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Jim Hunt: The Legacy of a Very Fine Man
- Details
- Wednesday, 31 December 2025
- Written by Margaret Dickson
James Baxter Hunt, known to people in North Carolina, across the United States, and around the world as plain old Jim Hunt, left us a few short weeks ago at well-earned age of 88.
His fingerprints are everywhere in our community, in our state, and in educational circles everywhere and have been for about 50 years. North Carolina is successful and growing state in large part because of Jim Hunt.
Native Tar Heels know how he led our state, and newer arrivals have benefited from his political life, whether they know it or not.
Jim Hunt’s list of accompaniments is too long to fit into roughly 600 words, but collectively they changed, shaped, and improved a largely-rural North Carolina. To birth them, he cajoled legislators, educators, and
business leaders. He was relentless and almost always prevailed.
We can thank Hunt, at least in part, for the early learning program Smart Start, which did just that for young children. For universal public kindergarten.
For the state School of Science and Math, which gives North Carolina’s brightest high schoolers a superior educational start in those fields.
For national board certification for teachers. For getting teacher pay up to the national average, although we are at the bottom now.
For the gubernatorial veto and gubernatorial succession, both of which gave North Carolina a more balanced distribution of powers. For the Hunt Institute, a think tank of educational policy, research, and leadership, which partners with the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University.
After serving 16 years as Governor in 4 separate terms, Hunt retired from elective politics, but he was hardly out to pasture. He traveled on behalf of causes he supported, largely educational initiatives and economic development opportunities for North Carolina.
He also stirred our state’s political pots, offering his long expertise to fledging and experienced candidates. He was known to say, “Now, looka, here. This is what we need to do.” The wise listener took his advice.
One of those candidates was his own daughter, Rachel Hunt, of whom he was very proud and who now serves as North Carolina’s Lieutenant Governor.
Only once did Jim Hunt ever lose an election, and that was in 1984, when he challenged sitting US Senator Jesse Helms. It was a bitter and racially tinged contest, that many view as the precursor to today’s ugly
politics.
Buckets of ink have been used writing about Jim Hunt, especially in the days following his death. One remembrance that stands out for me is by Barry Saunders, a retired opinion columnist for the Raleigh News and Observer. Saunders recalls in that paper an economic development trip he took with Governor Jim Hunt and his entourage to South Africa in 1994, shortly after apartheid officially ended there but was fresh in everyone’s minds. Saunders was the only person stopped by South African airport officials, ostensibly because he was a journalist. Saunders recounts the story this way.
“That’s when Gov. Hunt, who’d been several yards ahead of me when the kerfuffle began, peeled off from this entourage and came back to find out what was the issue.
“He’s with me,” he said and voila, I was admitted to the country.
“I’d first met Governor Hunt 10 years earlier, in 1984, when he’d come…to campaign while seeking to unseat U.S. Senator Jesse Helms….I finagled an invitation.”
“…Hunt…lost a vicious battle with Helms by four points. “As I’m guessing is true of many Tar Heels who traveled to other states during that period, I was often asked how I could live in a state that elected someone like
Jesse Helms. “My immediate and true response was it was a state that also elected people like Jim Hunt.”
His was a life well lived and all of us in North Carolina are better for it.
(Photo: Jim Hunt served North Carolina as governor in four separate terms. He brought about changes in the education system within the state. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia)
