James G Martin

Early life and education

Jim Martin was born in Savannah, Chatham County, Georgia. He was subsequently raised in South Carolina. He now lives in Charlotte.

He graduated from Davidson College in 1957 with a Bachelor of Science degree. Shortly after graduation, on June 1, he married Dorothy Ann McAulay of Charlotte, North Carolina. An avid tuba player, he was a member of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia music fraternity and Beta Theta Pi Social Fraternity while an undergraduate at Davidson.

After receiving his doctorate in chemistry from Princeton University in 1960, Martin served as an associate professor of chemistry at his alma mater Davidson College until 1972.

Local

As a professor at Davidson, he advised the school's Young Republicans chapter. In 1966, he was elected to the Mecklenburg County Board of Commissioners. He served for seven years, chairing the body from 1967 to 1968 and briefly in 1971. He was a president of the North Carolina Association of County Commissioners.

National

He was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1972 representing the Charlotte-based 9th Congressional district. He served there for six terms. He served as a Ways and Means Committee member, and as a House Republican Research Committee chairman. He became the first elected official to receive the Charles Lathrop Parsons Award, given by the American Chemical Society for outstanding public service by an American chemist, in 1983.

State

In 1984, with incumbent governor Jim Hunt leaving office due to the term limit, Martin ran for the Republican nomination and won. He defeated state attorney general Rufus Edmisten by a nine-point margin. He was helped by the coattails from Ronald Reagan's landslide re-election victory. He was also helped when Lieutenant Governor Jimmy Green endorsed him after being defeated by Edmisten in the Democratic primary. Green was from eastern North Carolina, and his endorsement helped Martin win support among conservative Democrats in that part of the state.

One promise

While most political figures running for office were prone to make promises covering a wide range of issues from education to health care, Martin made one promise that garnered a lot of attention; he said he would address all of the priorities in the state, but his only promise was that construction on Interstate 40 from Raleigh to Wilmington, North Carolina would be finished before he left office. The long-neglected and last leg of I-40 from Barstow, California would open up the southeastern coastal area to the rest of the state. He was true to his promise; the last unfinished leg of I-40 was finished before the end of his first term.

Re-election

Martin was easily reelected in 1988, defeating Lieutenant Governor Bob Jordan by 13 points. In so doing, he became the only member of his party to have been elected to two terms as governor of North Carolina. He was part of a 28-year trend of Governors of North Carolina who were named James, having been preceded and succeeded by Jim Hunt, who in turn was preceded in his first term by James Holshouser.

Subsequent career

In 1993 he retired from political life and became chairman of the board of the James Cannon Research Center of Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, NC. In 2012, he was appointed to lead an investigation into academic improprieties at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

For the United States presidential election in 2016 Martin endorsed fellow Republican John Kasich.

In January 2017, the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy changed its name to the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, named after Governor Martin. Gov. Martin also serves on the board of directors for the Martin Center.