Only 3 governors in 32 years?

A Raleigh reader's question about this week's column reminds me of this point about today's election for governor: N.C. voters are choosing only the fourth different person since 1976 to be governor.
Thanks to the 1976 Constitutional amendment that allowed governors to run for and serve a second consecutive term in office, we've seen Democrat Jim Hunt serve two straight terms, then Republican Jim Martin serve two, then Jim Hunt serve another two, then Democrat Mike Easley serve two. That's eight gubernatorial terms, but only three people since President Gerald Ford left office. Either Democrat Bev Perdue or Republican Pat McCrory will become the fourth person to be elected governor in the past 32 or so years.
All this comes to mind because a reader wondered about a line in the column which said "Democratic presidential candidates have won nationally three times" since 1964. The reader thought that meant I was saying that three different Democrats had been elected president, but that's not the case with that particularly grammatical construction. The Democratic candidates who won three times were Jimmy Carter once (1976) and Bill Clinton twice (1992 and 1996).
But the reader had a closer point about the way I wrote that "N.C. voters did elect three Republican governors…." It was, of course, only two different persons. They elected Republican Jim Holshouser for one term in 1972, before governors could run for another term, and Republican Jim Martin twice, in 1984 and 1988.
This is also a reminder that the Era of the Jims officially ended years ago. Unless the winner of today's gubernatorial election changes his or her name, we're well out of the time when only a Jim could win. From Holshouser in 1972 to Jim Hunt's final term ending in 2000, all our governors were named Jim. OK, that's only three Jims, but they served seven different terms in office.