John Jay Hooker, American politician, Died at 85

  Politician

John Jay Hooker, Jr. was born on August 24, 1930, and died on January 24, 2016.
He was a Nashville, Tennessee attorney, entrepreneur, political gadfly and perennial candidate.
He was the Democratic nominee for Governor of Tennessee in 1970 and 1998.
Following him completing high school at Nashville’s Montgomery Bell Academy, Hooker attended college at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee.
John then served two years in the United States Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps as an investigator.
Upon discharge from the service, Hooker attended Vanderbilt University Law School.
Mr.Hooker graduated and was admitted to the Tennessee bar in 1957.
Mr.Hooker then practiced law with his father in the law firm of Hooker, Keeble, Dotson, and Harris, one of the most prominent law firms in Tennessee.
In 1959, Mr.Hooker married the former Eugenia “Tish” Fort, a member of another socially-prominent Nashville family.
They had three children, Dara, Kendall, and, Blount, who was named after his ancestor Governor Blount.
The Fort family were co-founders along with other families of the former National Life and Accident Insurance Company and its subsidiaries, WSM radio and the Grand Ole Opry country music program.
John Hooker won the nomination based on tremendous name recognition among older Democrats, who are in Tennessee generally the most reliable primary voters.
John Hooker ran best in the rural areas and with urban blacks, who had always provided him with a core support group.
While not formally disclaim him, the regular Democratic Party organization did almost nothing to promote his candidacy, and Hooker had repudiated the formal fundraising process as unethical and immoral.
John Hooker received about 30 percent of the vote in the November general election.
At this time, Governor Sundquist had a 72 percent approval rating.
Hooker stayed as a political activist, running for Congress in 2002 and again suing all his opponents, and then for Chancery Court judge in 2004 as an Independent against Chancellor Claudia Bonnyman and sued her for taking campaign contributions from lawyers who practice in her court, which lawyers attended fundraisers held by her where she, according to Hooker, gave them food and drink prohibited by Article X Section 3 of the Tennessee Constitution.
Hooker filed to run for the Democratic nomination for both the governor of Tennessee and United States Senator, in 2006.
Despite deny to raise or spend any money in these efforts, Hooker completed the third in the senatorial primary and second in the gubernatorial primary held on August 3.
John Hooker ran for Governor as an Independent in the 2014 election.
John Hooker passed away at 85 yrs old due to cancer.