting for Gorrell, but eventually got him appointed a judge and married him. Although Gorrell followed O’Brien to Memphis, found him, and got another pledge of support, O’Brien continued to abstain until The Secrets of the Hopewell Box 277 Governor Clement had cut a deal with the state senate’s eight Republicans. They voted for Maddux and, more important, for the first time since Reconstruction had a say about who would lead the Tennessee legislature. A year later, the indefatigable Gorrell won the post of Senate speaker through some deal making of his own. It was not long until urban independents claimed the speaker’s office of the Tennessee house for the first time since...