Jim Nance McCord

Jim Nance McCord (March 17, 1879 – September 2, 1968) was an American journalist and politician who served one term in the U.S. House of Representatives (from 1943 to 1945) and two terms as the 37th Governor of Tennessee (from 1945 to 1949).

McCord was born to a farm family in Unionville in Bedford County, Tennessee, and was educated in the public schools and by private instructors. As early as 1894 he worked as a store clerk, and by the age of 17 he left home to work in a store in Lewisburg, Tennessee and later to become a traveling salesman. In 1901 he married Vera Kercheval of Lewisburg.

In 1910 he began a long newspaper career as editor and publisher of the Marshall County Gazette in Lewisburg, the county seat of Marshall County, where he was later to serve 13 terms as the city's mayor.

In 1942 he ran for the United States House of Representatives and won. Less of a supporter of E. H. Crump, the Memphis political boss, than his predecessor, Governor Prentice Cooper, McCord pushed through the legislature a politically unpopular sales tax (2%). In the compromise that made this possible, the state property tax was eliminated.

McCord was also a supporter of right-to-work legislation allowed under the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947. This put him at odds with many core Democratic constituencies, particularly organized labor, and was a factor helping to lead to his defeat by former governor Gordon Browning in the 1948 Democratic Primary. However, McCord's career as a public servant was not over. He was a delegate to the limited state constitutional convention of 1953, which submitted several important changes to the voters for approval, most notably extension of the gubernatorial term from two to four years. McCord also served in the cabinet of Governor Frank G. Clement as Commissioner of Conservation.

In 1958, at the age of 79, he opposed Buford Ellington for election to the governorship again in the 1958 general, this time running as an Independent, but received 32% to Ellington's 58%.

McCord died in Nashville on September 2, 1968 at the age of 89, a decade after his last run for the governorship. At the time of his death, he was the third oldest governor in Tennessee history, behind John I. Cox and Tom Rye, both of whom lived to age 90. McCord is buried in Lone Oak Cemetery in Lewisburg.