Former Gov. Bob Scott, who served from 1969-73 and who got the legislature to adopt the state's first cigarette tax and who pushed for restructuring of higher education in a move that led to creation of the present UNC system, has died, according to longtime family friend Fred Morrison, who served as Scott's legal counsel. Scott had been in Alamance Hospice for several days after spending time at Alamance Hospital.
Scott was the son of former Gov. Kerr Scott, whose upset victory over establishment Democrats in 1948 had changed North Carolina politics in major ways. The elder Scott, later a U.S. senator, represented the "branchhead boys" -- ordinary folks, farmers and other rural residents who live way up at the heads of branches and creeks and who had to endure muddy dirt roads to try to get their crops to market.
Bob Scott was somewhat more conservative than his father, but still liked to shake up the establishment and seemed to revel in firing darts at those in charge. He attempted to make a political comeback against Gov. Jim Hunt in 1980 and lost badly in the primary, but later became head of the N.C. Community College system and did much to represent that system's interests in the legislature. His later days were not happy ones. His daughter, Meg Scott Phipps, was elected commissioner of agriculture but later went to federal prison for several years in a scandal over campaign contributions. The last years of his life Scott had to use an oxygen mask to help him breathe, surely an annoyance for an active fellow who was used to going where he liked and doing what he wanted to do.
Scott was a lot of fun to cover. He was the first governor I covered after graduating from college -- I still remember the long sideburns he sported shortly after taking office -- and later he chaired the Appalachian Regional Commission in Washington during Jimmy Carter's presidency. Scott liked a good joke and he loved ribbing his friends and his adversaries. Whenever I saw him he'd grin and drawl, "Well, here comes the coarser element."
