Friendship did not come fast between John Jay Hooker and Winfield Dunn.
But when it did, it was lasting.
“We’ll get in my car, and I try to keep his big foot off my dashboard,” Dunn said, describing their bond shortly before Hooker fell ill last fall. “He likes to relax and lay back, and we just ride.”
Hooker was a Nashville businessman and five-time gubernatorial candidate, coming close to winning the governor’s office in 1970. But Dunn, an upstart Republican from Memphis, denied him.
That election would give Republicans the governor’s office for the first time in almost half a century, signaling the political realignment that still echoes through Tennessee politics to this day. But it would be just the first chapter in the relationship between the two men.
Dunn says he was fascinated with Hooker from the first time they met — on the campaign trail in early 1970. Tall and striking, Hooker had the gift of gab, something Dunn, a dentist with little political experience, felt he lacked.
Hooker wanted to debate on television.
“Well, I was too smart for that, as a matter of fact,” Dunn recalled.
They settled instead on a marathon, one-day series of debates. Hooker held the upper hand at every turn, peppering the crowd with city workers in the first event on Rolling Mill Hill, decking out the square with Democratic signs in Springfield and leafleting the crowd with anti-Dunn fliers at the third debate in Jackson.
But it was Dunn who emerged from the race triumphant, riding Richard Nixon’s rising popularity in the South to break Democrats’ stranglehold on Tennessee politics.
Dunn said Hooker was gracious in defeat, but a chill remained between the former adversaries. They might cross paths from time to time, but it wouldn’t be until more than three decades later that they’d become close, after Hooker was invited to take part in a roast honoring Dunn.
“He is an enthralling speaker. When he’s on a program, he becomes The Program. It’s just the way he is,” Dunn recalled, laughing. “And I was never jealous. I admired him very much.”
Dunn says Hooker jokingly claimed he — not Dunn — should carry the title of father of the Tennessee Republican Party. After all, it was Hooker’s stunning loss in 1970 that made the GOP’s rise possible.
After that night, Dunn and Hooker would get together frequently for weekend drives. Hooker would slouch in the passenger seat of Dunn’s SUV as they tooled around the back roads of Middle Tennessee, talking everything from Tennessee history to Hooker’s latest business idea involving electronic medical records.
“We rode recently out in the country along River Road here in Nashville. Just had a great time talking and being together.”
Times like these, Dunn said, are what made his political rival and personal friend, John Jay Hooker, special.
On Air - 90.3 WPLN-FM