Gov. Scott and the Great Bull Calf Walk
Published August 17, 2014
by Rob Christensen, News and Observer, August 16, 2014.
This year marks the 60th anniversary of one of the most celebrated campaign stunts in North Carolina political history, the Great Bull Calf Walk.
It was a campaign stunt from an earlier era, when North Carolina had far more tobacco barns than Starbucks, sushi restaurants and strip malls. And unlike many campaign gimmicks, it didn’t involve dirty politics.
The Great Bull Calf Walk took place during the Democratic Senate primary in 1954, when former Gov. Kerr Scott was challenging U.S. Sen. Alton Lennon of Wilmington. Lennon had been appointed to the Senate seat by Gov. William Umstead after the death of Sen. Willis Smith. At that time, North Carolina, like the rest of the South, was still a one-party state dominated by Democrats, so winning the primary was tantamount to winning the election.
Scott, who had been governor 1949 to 1953, was a dairy farmer from the Alamance County town of Haw River, and had built a following among rural people by championing farm-to-market roads, and extending electricity and telephone service to the countryside.
Campaigning in Eastern North Carolina, Scott told a radio audience he had once walked 21 miles in 1919 between Kinston and Hargett’s Crossroads while en route to a cow sale to save the dollar-per-mile taxi fare.
Walk the walk
As a campaign gimmick, Scott offered a bull calf to anyone who could walk the 21 miles in less than six hours – the time it took him to walk the distance.
In Pink Hill, Scott gave away 39 bull calves to those whose walk broke the six-hour barrier. Most of the calves were donated by the North Carolina Jersey Cattle Breeders Association.
The first calf was presented to Paul Simpson, a Burlington postman who traveled the 21 miles in the fastest time, 4 hours and 8 minutes.
Knowing a good publicity stunt when he saw one, Scott arrived in town in a sulky pulled by two mules and accompanied by a local high school band. The mayor inducted Scott into the Athletic Order of the Survivors of the Great Bull Calf Walk.
“There were thousands of people lining the road and cheering people on,” said Lauch Faircloth, a Scott lieutenant and a future U.S. senator. “There were truckloads of those calves. I think a lot of people won a calf who didn’t know quite what to do with it.”
The certificate
Those who completed the walk were awarded by the campaign a certificate. It read:
“Be it hereby known to all parties interested ... that (name) has, by participation in the Great Bull Calf Walk on 3 March, 1954, being from Kinston to Hargett’s Store, the same being several miles in distance, sufficiently demonstrated certain admirable qualities, including good humor, alertness and ability to stay in the fight. This then certifies that the bearer henceforth will be known as one who has caught up in hauling and doesn’t drag his feet.”
Scott, the liberal, went on to defeat Lennon, the conservative, in the Democratic primary and win the Senate seat. In Washington, he continued his walking ways, often hiking miles each morning from the Westchester Apartments in Northwest Washington to Capitol Hill.
The Great Bull Calf Walk entered Tar Heel folklore, even making its way into a novel by New York Times columnist Tom Wicker.
Of course, Scott is not the only politician responsible for spreading bull across the state. But he is the only one who has owned up to it.
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