Thursday, November 13, 2008

North Carolina's four U.S. Senators

For those who like to keep track of all things related to North Carolina, here's some trivia: How many North Carolinians are there in the U.S. Senate right now?

Depending on how you define the term, there are four: U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole, reared in Salisbury (and defeated by state Sen. Kay Hagan of Greensboro, a Shelby native, in last week's election), and Sen. Richard Burr, from Winston-Salem. Both Dole and Burr are Republicans; Hagan is a Democrat.

And there are at least two senators who are N.C. natives (native, as in (born in' as opposed to 'reared in') but who represent other states.

One of them is West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd, an aging parliamentarian who was born in Wilkes County, and whom the Democratic leadership recently persuaded to step down from leadership of the appropriations committee because of his advanced age. He'll be 91 next week. Byrd was born on Nov. 20, 1917. Wikipedia's entry says this: "Byrd was born Cornelius Calvin Sale, Jr., in North Wilkesboro, North Carolina, in 1917. When he was one year old, his mother, Ada Mae Kirby, died in the 1918 Flu Pandemic. In accordance with his mother's wishes, his father, Cornelius Calvin Sale, dispersed the family children among relatives. Sale Jr. was given to the custody of an aunt and an uncle, Vlurma and Titus Byrd, who renamed him Robert Carlyle Byrd and raised him in the coal-mining region of southern West Virginia." Curiously, Byrd, a Democrat, is a former Ku Klux Klan member, way back in his youth, who endorsed Barack Obama for president.

The other Tar Heel native in the Senate is Georgia Sen. Saxby Chambliss. As my former colleague Dave Ingram notes in an e-mail from Washington, where he now works for Legal Times, Chambliss was born in Warrenton in Warren County in 1943. Chambliss later graduated from high school in Louisiana and went to the University of Georgia. Chambliss, a Republican, is locked in a Dec. 2 runoff with Democrat Jim Martin, an Atlanta native.

Ok, one more piece of trivia. Of the four current U.S. senators and the one senator-elect mentioned in this blog, which one is not a North Carolina native? It's Richard Burr, a native of Charlottesville, Va.

(And just to take note: That's the same state -- excuse me, commonwealth -- from whence Lt. Gov. Bev Perdue came to this state to eventually become the first woman elected lieutenant governor and governor of this state. She's a native of Grundy, Va.)

(Which other recent N.C. governor was born elsewhere? Gov. Jim Martin, governor from 1985-1993, born in Savannah, Ga. And no, that’s not the same Jim Martin running against Saxby Chambliss.)

7 comments:

tarhoosier said...

"from whence" is redundant, notwithstanding biblical use.

Jack Betts said...

Tarhoosier: Thanks for the correction. I had to wince at my misuse of 'whence.'

Anonymous said...

don't forget that former US Senator Lawton Chiles from Florida is Kay Hagan's uncle.

Anonymous said...

I rather like "from whence" even in modern Tar Heel usage.

Then don't forget the morphological variations, i.e.:

That man came all the way from Winston-Salem to try to find a print edition of The Charlotte Observer.

Okay, as Andy Griffith of Mount Airy would say: I was just funnin'.

Anonymous said...

And don't forget North Carolina's two native-born Vice Presidents, one of whom was elected from Tennessee and the other one from Alabama.

Anonymous said...

Re: Native North Carolina Veeps:

The bicentennial of the birthday of the Tar Heel-born Vice President from Tennessee is coming up next month--December 29, 1808-December 29, 2008. But the birthday of this VP's presidential running mate is much better known: February 12, 1809.

As for the Tar Heel-born Vice President from Alabama, some may refer to him as Clinton's Vice President, but he was not Albert Gore Jr. of Tennessee. He was born in Sampson County, N.C., whose county seat is Clinton. Sampson County is also home to the annual National Hollerin' Contest at Spivey's Corner, so I reckon you could say Sampson County has "hollerin' rights" to this Vice President.

This Vice President is not so well known to history buffs but not because he died in office. In fact, he died before ever taking office in the first place, so he may be more accurately classified as North Carolina's native-born Vice President-Elect.

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