by Ray Hill | Apr 26, 2020 | Columnist, Hill, Stories In This Week's Focus:
By Ray Hill Senator Luke Lea was so unpopular with his fellow Democrats, the party machinery moved up the election for the Democratic nomination to November of 1915, a full year in advance of the regular general election in 1916. For the first and only time, the...
by Ray Hill | Apr 19, 2020 | Columnist, Hill, Ray Hill's Archives, Stories In This Week's Focus:
By Ray Hill Malcolm Rice Patterson, the “gamecock” of Tennessee politics, had left the governor’s mansion in 1911 as a hugely controversial figure and bitterly hated by many inside his own party. To make matters worse, a combine of “fusionists,” Democrats opposed to...
by Ray Hill | Apr 12, 2020 | Columnist, Hill, Ray Hill's Archives, Stories In This Week's Focus:
By Ray Hill Malcolm Rice Patterson enjoyed a meteoric rise in Tennessee politics until the consequences of his own actions ended his career. Redheaded, thin, with angular features, Malcolm Patterson was known throughout Tennessee as a dynamic and gifted speaker. ...
by Ray Hill | Apr 5, 2020 | Columnist, Hill, Ray Hill's Archives, Stories In This Week's Focus:
By Ray Hill James Beriah Frazier had been elected governor of Tennessee in 1902. A tall, stately man with an elegant appearance, James B. Frazier certainly looked the part of a governor. Despite his aristocratic appearance, James B. Frazier had worked his way...
by Ray Hill | Mar 29, 2020 | Columnist, Hill, Stories In This Week's Focus:
By Ray Hill Benton McMillin was such a fixture in Tennessee politics he was regarded as the “Old Warhorse” of the Democratic Party in the state. After spending twenty years in Congress from Tennessee’s Fourth District, Benton McMillin twice served as governor of...
by Ray Hill | Mar 22, 2020 | Columnist, Hill, Ray Hill's Archives, Stories In This Week's Focus:
By Ray Hill With the sudden death of U. S. senator William Brimage Bate, Tennessee would send someone else to the Senate. Bate had died just days after being sworn-in for his fourth term. Indeed, only two men had ever been elected to serve a fourth term in the...
