Ian Oliver Martin
Guy Hunt
MONTGOMERY, Ala. - Guy Hunt, who in 1987 became Alabama's first Republican governor since Reconstruction but six years later became the state's first chief executive removed from office for a criminal conviction, died Friday in Birmingham. He was 75. Family spokesman Mark McDaniel said Hunt died at Trinity Medical Center. He was being treated the last couple years for cancer and was frail when he had gall bladder surgery in late November and was never able to recover. The former Amway salesman, farmer and Primitive Baptist preacher was dismissed as a country bumpkin by some when he entered the governor's race in 1986. But he pulled a spectacular upset when internal feuding split the Democratic Party, sending 56 percent of voters into Hunt's column. He became the first Republican elected to lead Alabama since 1872. He is credited with filling enough committees, boards and other offices with Republicans that he helped make Alabama a two-party state instead of being dominated by Democrats. "That was the beginning of the power of the Republican Party in Alabama, and Democrats did it to themselves," said Democrat Lowell Barron, an influential state senator and frequently Hunt's political ally. Hunt was re-elected in 1990, but halfway through his second term, he was convicted of violating the state ethics law for misusing 1987 inaugural funds and was kicked out of office. He later was pardoned but could never restart his political career. Hunt tried to become governor for the first time in 1978. After an unsuccessful run, he again sought the office in 1985 and won a three-man Republican primary that drew few voters in 1986 and was looking at another losing campaign in the general election. Then the Democratic Party started fighting over a Democratic runoff and a committee gave the party's gubernatorial nomination to the second-place finisher, Lt. Gov. Bill Baxley. The handpicking by Democrats created a voter backlash that swept Hunt into office. "He was absolutely what you would call 'an accidental governor.' He was put into office by the perception the Democratic Party was taking away the vote of the people," said Margaret Armbrester, co-editor of the book "Alabama Governors." Hunt took a hands-on approach to recruiting new industry to Alabama and, in his first year in office, was named one of the nation's top governors by U.S. News & World Report. But in 1993, a jury convicted Hunt of violating the state ethics law by making personal use of $200,000 donated to a tax-exempt fund for his 1987 inauguration. He was placed on five years' probation, fined $211,000 and automatically removed from office. The state parole board gave Hunt a full pardon in 1998 and afterward, he unsuccessfully ran for office twice, including governor that year, when he was asked how he wanted to be remembered. "The thing that would thrill me the most is if every fourth-grade student in this state who reads Alabama history someday will have the understanding that this is an honest governor who ran an honest administration and would not knowingly violate the letter or the spirit of the law," he said. Survivors include his second wife, Anne; son, Keith Hunt; and three daughters, Pam Hunt, Sherrie Williams and Lynn Harris.
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