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power. And I said, "My God, is that the only reason?" "yeah." I said,

"Well, you are wrong. If you serve the people, you are not going to have

any power. You've got the wrong idea. You shouldn't even consider running

for the county commission." And you have some real odd balls, you know,

that have freakish ideas. One thing for damn sure, there is no money in

politics if you're honest. There is no way. You've got to have some

other motivation, because you damn sure can't make any money out of it.

I don't care, you couldn't make any money being president if you are

honest. If the guy has got the money and the inclination, then great, but

I just hope that .

J.B.: What kind of people do you try to recruit?

Thomas: Well, you know it depends on the kind of job they are running

for, if it is a part time job or a full time one.

J.B.: Well, say that it is the legislature.

Thomas: Well, legislature you know, I think that we have got too

many lawyers in the legislature and I can get in all kinds of arguments

over just saying that. I think that it is true, we've got too many lawyers

and too many insurance men. I think that the kind of guy we ought to have

in the legislature is some kind of young guy that's on the way up or some

guy who has got it moderately made who can afford to serve over there

and have a free and open mind. But so many of them, we've got an awful

lot of them in our own party over there, we've got some good young people

and some of them aspire to higher office and that's great. I mean, they

are really dedicated. But then we've got some other guys that we're not

real proud of. And of course, there are some guys in the Democratic party

that they are not proud of. They've got some guys who have talked to me

about switching to the Republican party and I let them know that I didn't


From the Southern Oral History Program, #4007, Interview /4-6 in the Southern Historical Collection,
University of North Carolina Library, Chapel Hill. FOR REFERENCE ONLY: PERMISSION TO
PUBLISH MUST BE REQUESTED. WARNING: MOST MANUSCRIPTS ARE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT.