by Ray Hill | Jan 11, 2015 | Archives, Columnist, Hill, Ray Hill's Archives
By Ray Hill Prentice Cooper had been governor of Tennessee for six years; the first man to be elected to three two-year terms since Austin Peay. Unlike Peay, Cooper lived through his entire tenure of office, but in 1944, he could not run again. Governor Cooper was a...
by Ray Hill | Jan 4, 2015 | Archives, Columnist, Hill, Ray Hill's Archives
By Ray Hill 2015 marks the one-hundredth year since the people of Tennessee cast their ballots to select a candidate for the United States Senate. There had previously been non-binding preferential primaries, as senators were still elected by the state legislature....
by Ray Hill | Dec 28, 2014 | Archives, Columnist, Hill, Ray Hill's Archives
By Ray Hill Senator Kenneth D. McKellar once claimed that outside of the three men who served as President of the United States, Robert Love Taylor was “the best-known man to the Republic at large that Tennessee has ever produced”. It well may have been true. Robert...
by Ray Hill | Dec 7, 2014 | Archives, Columnist, Hill, Ray Hill's Archives
By Ray Hill Cordell Hull had served in the U. S. House of Representatives since 1906, with one brief two-year interlude, when he announced he would be a candidate for the United States Senate in 1929. It was rare, at that time, for a prospective candidate to declare...
by Ray Hill | Nov 30, 2014 | Archives, Columnist, Hill, Ray Hill's Archives
By Ray Hill Tennessee’s senior United States senator, Kenneth D. McKellar, was well known for having a volatile temper and had won a well-deserved reputation as a feudist. It was not uncommon for the peppery senator to become involved in a physical altercation, even...
by Ray Hill | Nov 23, 2014 | Archives, Columnist, Hill, Ray Hill's Archives
By Ray Hill “I have no hesitancy in insisting that Government in an emergency do everything that can reasonably be done to relieve human suffering and distress.” That was the philosophy of John William McCormack throughout his long political career and he lived...