The call came shortly before noon.
On one end of the line was Hal Hardin, the 37-year-old U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee, calling from his office inside the Estes Kefauver Federal Building in Nashville.
At the other end of the line inside a private office in Green Hills was Lamar Alexander, a 38-year-old lawyerwho was just days away from being sworn in as Tennessee’s 45th governor.
Hardintold Alexander he was not calling him in his capacity as the U.S. attorney but as a Tennessean. Hardin said he thought it was an obligation of the U.S. attorney to tell state officials about criminal activity that may affect it.
“I said, 'I think you’ve got to take office early in order to stop what’s going on,'” Hardin, a self-described yellow dog Democrat, recalled urging the East Tennessee Republican.
That initial conversationon Jan. 17, 1979, was brief, but over the course of the next six hours, resulted in an unprecedented effort to remove then-Gov. Ray Blanton from office.
It was nothing short of a coup.
TN POLITICS:In farewell address, Lamar Alexander calls for Senate to come together, work better
Successes outweighed by scandals
On Jan. 19, Gov. Bill Haslam will hand off power to Williamson County businessman Bill Lee, who will become Tennessee's 50th governor.
Lee’s inauguration comes about 40 yearssince anunbelievable set of circ*mstances led to the early swearing in of Alexander.
Therewas a last-minute, late-night session granting clemency to questionable and controversial prisoners. There wasan ongoing FBI investigation into suspected clemency for cashthat seeped into the governor’s office.
Long before all that, there was Blanton’s election in 1974 and as his term in office unfolded, there were hints of scandals to come.
It wasn't all bad. While the Blanton administration had some successes, including boosting the state's agricultural products into international markets and no new taxes, they were overshadowed by other developments.
$20,000 tobuy freedom
In the early years of his administration, Blanton faced severalscandals and setbacks.
In 1976,Jack Lowery, a Lebanon-based attorney was visited by a man who identified himself asBob Roundtree. Lowery had clientin state prison forvehicular homicide. "I was working to try to get him executive clemency," Lowery said in a recent interview.
Lowery assured Eddie Sisk, the governor's legal counsel, that if his clientwere to be released, he would leave the state.
Roundtree told Lowery he could assist him on his client''s clemency. "I can give you the time he'll be released and there will be no conditions on his release and he will not have to go to Florida,"Lowary said.
He was astounded byRoundtree's knowledge of his client'splan to leave the state.
Roundtree said it would cost$20,000.
Lowery wrote a report outlining his discussion with Roundtree, which ended up going to state investigators. Eventually, the FBI saw the report, which in part led tothe agency'sinvestigation into the administration's use of pardons.
By 1977, Blanton's administration faced additional scrutiny after the FBI investigatedstate employees, including two commissioners, for selling surplus state-owned cars to political allies.
Blanton:Convicted killer was a 'fine young man'
That same year, Blanton faced further ire after he vowed to WSMV reporter Carol Marin in a live interview to give a pardon to Roger Humphreys, who was sentenced to prison for killing his ex-wife and her male friend.
During Marin's interview, Blanton said Humphreys, whose father was a political ally ofthe governor, was a "nice young man."
“Roger was not a fine young man,” said Keel Hunt, who in 2013published "Coup: The Day the Democrats Ousted Their Governor, Put Lamar Alexander in Office Early and Stopped a Pardon Scandal."
Hunt said Humphreys haduseda two-shot Derringer to kill his victims. He shot them 18 times.
At one point during the Marin interview, Blanton said without being asked, "I haven't sold a single pardon, a single parole."
The interview set off a firestorm,with editorials appearing in newspapers around the state condemning Blanton. The next year, Democrat John Jay Hooker and former Gov. Winfield Dunn, a Republican, jumped ona petition effort, started by Alexander, to collect 1 million signatures urging Blanton not to pardon Humphreys.
For the remainder of his time in office, Blanton doubled down on his intentions, with the only exception being when he temporarily backed off shortly before the 1978 general election.
FBI zeroes in on the governor
During the 1978 election, Alexander, who was running once again for governor after losing to Blanton four years earlier,used the issues, as well as divisions within the Democratic Party, to bolster his candidacy.
He ended up beating Democrat Jake Butcher,netting nearly 56percent of the vote. Blanton opted against seeking re-election.
Two months after the election, Blanton’s administration was further rocked by scandal.
On Dec. 15,1978, the FBI held coordinated sweeps in Memphis and Nashville, arresting three Blanton aides. They included Eddie Sisk, the governor’s legal counsel, who was in the Capitol at the time;Charles Benson, anextradition officer;and Tennessee Highway Patrol officer Lt. Fred Taylor, who also served as one of Blanton's bodyguards.
The agents found marked $100 bills inside Sisk’s pocket. Benson, who was arrested at the Nashville airport, had clemency papers with him for Eddie Dallas Denton, who was in prison for killing three people. With recorded conversations of Taylor, the government said all three men werepart of the scheme to sell pardons for prisoners.
Over the course of the next month, themachinations of the FBI’s investigation would appear on the front pages of The Tennessean and more frequently, the Nashville Banner, the afternoon newspaper with more conservative leanings.
On Jan. 4, the Banner reported a grand jury had viewed videotapes of transactions in the bribery scheme. The next day, the newspaper reported that FBI agents returned to the Capitol to question Blanton’s newest legal counsel and other staff members.
In an afternoon news conference on Jan. 6, Blanton told reporters he was the “target” of the grand jury’s investigation into alleged abuses in pardons and parole procedures.
As the daily headlines continued, Blanton maintained his innocence, culminating in his Jan. 11, 1979, State of the State address.
“Ladies and gentlemen, if I have seemed arrogant at times, I ask you to mark it down to my impatience with those who take the myopic view of the greatness and boundless potential of this state we love," he told the newly convened 91st General Assembly.
“I would never willingly do one single thing to hurt this state or its people," he added.
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Blanton grants52 clemency in late-night session
Perhaps Blanton's most daring act occurredon Jan. 15, 1979, when he emerged from his Capitol office shortly after 11 p.m. and announced that he had granted clemency to 52 inmates, including Humphreys.
Thirty-six of the 52 prisoners Blanton releaseddid not receive a recommendation from the state Board of Pardons and Paroles. Twenty-three were serving timefor murder.
After signing the clemency papers, Blanton reportedly said, "This takes guts."
Gentry Crowell, the secretary of state at the time, responded,"Yeah well some people have more guts than they've got brains."
Blanton's late-night clemency made animmediate impact. Alexander saidthe move was disgraceful.National news outlets suddenly descended on Tennessee.
"It was like dropping a match in a can ofgasoline," remembers Hunt, who at the time worked for Alexander.
On thelocal CBSevening news, the anchor noted that Blanton had released more thanmore than 650 prisoners during his time in office.
The Coup
Two days after the 52 pardons, Hardin had a short conversation with an FBI agent who told him the agencyhad new intelligence that Blanton was considering additional last-minute pardons, including of some people who were under active investigation.
The agent asked Hardin what he planned to do but the U.S. attorney simply said, "You don't want to know."
The prevailing concernwas that if Blanton stayed in office until the end of his term, he could completely empty the prisons if he wanted. Among those who could have been pardoned was James Earl Ray, who just a decade before had assassinated Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis.
At that point, Hardin had made up his mind: He needed to encourage Alexander to take office early.
But he didn't tell anyone. Proper protocol would include notifying the Attorney General of the United States. To ignore the chain of command was extremely risky— he was, after all, an appointee of then-President Jimmy Carter.
Over the next severalhours, Hardin workedto convince Alexander, then-House Speaker Ned McWherter and then-Lt. Gov. John Wilder of the necessity for an early swearing in. Both were Democrats.
Still, there were other obstacles.
Earlier in the week, the idea of an early swearing in had been broached and rejectedby Alexander even after an opinion written by a low-level stafferin the attorney general's office said it was allowed.
But others, including then-Attorney General William Leech, a Democrat, were not fully convinced.
Former state Supreme Court Justice Bill Koch, then working as deputy state attorney general, remembers how he, Hardin, Leech and C. HayesCooney, the chief deputy to the attorney general,locked themselves in a downtown hotel room while considering the legality of an early swearing in.
"We finally got to the same place where we said in fact the original opinion was correct," Koch said.
Secrecy and trust were paramount among the various players involved, who had never worked together before, for fear of what Blanton might do if he found out about their efforts.
Trying to think of everything that could go wrong, Alexander recalls now that Blanton could have surrounded the Capitolwith the Tennessee Highway Patrol troopersor members of the National Guard. If he did so, it would be a national embarrassment.
"It'd be like taking your first step into any sort of venture and walking right off the cliff and into a big mud puddle," Alexander said in a recent interview, referring to the newly formed coalition as a "bipartisan boot camp."
The players somehow managed to keep a tight lid on their plot, even as a frenzied group of media moved from Legislative Plaza tothe Supreme Court chambers shortly before 6 p.m. on Jan. 17, 1979— 40 years ago this week.
"Nobody really knew why we were there," David Fox, who was the chief capitolreporter for the Banner, said in an interview.
While gathered inside the Supreme Court's robing room, normally reserved for the justices, the bipartisan group leading the early ouster effortcalled Blanton at his home and informed him of the decision.
Around 5:55 p.m. central time, Alexandertook the oath of office, administeredby Joe Henry,the chief justice of the state Supreme Court, whilejoined by the attorney general, the speakers of the House and Senate, and a smattering of campaign staffers and advisers.
Afterwards, Alexander held an impromptu news conference to offer an explanation. Reporters noted the somber tone.
On Jan. 20, Alexander once again took the oath of office during the regularly scheduled inauguration.
In his speech, he said, "Let's go the extra mile to put the agony and the anger behind us. Let's let our pain give way to pride again."
Taking action, regardless of party
Hunt said the story ofAlexander's early swearing in is one he viewsnot as bad guys doing wrong, but good people doing the right thing.
"They set aside the partisanship to deal with this problem and they took care of business," Hunt said.
Minutes after Alexander's wearingin, Hank Allison, a reporter at WTVF, asked McWherter about working to undermine Blanton and get a Republican into office.
McWherter cut off Allison's question. "First I'm a Tennessean," he said. "And I think this is in the interest of Tennessee, regardless of the party."
Alexander said the bipartisan work that day came in handy during his eight years as governor and later while serving in the U.S. Senate.
"I think the lesson for today is that it's not naive to think that grown ups, sophisticates and politics can still be rough and tumble, good, effective partisan politicians and when the elections are over, they can put those political weapons and work together to get results," he said.
"That's the way the system is supposed to work."
Reach Joel Ebert atjebert@tennessean.comor 615-772-1681 and on Twitter@joelebert29.
