AHC: President Hunt

Your challenge is to make North Carolina's 4-term Governor Jim Hunt (1977-1985, 1993-2001) be elected President of the United States.
 
Does he have to serve all four terms first?

If no -- and if you'll forgive the cheap plug :) -- he's certainly on his way to becoming a plausible candidate in Dirty Laundry after defeating Jesse Helms for the North Carolina Senate seat in 1984.

From there, I would envision that he could be a dark-horse candidate for the Democratic nomination in '88 and, if a liberal Northeasterner gets the nomination as per OTL's Dukakis, would certainly be on the vice-presidential shortlist.

I note that Wikipedia lists Hunt as a possible VP in 2000 and 2004, which strikes me as somewhat unlikely.
 
When I read this I thought you meant Arizona's George WP Hunt, co-incidentally our longest serve Governor. Woah :eek:

Jim Hunt ended his 2th term in 1985, so you could have him in 1988 or 1992 as a old school Southern Democrat liberal, someone who couldn't be painted the way Dukakis was OTL. If you wanna go 4 terms, have Gore and Bill Bradley go to a brokered convention, or have Gore make his decision to not run, maybe he'll go back to the Senate or just retire. In the later case I'm not sure if the Dems want another Southern Democratic Governor, although Jim Hunt was apparently not very controversial (morally speaking)

One last idea hit me, Gore could choose Hunt as a VP choice instead of Lieberman, again he would be repeating Clinton in a double Southern ticket, but he might be able to hold as many states as Clinton did in the Deep South. In a terrorist attack Gore is assassinated, and Hunt becomes President. Come 2004 if the economy is relatively decent, and/or Gore died not too long ago, Hunt gets his own term.
 
Does he have to serve all four terms first?

If no -- and if you'll forgive the cheap plug :) -- he's certainly on his way to becoming a plausible candidate in Dirty Laundry after defeating Jesse Helms for the North Carolina Senate seat in 1984.

I too go with him beating Jesse Helms in 84. He becomes a well known Senator. He is the leading DLC figure and he runs and wins in 1992. Bill Clinton is Secretary of Education, until he has to resign over an affair he had with an intern.
 
Hunt wins his senate race against Helms in '84. He spends the next few years building up his reputation in the Senate and runs in either '88 or '92. Not sure the likelihood of a Hunt win in the Democratic primaries in '88, considering the crowded field in OTL. He might have a better shot in '92, since the field is weaker overall. His fellow Southerner, Bill Clinton, would probably be his main competition.

Another scenario is after beating Helms he stays in the Senate till '92 and Clinton chooses him as his running mate instead of Gore . If Hunt is in the Senate at the time, he could be seen by Clinton as a good choice. Hunt then runs and wins in '00.
 
Hunt's always been a major pro-education Governor, but IDK much of the rest of his platform. He did speak at the DNC last year, so that should tell you something.
 
Even having lost to Helms in 1984, Hunt would have been well-positioned in 1988. Sufficiently moderate enough to represent a turn away from the old-school liberalism people wanted to disavow after the Mondale disaster, but not too far to the right in the mold of a Sam Nunn. Also, unlike Gore in 1988 he possesses real experience at this point in his career, two terms as governor rather than one incomplete Senate term.

Basically rather than running with Gore's stupid southern strategy, he competes in Iowa and New Hampshire. Perhaps he doesn't win there against the likes of Gephardt and Simon, but does respectably so that he becomes the default southern choice by the time Super-Tuesday comes around. Also, he does well with teachers unions, a critical component of Dukakis's coalition on Super-Tuesday. In the end, Dukakis doesn't make the inroads in the south he made on our actual Super-Tuesday. Instead, on Super-Tuesday Hunt holds the southern states that don't go for Jackson.

At that point he becomes the default candidate, with people weighing his national electability against Dukakis, and with people also believing Hunt is an effective compromise between Dukakis's northeastern liberalism and the DLC centrism represented at this point by people like Gore.

He could win the nomination under those circumstances easily, and then be much less vulnerable to Bush's loathsome attacks (Willie Horton, ACLU, etc.) come the fall.

Perhaps the point of departure could be that he doesn't make the race against Helms, and uses the long run-up to 1988 (technically beginning fundraising before the 1984 elections) to build a war chest and ingratiate himself with the party organizations in key states.
 
Even having lost to Helms in 1984, Hunt would have been well-positioned in 1988. Sufficiently moderate enough to represent a turn away from the old-school liberalism people wanted to disavow after the Mondale disaster, but not too far to the right in the mold of a Sam Nunn. Also, unlike Gore in 1988 he possesses real experience at this point in his career, two terms as governor rather than one incomplete Senate term.

Basically rather than running with Gore's stupid southern strategy, he competes in Iowa and New Hampshire. Perhaps he doesn't win there against the likes of Gephardt and Simon, but does respectably so that he becomes the default southern choice by the time Super-Tuesday comes around. Also, he does well with teachers unions, a critical component of Dukakis's coalition on Super-Tuesday. In the end, Dukakis doesn't make the inroads in the south he made on our actual Super-Tuesday. Instead, on Super-Tuesday Hunt holds the southern states that don't go for Jackson.

At that point he becomes the default candidate, with people weighing his national electability against Dukakis, and with people also believing Hunt is an effective compromise between Dukakis's northeastern liberalism and the DLC centrism represented at this point by people like Gore.

He could win the nomination under those circumstances easily, and then be much less vulnerable to Bush's loathsome attacks (Willie Horton, ACLU, etc.) come the fall.

Perhaps the point of departure could be that he doesn't make the race against Helms, and uses the long run-up to 1988 (technically beginning fundraising before the 1984 elections) to build a war chest and ingratiate himself with the party organizations in key states.

That sounds great! Maybe you could write the Timeline?
 
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