Jim Nance McCord
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Jim Nance McCord (March 17, 1879 - September 2, 1968) was Governor of Tennessee from 1945 to 1949.
A Tennessee native, he was the long-term editor of the Marshall County Gazette and served thirteen terms as the mayor of the Marshall County seat of Lewisburg. In 1942 he ran for the United States House of Representatives and won. Less of a supporter of E. H. Crump, the Memphis political boss, than his predecessor, Governor Prentice Cooper, McCord pushed through the legislature a politically unpopular sales tax (2%), giving the state government more financial resources than it had ever previously had access to. In the compromise that made this possible, the state property tax was removed, although local property taxes are still a major source of revenue for counties and cities in Tennessee. (Technically, the state property tax was not repealed, but rather the rate was set to zero. This means that theoretically it could be reimposed at any session of the legislature merely by an act setting the rate above this, but so far over a half century has passed, including numerous "revenue crises", without this idea rising above a barely-whispered concept by most legislators.)
McCord was also a supporter of right-to-work legislation allowed under the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947. This put him at odds with many core Democratic constituencies, particularly organized labor, and was a factor helping to lead to his defeat by former governor Gordon Browning in the 1948 Democratic Primary. However, McCord's career as a public servant was not totally over. He was a delegate to the limited state constitutional convention of 1953, which submitted several important changes to the voters for approval, most notably extension of the gubernatorial term from two to four years. (Prior to this, the state constitution of 1870 had lasted eighty-three years without amendment, the longest such period for a written constitution anywhere in the world.) McCord also served in the cabinet of Governor Frank G. Clement as Commissioner of Conservation. Later he opposed Albert Gore, Sr. for re-election to the United States Senate in the August, 1958 Democratic Primary, but by then was relatively feeble and was soundly defeated by Gore.