Little more than a month after his decisive gubernatorial victory of Novem-
ber 1980, Governor Hunt announced that his second inauguration would
be as down-home and unpretentious as his first: dress would be business or
Sunday suits; the setting would be informal and outdoors; speeches would
be brief. On Saturday, January 10, 1981, the governor's party walked in
freezing rain the one block from the Governor's Mansion on Blount Street
to the outdoor speakers' platform on the steps of the Archives and History
Building, where before an audience of some four thousand Hunt took the
oath of office administered by Chief Justice Joseph Branch.

After removing his chesterfield, Hunt delivered a ten-minute inaugural
address. It vigorously sounded his theme for the eighties: "Across the nation
the winds of retreat are blowing," he declared. "But North Carolina must
sail against the wind." The reference was to the newly elected Reagan ad-
ministration. Hunt noted paradoxically that the "role of the federal gov-
ernment is properly diminishing, and the states can again become the true
laboratories of democracy." With the careful pragmatism that often char-
acterized his rhetoric, the governor declared that while "it is time for gov-
ernment to reduce its burdens on the people," it is "not a time to turn back
from progress." He insisted that North Carolina, which had become the
tenth most populous state, was "poised to lead the nation."

But then he mentioned the state's obstacles--it was forty-first in per
capita income and forty-seventh in infant mortality, its schools had high
drop-out rates, and many of its rivers were polluted. He challenged the
state to join the technological revolution, to volunteer to help a child learn
to read, to protect neighbors against crime, and to give aid to senior citi-
zens. In a reference to the Greensboro Klan-Communist shoot-out, he said
the state would not tolerate "bigotry or hatred." He concluded: "We shall
light the flame of human brotherhood."

Two days later, at the swearing in of his new cabinet, the governor ex-
panded on the centrist theme of his inaugural address. "We must prove that
we can be both conservative and progressive. We must prove that govern-
ment can be both lean and compassionate." Hunt repeated the goals he
had campaigned on in 1980: Economic development, education, energy al-
ternatives, environmental protection, and crime control. "Inflation is our
greatest problem," he declared. "We are going to be conservative in the use

-78-