John Ingram (politician)

John Randolph Ingram (born 12 June 1929)^[1] is a retired American Democratic politician, attorney, and insurance commissioner. He served as North Carolina's Commissioner of Insurance from 1973 until 1985, and ran repeatedly for other state-wide offices in his later career.

Born in Greensboro, North Carolina, Ingram attended Asheboro High School. He graduated with a B.S. in Business Administration at the University of North Carolina School of Business in 1951.^[1] He earned his Juris Doctor from University of North Carolina School of Law in 1954, and practiced as an attorney, serving on the board of directors of the North Carolina Bar Association.^[1]

He first ran for election to represent Randolph County in the North Carolina House of Representatives in 1960, but lost.^[2] He ran for the state House again, winning in 1970, and served for one term, during which he introduced the bill reducing the voting age to 18 in North Carolina, and also agitated for auto insurance reform.^[1] He won his post as Commissioner of Insurance in 1972.^[3]

In that role, Ingram was known as a populist and was the most controversial holder of the office since its creation in 1899.^[4] He won re-election in 1976 and 1980. He considered the abolition of assigned risk for young drivers to be the highlight of his career as Commissioner.^[2] Throughout his tenure, he consistently rejected insurance rate increases, although these were overturned by appellate courts in 32 of 33 cases.^[2] This brought him into conflict with the General Assembly, which, in 1977, stripped the Commissioner's office of its rate-capping powers.^[5]

Ingram was eccentric:^[3][6] often firing aides and deputies, including successor Jim Long, and holding meetings in parking garages over fears his office was bugged.^[4] Ingram's office administration was unconventional and sloppy;^[5] one of Ingram's aides was jailed, and, upon leaving office, Ingram's replacements found boxes of documents in a dumpster outside the department's office.^[2] When he left office, Jim Long made a point of symbolically breaking with his maverick predecessor.^[2]

Ingram ran for the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate in 1978, 1986, and 1990. He won the Democratic nomination in the second ballot in the 1978 election against the banker Luther H. Hodges, Jr., who outspent him by $1.7m to only $50,000.^[2] In the general election, against the Republican incumbent Jesse Helms, he was abandoned by the state Democrats, who favoured the pro-establishment Hodges and the conservative Helms, and was outspent by 30 to 1 by his opponent.^[6][7] Consequently, he lost to Helms by 55% to 45%.^[8] He ran for the position of Governor of North Carolina in 1984, to replace Jim Hunt, who stepped down to challenge Helms for the Senate. However, in the primary election, Ingram finished fifth in a crowded field, with 9% of the vote.^[8]

In 1986, Terry Sanford won the nomination on the first ballot, with Ingram coming second, with 16% of the vote. Ingram came third in the 1990 primary, with 17%, behind Harvey Gantt and Mike Easley.^[8] In these later races, Ingram was known to focus primarily to issues of insurance. In the 1990 election, at first, Ingram refused to answer questions about any other topic, focusing on health insurance.^[9] However, he was known as pro-choice, and favoured federal funding of abortion for poor victims of rape and incest.^[10]

Footnotes