delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1940. In 1942, he ran unopposed for the 5th district seat in the U.S. House of Representatives (the incumbent, Percy Priest, had been redistricted). Governor In 1944, McCord sought his party's nomination for governor in the race to succeed the incumbent, Prentice Cooper, who was term-limited. With the support of powerful Memphis political boss, E. H. Crump, McCord won the primary by a lopsided margin over Nashville attorney Rex Manning and Knoxville law professor John R. Neal, and defeated the Republican candidate, Greeneville attorney John Wesley Kilgo, in the general election, 275,746 votes to 158,742. During his first term, McCord obtained significant appropriations for education, including $4 million for monthly raises for teachers and principals, and funding to provide tuition assistance for returning World War II veterans. He also signed a retirement law for state employees. In the 1946 gubernatorial campaign, McCord beat back a primary challenge from former governor Gordon Browning (who was in Germany and did not actively campaign), and easily defeated the Republican candidate, W.O. Lowe, in the general election. The 1946 primary was marred by an uprising known as the "Battle of Athens," which erupted when several hundred ex-World War II veterans launched an armed assault on the jail in Athens, Tennessee, where the sheriff and several Crump-linked figures had retreated with ballot boxes, presumably to fix local elections. McCord dispatched the state guard to restore order. During his second term, McCord enacted a 2% sales tax, which Crump had reluctantly agreed not to oppose. The revenue from this tax was used to build new schools, buy school buses, and help implement the state's first comprehensive program for grades 1 through 12. McCord also enacted right-to-work legislation, which was made possible by the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947. The enactment of this law alienated the party's organized labor constituency. In the governor's race of 1948, Browning, determined to break the Crump machine, ran a strong campaign for the nomination. He assailed McCord for the sales tax, and accused Crump of voter fraud. Gradually, important constituencies, including veterans, black voters, rural voters, and organized labor, began abandoning Crump and McCord. On election day, Browning defeated McCord for the nomination, 231,852 votes to 158,854. It was the first defeat of a Crump-backed candidate in a major state election in over two decades. Later life McCord was a delegate to the limited state