Harlan Mathews

Early life and education

Harlan Mathews was a native of Walker County, Alabama. He was born January 17, 1927 in Sumiton, Alabama, the son of John William Mathews and Lillian (Young) Mathews. In 1944, after high school, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy and served until 1946. Returning to Alabama, he graduated from Jacksonville State College (now Jacksonville State University) with a B.A. degree in 1949.

He came to Nashville and obtained a master's degree in public administration from Vanderbilt University in 1950. He began work on Governor Gordon Browning's planning staff. When Frank G. Clement was elected in 1954 Mathews moved to the state's budget staff. A year after beginning his service as Commissioner of Finance and Administration in 1961, he completed his law degree in 1962 from the YMCA Night Law School, now Nashville School of Law.

Early political career

Mathews joined Tennessee state government in 1950, becoming part of the staff of the governor of Tennessee, successively serving governors Gordon Browning, Frank G. Clement, and Buford Ellington. In 1961 he was named to the Cabinet as Commissioner of Finance and Administration, a position he held until 1971.

With the accession to office of Republican Winfield Dunn in January 1971, Mathews left the Cabinet and entered the private sector for two years, working for Amcon International in Memphis. In 1973 he became the legislative assistant to the longtime Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury, Bill Snodgrass. In 1974 he was elected state treasurer by the Tennessee General Assembly when his predecessor, Tom Wiseman, resigned to run for governor. The Tennessee General Assembly elected him to his first full two-year term as treasurer in 1975, and he served in this office until January 1987, when he became deputy to the newly elected governor, Ned R. McWherter.

U.S. Senate

Mathews served as deputy to the governor until January 1993. Al Gore, who had been Tennessee's junior Senator since 1985, was elected Vice President of the United States as Bill Clinton's running mate in November 1992, and resigned his position as Senator in preparation for his inauguration as Vice President on January 20, 1993. McWherter then appointed his deputy as Gore's successor in the Senate.

From the beginning, it was understood that Mathews' role in the Senate would be one of caretaker; he had no ambition of running for election to the Senate. The appointment served two purposes; firstly, to reward a longtime government insider who had served his state and his party faithfully for many years, largely out of view of the general public, and secondly, to allow McWherter to remain above the fray in the scramble to succeed Gore in the Senate and not identify himself with any particular party faction.

Mathews' service in the Senate was of a decidedly low-key nature; he largely supported the Democratic agenda of President Clinton and the then-majority in the Senate. The passion for the contest for the Democratic senatorial nomination to succeed him was quelled somewhat when it became apparent that the Republican nominee would be attorney and prominent actor Fred Thompson. The highest-profile Democrat to enter the primary was Representative Jim Cooper, who was the eventual nominee and lost to Thompson in a landslide.

Thompson was sworn into office in December 1994 in order to give him a slight advantage in seniority over other Senators elected in that year, as is traditionally done when someone is elected to the balance of an unexpired term. Mathews left office as quietly as he had served in it and then practiced law in Nashville, Tennessee.

Death

Mathews died of brain cancer on May 9, 2014 at a hospice in Nashville. He is survived by his wife, Pat Mathews and two sons. A third son, Richard Mathews, had preceded him in death.