Rep. Dan Kuykendall, RIP

By Kleinheider Posted on June 12, 2008 at 12:51 pm

The man who many assumed may very well be the last white man, and who likely will be the last white Republican, to hold Tennessee’s Ninth District Congressional seat has died:

Mr. Kuykendall was one of the architects of the Shelby County Republican Party in the 1960s, the building of which led to the emergence of a highly competitive two-party system across Tennessee.

Shelby County’s conservative Republicans combined with East Tennessee traditional GOP in 1966 to send Howard Baker to Washington as the first popularly elected Republican senator from Tennessee and, four years later, to elect Winfield Dunn as the state’s first GOP governor in 50 years. Dunn was an early ally of Mr. Kuykendall, Memphis lawyer Lewis R. Donelson and others in building the Shelby GOP.

SEE ALSO: The Daily Docket

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Tags: Dan Kuykendall, Ed Bryant, Harold Ford, Ninth District