Louie B. Nunn, R.I.P.

Human Events, Feb 9, 2004 by Gizzi, John

The January 27-29 Republican National Committee meeting in Washington was a bittersweet event for Kentucky State Party Chairman Ellen Williams. Repeatedly toasted and congratulated throughout the meeting for her role in electing Ernie Fletcher the first Republican governor of the Bluegrass State since 1967, Williams was then saddened by reports on the morning of the 29th that her state's last Republican governor had died of a heart attack at age 79.

"Louie B. Nunn was the father of the modern Republican Party in Kentucky," Williams recalled to me, "Long after he left the governorship and right up to his unfortunate passing, he remained a tremendous force in the party who helped us turn the state from solidly Democratic to one where both senators, the governor, and every House member but one are Republicans."

A native Kentuckian who served in the U.S. Army in World War II, Nunn earned degrees from the University of Cincinnati and the University of Louisville Law School. In 1954, at age 29, he was elected county judge (executive) in his native, strongly Democratic Barren County. In the 1950s and '60s, Louie and brother and State GOP Chairman-to-be Lee Nunn would play as dynamic a role among their state's Republican Party as the Kennedy brothers did among Democrats in Massachusetts and the Burton brothers in San Francisco. Under the Nunns' aegis, Dwight Elsenhower carried Kentucky in 1956 and the state elected Republican U.S. Senators Thruston Morton (195668) and John Sherman Cooper (1946-48, 1952-54, 1956-72).

As the GOP nominee for governor himself in 1963, Nunn came within 15,000 votes of victory following a hard-hitting campaign that tied his opponent to the Kennedys. Four years later, with campaign help from his good friend California Gov. Ronald Reagan, Nunn became his state's first Republican governor since 1943. A sign that times were changing in Kentucky was that Nunn first had to win a highly competitive Republican primary. He narrowly edged out then-Jefferson County Judge Marlow W. Cook, who went on to serve in the U.S. Senate from 1968-74.

Faced with a $36-million state budget deficit the day he took office, and thwarted by the courts in his attempts to fire large numbers of Democratic patronage appointees from state jobs, Gov. Nunn felt forced to raise the state sales tax by five cents. "Nunn's nickel," as it became known, was the sole tax increase under the Republican and it helped him leave the state with a $36-million surplus when he left office in 1971. Moreover, the revenue from "Nunn's nickel" made it possible for the governor to overhaul Kentucky's Charles Dickens-like mental health system, eventually completing 22 mental health centers and securing full accreditation for all four state psychiatric hospitals. (In contrast to Nunn's one-time tax increase, Democrats upon retaking the governorship in 1971 promptly pushed through a massive $225 million hike in sales taxes on products from milk to gasoline).

But "Nunn's nickel" continued to dog the former GOP governor. It was a major factor in his defeat for the U.S. Senate by Democrat Walter "Dee" Huddleston in 1972 even as Richard Nixon was sweeping Kentucky's electoral votes. Nunn was also badly beaten by Democrat John Y. Brown, Jr. in his comeback bid for the governorship in 1979. As Ellen Williams put it, "That sales tax made his reputation in the long-run, but badly hurt him politically in the short run."

A player in national Republican politics, Nunn was one of a handful of prominent Republican politicians on the initial steering committee for Ronald Reagan's challenge to President Gerald Ford in 1976.