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John Jay Hooker, Jr. (born 1930) is a Nashville, Tennessee attorney, entrepreneur, perennial candidate and political gadfly.
Early life
Hooker was born to relative wealth and privilege into one of the Nashville area's more prominent families. His father, John Jay Hooker, Sr., was one of the Nashville area's best-known and most respected attorneys, as his brother Henry Hooker has also become. He was a descendant of the first Chief Justice of the United States and his namesake, John Jay, and also "Fighting Joe" Hooker, a Union general in the American Civil War whose camp-followers are said to have been the source of a well-known slang term for prostitutes which began as "Hooker's girls". John Jay Hooker could have easily been much more like his father and brother, but took a different path.
Legal Career
After finishing high school at Nashville's prestigious Montgomery Bell Academy, Hooker attended college at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. He then served two years in the United States Army Judge Advocate General Corps as an investigator. Upon discharge from the service, Hooker attended the Vanderbilt University law school. He graduated and was admitted to the Tennessee bar in 1957. Struck by the inequalities in the Southern society that confronted him at the time, he became identified as a young man with progressive Democratic politics. While practicing law, he also began a series of diverse business investments.
In 1958, governor of Tennessee Frank G. Clement asked Hooker to become involved in the state's investigation of Raulston Schoolfield, an allegedly corrupt Chattanooga area judge. Based largely on Hooker's findings, the Tennessee House of Representatives voted to imepach Schoolfield. Hooker was then retained to help prosecute Schoolfield before the Tennessee State Senate. (As of 2004, this is the last such event that has occurred in Tennessee.)
Political Career
He married the former Patricia "Tish" Fort, a member of another socially-prominent Nashville family which was associated with the founding of the former National Life and Accident Insurance Company and its subsidiaries, WSM radio and the Grand Ole Opry country music program. He also befriended the powerful Seigenthaler family, who then published the Nashville Tennessean, the most prominent newspaper in Middle Tennessee. This association helped him to meet Robert F. Kennedy, who was then beginning his career as United States Attorney General. Kennedy used Hooker to help with the government's position in the landmark redistricting case, Baker v. Carr. In 1962, both the Seigenthalers and Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver encouraged Hooker to oppose Frank Clement for governor, but he declined to do so at the time.
However, with the support and backing of the Seigenthalers, Hooker decided to enter the 1966 Democratic primary for governor of Tennessee. His opponent was Buford Ellington, a former governor attempting a return to the office who had the strong backing of the incumbent governor, Frank Clement, and the other Nashville newspaper, the Nashville Banner. Supported by some of the more progressive members of the Nashville business community, Hooker was perhaps unprepared for a blistering counterattack which was mounted by Ellington's "Old Guard" supporters. Running fairly well in urban areas, Hooker was swamped in the rural areas of the state. Ellington went on to victory in November without even facing a Republican opponent – the last time such an event was to occur in Tennessee to date.
During this period, Hooker and Tish made a campaign appearance at a Nashville church attended by the very young Oprah Winfrey and her family. Tish, as Oprah recounted later, took the time to speak to the young girl, and told her she was "pretty as a speckled pup." Many years later, Tish was invited to appear on Oprah's television show and Oprah acknowledged how much those kind words had meant to her.
During the next four years, Hooker divided his time between two major activities – investments and planning to run for governor again in 1970. Politically, he kept up his connection with Bobby Kennedy and other members of the Kennedy political family, and was devestated when RFK was assassinated in 1968. In investments, he put together a small diversified holding company referred to by some as a "mini-conglomerate", Whale, Inc., and a chain of fried chicken restaurants fronted by the country comedienne Minnie Pearl. His rationale for the chicken restaurants was that just as Pepsi had long made a large amount of money as the primary competitor to Coca-Cola, someone else stood to make a comparable fortune as the primary competitor to Kentucky Fried Chicken. Hooker was also intimately involved around the same time with the Frist family and others in the formation of what became the first major for-profit health care chain, the Hospital Corporation of America.
Hooker won the 1970 Democratic nomination for governor of Tennessee over a host of competitors, most notably the candidate of the "Old Guard", Nashville attorney Stan Snodgrass, who had the endorsement of the Nashville Banner. In the past, this would have almost assured victory in November. But many things had changed in Tennessee in the four years since his loss to Ellington. For one, the Republican Party was benefitting greatly from the Southern strategy of then-President Richard M. Nixon to reach out to rural and working-class urban Southern whites who were disturbed by desegregation and other rapid social changes. Tennessee Republicans, only just over two years from failing to field a gubernatorial candidate, had even managed to organize the Tennessee House of Representatives for the first (and only) time in the 20th century in 1969, and were not about to allow what appeared to them to be a golden opportunity to pass them by.
Events as well as people seemed to conspire against Hooker in the fall of 1970. The Republicans had staged a very hard-fought primary race of their own, but had come out of it largely united behind the candidacy of Memphis dentist Dr. Winfield Dunn, former chairman of the Shelby County Republican Party. Many of Snodgrass' erstwhile supporters, including the Nashville Banner, endorsed Dunn. At the same time, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced an investigation into Hooker, Whale, Inc., and Minnie Pearl's Chicken, the price of which had collapsed from a high of $40 a share to approximately 50 cents amid charges of accounting irregularites and stock price manipulation.
Simultaneously, Democratic Senator Albert Gore, Sr. was running an equally hard-fought and ultimately unsuccessful campaign for a fourth term against Chattanooga Congressman William E. Brock. The friendly relationship both Gore and Hooker shared with the Kennedy family became an issue, especially in light of Ted Kennedy's involvement in the Chappaquiddick incident the previous year. Republicans and "Old Guard" detractors alike pilloried the two, leading to a Republican sweep and the first time in the post-Reconstruction era that the Republicans held the Tennessee governorship and both United States Senate seats (although, curiously, they lost control of the state House of Representatives and to date have never regained it).
Hooker was devestated both by the defeat and by what he regarded as a betrayal by people he had thought to be friends. He was never convicted of any criminal wrongdoing in the SEC cases, but found his fortune to be gone and his marriage faltering.
After Politics
He served as chairman of the STP Corporation from 1973 to 1976, having previously returned to the practice of law and, later, investing again, albeit at first on a greatly reduced scale. He entered the 1976 Democratic Primary for Brock's U.S. Senate seat and was at first perhaps favored to win the nomination, but was defeated by the previously-little-known Jim Sasser for the nomination. (Sasser was well-known by Tennessee Democratic insiders, however, as the manager of Albert Gore, Sr.'s, last, unsuccessful campaign six years earlier. He defeated Brock in November and went on to serve three terms in the Senate.) In retrospect, this was probably Hooker's last serious attempt to gain elective office. During this campaign, in an exchange with Nashville talk show host and then-news anchor Teddy Bart, he made a most memorable reply to a question about abortion and related moral issues: "Come on, Bart! I'm not running for Jesus, I'm running for the Senate."
After the unsucessful 1976 race, Hooker again returned to the practice of law and investing. In 1979 he arranged for the sale of The Tennessean to Gannett, which had earlier purchased the Banner but preferred to own morning rather than evening papers. At the same time, his own investment group purcahsed the Banner from Gannett (the two papers were linked by a joint operating agreement) and became publisher of the very paper that had so tormented him only nine years earlier. In retrospect, he has called this perhaps the greatest single moment of his life. However, Hooker sold his portion of the Banner in 1982 and became chairman for a period of United Press International, the historical but faltering competitor in the wire-service news business to the Associated Press.
Hooker's fortunes seemed to ebb and flow in the 1980s. At one point, he became rather prosperous again. Always something of a flamboyant dresser, he began to appear in public in the old-time flat topped straw hat which was fashionable in the 1930s and has ever since been associated with political campaigns. He promoted a new fast food chain, named for himself, which sold hamburgers from small, drive-by only buildings, operating this venture from 1984 to 1986 before selling it, apparently for a relatively small sum. Several of these outlets were built in the Nashville area and the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, at least, but the venture ultimately was a failure, and Hooker begin to live off of the sympathies of friends, and was at one point reputed to be living in his car. He remained friends with many prominent persons, however, including former heavyweight boxer Muhammad Ali and H. Ross Perot. Hooker always claimed to have been the first and primary counsellor in Perot's decision to run for States President in 1992.
At this point, Hooker began to exhibit behaviour that could only be described as bizarre. He began to appear in public in Nashville dressed as Abraham Lincoln, complete with frock coat and "stovepipe" hat and beard, a habit he maintained for several years. He also began to file to run for various political offices including governor, Senator, Congressman, and others, only then to sue all of the other persons running for the office for taking campaign contributions from out of state, which according to his legal theories was illegal, even unconstitutional. (This was litigated to the Supreme Court level and Hooker's views were not upheld.) In 1995 he even sued President Bill Clinton, as well as all of the other presidential candidates, for accepting campaing contributions, which according to his theory were sheer bribery. He sued the Tennessee Supreme Court, saying that their elections under the "modified Missouri Plan" were unconstitutional, eventually forcing them to recuse themselves from their own case and require the empanellment of a special State Supreme Court to hear the charges. (They found nothing wrong with the system). At one point his ability to conduct this sort of litigation on a per se basis was contested when it was revealed that he had failed to maintain the continuing education requirements for maintenance of his law license, a situation that he eventually remedied. Although his later campaigns were basically stunts to draw attention to the amount of money which came into Tennessee politics from out of state and its alleged corrupting influence, he unexpectedly, perhaps even to himself, received the 1998 Democratic nomination for governor. No other prominent Democrat had filed to opposed incumbent Republican governor Don Sundquist, and Hooker defeated a field of other "token" candidates as well as the supposedly "serious" candidate with union backing, Mark Whitaker, who was the selected "sacrifical lamb" of the party leadership (and who was in 2002 to run for state representative as a Republican).
Hooker won the nomination based on tremendous name recognition among older Democrats, who are in Tennessee generally the most reliable primary voters. Ironically, he ran the best in the rural areas which had always been his downfall in the past, and with urban blacks, who had always provided him with a core support group.
While not formally disavowing him, the regular Democratic Party organization did almost nothing to promote his candidacy, and as Hooker had disavowed the formal fundraising process as unethical and immoral and at this point utterly lacked his own resources sufficient to run a realistic campaign, so he received only about 30% of the vote in the November general election, the lowest mark for any Democratic nominee for a statewide office in Tennessee since the restoration of civil rights to former Confederate sympahtizers after the end of the Civil War. Hooker remains a gadfly, running for Congress in 2002 and again suing all his opponents, and most recently for Chancery Court judge in 2004 as an Independent, receiving approximately 13% of the vote.
Eccentricies in the Courtroom
In November 2004 Hooker was ordered to pay a $4500 fine by Nashville judge Walter Kurtz. This was based on Hooker's persistent filing of lawsuits. Hooker's most recent legal theory, after the courts dismissed his claims based on the purported unconstitutionality of out of state money in the political process, is aimed at political fundraisers. Hooker cites Article X, Section 3 of the Tennessee state constitution, which states "Any elector who shall receive any gift or reward for his vote, in meat, drink, money, or otherwise, shall suffer punishemnt as the laws shall direct. And any person who shall directly or indirectly give, promise, or bestow any such reward to be elected, shall thereby be rendered incapable, for six years, to serve in the office for which he shall be elected, and be subject to further punishment as the Legislature shall direct." He says the food and beverages traditionally served at political fundraisers are in direct violation of this article. (Fundraisers have been found to be consititutionally permissible in Tennessee because their intent is to serve as an inducement to donate money, on the grounds that the votes of people who attend such an event are not being purchased in any way, as they are assumed to be assured.) All future lawsuits filed by Hooker for the next five years relating to political fundraising to be screen by a special master as well according to Kurtz's order.
Hooker is appealing, in part on the grounds that, as someone subject to periodic reelection, Kurtz is an interested party in the suit and therefore incompetent to rule on it. (Just which judicial authority in Tennessee would be competent to hear Hooker's arguements in this event is problematic; all state judges in Tennessee are subjected to periodic reviews by the voters in one manner or another.) The state attorney general's office had asked Kurtz to sanction Hooker after Hooke sued four appelate and one trial level judge, a judge who had previously sanctioned him for filing frivolous lawsuits and the appelate judge which upheld his ruling. Kurtz later moved to disbar Hooker, on grounds that past sanctions had not deterred his persistent filing of frivolous lawsuits.
Hooker remains a minor, tragicomic figure on the Nashville scene. He enjoys, many would say craves, attention and has been a frequent guest on Teddy Bart's radio talk show. (He and Bart are close friends. In fact, Hooker's brief second marriage was to Bart's former receptionist.) In an interview with Bart in the spring of 1999, he gave this remarkable summation of his career, which would in many ways perhaps serve him well as an epitaph: "You know, Teddy Bart, I've had a remarkable life. I was born to a prominent family, and am the lineal descendant of the first Chief Justice of the United States and author of the Federalist Papers, and another man whose female followers have since given their name to a whole way of life. I befriended a man who should have been President of the United States, Bobby Kennedy, and twice been the Democratic nominee for Governor of Tennessee. I've shared the love of two beautiful women, made and lost several fortunes, and most of all, I'm still in love with the sound of my own voice."
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