News & Reviews
Keel and Coup will be featured on A Word on Words with John Seigenthaler on Sunday, September 29th at 10:30am.
This same show will be re-broadcast on NPT 2 on Friday, October 4th at 9pm. This can be found on a digital tuner at 8.2, or on Comcast 241.
The podcast will then be available on iTunes/word on words/Keel Hunt as a free download, and it will be available at wnpt.org/wow where it will be archived.
On Wednesday morning, Jan. 17, 1979, Republican Gov.-elect Lamar Alexander was enjoying a brief respite from his five-year quest; he was sitting in his campaign offices on Hobbs Road, working on his speech for Saturday, when he, his wife, Honey, family, friends and supporters would celebrate the long, sole-wearing journey they had taken to Nashville.
And then U.S. Attorney Hal Hardin called and ruined his day.
And it was not just Lamar Alexander’s day that Hardin ruined. “It was the worst day of my life,” Honey has said of the next several hours that led to Alexander being sworn in by Justice Joe Henry in the Supreme Court chambers just before 6 that evening.
Keel Hunt, a former reporter and longtime media and public relations consultant, has just published a book, “Coup,” about that day when the Democratic leadership of the state legislature, the Democratic leadership of the state’s judiciary, the Democratic attorney general and the Democratic U.S. attorney determined that the only way to prevent one of the worst political scandals in Tennessee’s history from spiraling out of control was to prematurely oust Democratic Gov. Ray Blanton and swear in the young Republican Lamar Alexander. John Seigenthaler wrote the foreword, and on Friday hosted Hunt, Alexander and Hardin for a rare public review of that day.
Hunt starts his epilogue: “Among the principals, there were no further meetings on the subject, ever.” As Hardin said at the Friday event, it is not an event to celebrate.
But it is certainly an event that we should remember and take heed of.
When Alexander beat Knoxville banker Jake Butcher to win the governor’s race, Tennessee Democrats were in the midst of losing control of the state. After more than 50 years of dominance, voters had elected two Republican senators, Howard Baker (elected in 1966) and Bill Brock (elected in 1970, but Jim Sasser won the seat back for Democrats in 1976), and Democrats had just lost the governor’s office for the second time in eight years.
Though not panicked, Democrats were of little mind to cooperate with these new Republicans who were in the process of wresting away the lucrative relationships that come with entrenched political power.
Yet faced with the naked acts of Blanton and his staff, who were engaged in a “pay-for-pardons” scheme that ended up freeing 52 criminals — including several murderers — whose parole had been denied, the Democratic leadership, Lt. Gov. John Wilder, House Speaker Ned McWherter and Attorney General William Leech agreed with Hardin, a fast-rising Democrat appointed U.S. attorney by President Jimmy Carter, that Tennessee faced the prospect that Blanton could “empty the penitentiary” with his scheme. Already, the FBI had arrested three Blanton staffers for corruption, though Blanton was not indicted after a December 1978 appearance before the grand jury.
In a remarkable turn of events, these leaders came together, debated heatedly about their constitutional rights and obligations and concluded that Tennessee demanded more of them than partisan politics.
Justice Henry was pulled from his recuperative bed; Honey Alexander dug out the family bible; and Alexander took the oath that evening. Welcome to the mansion.
At Friday’s event in the Seigenthaler Center, Alexander was asked how the abrupt beginning of his term had affected his governorship.
“Though it would be difficult on the country, I wish that all political leaders had that experience of a six-hour boot camp with the opposing party,” he said. “I did not know Hal (Hardin), Ned (McWherter), John (Wilder) or Bill (Leech) other than by reputation before that day, but we worked through the most difficult problem we would face.”
Alexander became the first Tennessee governor to serve consecutive terms, and he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2002.
We are fortunate to have the opportunity to hear firsthand from those who lived through the dramatic twists and turns of governance, and to read their accounts from the skilled hands of journalists such as Keel Hunt.
We say that we study and remember history so that we do not have to experience the same tortured process to learn its lessons and avoid repeating mistakes.
That is what we say …
Sunday July 21, 2013
The Tennessean
Written by Frank Daniels III
Click here for original story on tennessean.com
The late Lt. Gov. John Wilder once described it as “impeachment, Tennessee style.”
Keel Hunt’s new book calls the events surrounding Sen. Lamar Alexander’s swearing in to the Tennessee governor’s office in 1979 “the coup.”
John Seigenthaler, chairman emeritus of The Tennessean, hosted a panel discussion of Hunt’s book, which is titled “Coup,” at Vanderbilt University’s John Seigenthaler Center. The panel included Alexander, Hunt and former U.S. Attorney Hal Hardin, who was the first to advise Alexander to take office early on Wednesday, Jan. 17, 1979.
The recently released book tells the story of the cash for pardons scandal that compelled Alexander, who would go on to serve two terms as governor and eventually be elected to the U.S. Senate, to take the governor’s oath of office three days early. Government officials, namely Hardin, learned that then Gov. Ray Blanton, a Democrat, planned to pardon dozens of criminals in his last few days of office.
“It was a stunning moment in the history of this state,” Seigenthaler said on Friday night to the more than one hundred people who attended the discussion.
“Coup: The Day the Democrats Ousted Their Governor, Put Republican Lamar Alexander in Office Early, and Stopped a Pardon Scandal,” the book’s full title, focuses on the bi-partisan collaboration between Alexander, a Republican, and state Democrats to keep the criminals Blanton intended to pardon, which included murderers and rapists, behind bars.
Hunt conducted 163 interviews over more than five years to piece the story together.
Several days before Alexander and his collaborator’s unprecedented actions, Blanton had already pardoned 52 men.
Hardin called Alexander on Jan. 17, informing him of the existence of a second list of men the governor intended to pardon. By 5:55 p.m., Alexander was the new governor of Tennessee.
Saturday July 20, 2013
The Tennessean
Written by Caleb Whitmer
Click here for the original story on tennessean.com
Coup was featured on Talk of the Town, “Summer Reading”. To see a video of the broadcast, please go here.
Keel Hunt spent two and a half years, during which he conducted over 150 interviews, researching the 1979 takeover which removed corrupt Tennessee Governor Ray Blanton from office, three days early. The result isCoup: The Day the Democrats Ousted Their Governor, Put Republican Lamar Alexander in Office Early, and Stopped a Pardon Scandal, an in-depth examination of the days leading up to the event. Hunt, a speechwriter, public affairs consultant and former reporter, spoke with PW about his research methods and the elements he feels are necessary for a great story.
What was your research process for this book?
[It entailed] a lot of digging in libraries, photo files, and newspaper morgues, and of course asking for, and scheduling, the many personal interviews. Most of the interview were face-to-face, and some [were over the phone]. At one point in the writing, the biggest challenge turned out to be how to organize the story. I re-organized the manuscript several times and finally settled on a structure that interlaces chapters about how the day unfolded with profiles of the main characters telling their personal and political histories. I think the book reads like a novel–a nonfiction novel.
Essentially, what occurs in Coup is bucking policy for the protection of the state. As you say in the book, “Nobody wanted to do this.” Do you think in similar circumstances today, the fear would be the same?
The peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the next is so central to our constitutional government in this country. Disrupting that tradition was one of the chief worries of the collaborators in the Coup, but how they worked through their long day was fundamentally a great testament to the rule of law. Whether elected officials in the very same offices would do the same today, in our hyper-partisan political environment, is, I think, one of the great questions this story raises.
You chose to publish Coup with Vanderbilt University Press. Why were they were the right publisher for the job?
I had been working on this project for maybe a year when, in April 2012, there was a well-attended retrospective program on the Vanderbilt campus about the Blanton ouster that occurred 33 years earlier. The moderator was my former editor John Seigenthaler, and he mentioned during the program that I was writing a book on the subject. There were maybe 300 people in the room. Literally the next morning, Michael Ames, director of the Vanderbilt University Press, called me asking to see the manuscript. It’s been a pleasure working with Michael and his team at the Press.
One of the political endeavors of Lamar Alexander was to walk across Tennessee, to get to know the people whose vote he asked for. Do you think such a move would be as successful today?
Possibly it could, and I think it would be healthy for the system if more candidates would try it. Otherwise, it’s so easy today for candidates to become overwhelmed by the unending news cycles and the quick-response impulse that social media especially drives. It gets to be such a superficial world they’re working in that the loss of contact with real constituents is the first casualty. Meeting voters face-to-face is the way to stay grounded.
What was the most challenging part of rebuilding the past, and bringing it to life?
I felt it was important to dig deeply enough into the memories of the participants still living, including politicians and journalists, and also of the families and friends of those who have died since 1979. The 163 interviews then created the challenge of organizing all that information so that the story would be understandable. It’s a very layered story, weaving in biographies of the main actors, so I knew it would be easy to wind up with a jumble of timelines and flashbacks. I think the final structure avoids that in a way that’s fun to read.
How important is it to be fearless, when retelling a true story and shaping it into a book?
I certainly felt the burden of needing to get the story right. From my own training as a journalist (in school and also at the Nashville newspaper years ago) I knew the importance of getting the maximum amount of information but then being able to sort and distill and understand all that data. There was definitely a point in the process where I felt I was getting to the center or the truth of the story.
What do you believe is the most important element of story?
I feel any great novel or work of nonfiction will yield lessons or truths about humanity. I have felt the full story of this American coup was a tale worth telling, chiefly because it is a true case study of leadership – of senior elected officials in our country who put principle over partisanship in an extraordinary moment. There could not be a better time than the present for Americans, especially elected officials, to remember that.
July 1, 2013
Publisher’s Weekly
By Paige Crutcher
Click here for the original story on publishersweekly.com
BookManBookWoman in Nashville, TN has exclusive signed First Edition copies of Coup this month.
Parking at BookmanBookWoman is free all day Saturday and Sunday, free on weekdays. and free after 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, at Cornerstone Financial on the corner of 21st Avenue and Blakemore.
BookmanBookwomanKeel was interviewed on Inside Politics with Pat Nolan on Friday, June 21. To watch a video of the interview, click here.
[NASHVILLE, TN] Copies of COUP, the eagerly awaited insider’s account of a secret bipartisan plot to remove a governor, are now in stock at the publisher’s warehouse and are being distributed to booksellers and libraries. COUP: The Day the Democrats Ousted Their Governor, Put Republican Lamar Alexander in Office Early, and Stopped a Pardon Scandal by Nashvillian Keel Hunt, with a foreword by John L. Seigenthaler, is published by Vanderbilt University Press.
This is a story about men of different political parties who found ourselves in a place none of us wanted to be and how we worked together over a few hours to do something unprecedented but necessary that none of us wanted to do. What fascinates me 34 years later is how much I did not know about what had happened until I read Keel Hunt’s book.
--Lamar Alexander, U.S. Senator
There was a time when government was willing to act. Keel Hunt was a key player on one such occasion in Tennessee and tells the story with elegance and precision. This book tells about government doing what’s needed–quickly, without hand-wringing and without seeking partisan advantage. Every elected official in America should read it.