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Triumph of Good Will: How Terry Sanford Beat a Champion of Segregation and Reshaped the South. By John Drescher. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, c. 2000. Pp. [xxii], 316. $27.00, ISBN 1-57806-310-8.)
John Drescher, who served as a state capitol reporter and editor for the Charlotte (N.C.) Observer, has written a competent, journalistic account of the bitter 1960 gubernatorial campaign in North Carolina. Terry Sanford's astute strategy on race enabled him to win the governor's race, and he would later emerge as a model for moderate, progressive southern governors such as Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. Clinton admired Sanford and concluded, "His work and his influence literally changed the face and the future of the South, making him one of the most influential Americans of the last [fifty] years" (p. xvii).
An ambitious, energetic man, Terry Sanford's main issue in the 1960 campaign was improving education in North Carolina. Against the advice of his pollster, he took a courageous stand advocating increased taxes to...