News & Reviews
Keel Hunt gives us a fascinating account of an important moment in Tennessee history. It’s a story of a time when Tennesseans of both parties came together to resolve a crisis that had rocked the state.
--Fred Thompson, Former U.S. Senator
By Tom Humphrey
While U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander has devoted a lot of time and effort to burnishing his partisan Republican credentials in preparation for next year’s re-election run, he has also been deftly including a history lesson from his background on the value of bipartisanship.
That came on Jan. 17, 1979, when Alexander was sworn into office as governor of Tennessee three days ahead of the announced inauguration day. Democratic Gov. Ray Blanton was removed from office ahead of schedule and thus blocked from granting further end-of-term pardons and paroles to imprisoned criminals.
Knoxville News SentinelA group of generous donors interested in the story has ensured that every Tennessee library, college, and middle and high school receives a copy of a new book about a dramatic event in Tennessee history, 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.
Nashville attorneys Hal Hardin and Lew Conner headed up the donor drive. In the spirit of the story told in the new book—a tale of extraordinary bipartisanship—the diverse donor group includes individuals and families from both sides of the political aisle. COUP, published by Vanderbilt University Press, will go on sale in June, with an official publication date in August.
[NASHVILLE, TN] Coup is the behind-the-scenes story of an abrupt political transition, unprecedented in US history.
This insider’s account of the secret bipartisan plot to remove a governor will be published August 2013
Based on 163 interviews, Keel Hunt describes how collaborators came together from opposite sides of the political aisle. In an extraordinary few hours, they reached agreement that the corruption and madness of the sitting Governor of Tennessee, Ray Blanton, must be stopped. The sudden transfer of power that caught Blanton unawares was deemed necessary because of what one FBI agent called “the state’s most heinous political crime in half a century”—selling pardons for cash.