H. Guy Hunt Biography, Age, Height, Wife, Net Worth and Family

Hunt died on January 30, 2009, at the age of 75, after a long battle with lung cancer.

Hunt was also ordered to pay $212,000, given five years’ probation, and serve 1,000 hours of community service. In February 1998 he asked the state parole board to reduce his probation by four months; the judge instead increased the probation by five years, since he had only paid $4,000 of his $212,000 fine. In April 1998, having served his full sentence and paid his fine, the parole board granted Hunt a pardon.

A grand jury indicted Hunt for theft, conspiracy, and ethics violations. Prosecutors said that he took over $200,000 from a 1987 inaugural account and used it to for personal use such as marble showers and new lawnmowers. Hunt was found guilty. As the state constitution does not allow convicted felons to hold office, Hunt was forced to resign on April 22, 1993.

In 1992, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that taxpayers could sue Hunt for flying on state-owned aircraft to preaching engagements, where Hunt received monetary ‘love offerings.’ The charges were eventually dropped.

He narrowly won reelection in 1990 after trailing most of the way. Hunt’s election is widely credited for beginning the rise of the state Republican Party; only two Democrats have held the office since his tenure, and only one of them by election.

After Reagan won the US election in 1980, he appointed Hunt as the Alabama State Director of the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Committee. He resigned in 1985 to run for governor. His campaign was not taken seriously at first even among Republicans, who were more concerned about helping Senator Jeremiah Denton win reelection. The press paid little attention to the Republican gubernatorial primary, fully expecting that the winner of the Democratic primary would be the next governor.

In the 1978 Alabama gubernatorial election, Hunt was the Republican nominee for governor, but he lost in a massive landslide to then Democrat Fob James.

He was State Chairman of Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaigns in 1976 and 1980 and chaired the state’s Republican delegation at the 1976 and 1980 Republican National Conventions.

In 1964, he was elected probate judge of Cullman County. Lyndon Johnson’s signing of the Civil Rights Act caused many Democrats to split the ticket and vote for Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater that year, and Hunt was one of several Republicans swept into office on Goldwater’s coattails making him the youngest probate judge in Alabama. He was reelected in 1970, stepping down in 1976 to honor a promise to serve only two terms.

Hunt was active in the Republican Party from the days when the Democrats held near-total control of the state. He first ran for office in 1962, an unsuccessful run for the Alabama Senate.

Harold Guy Hunt (June 17, 1933 – January 30, 2009) was an American politician, pastor, and convicted felon who served as the 49th governor of Alabama from 1987 to 1993. He was the first Republican to serve as governor of the state since Reconstruction.

Hunt was born on June 17, 1933, in Holly Pond, Alabama to William Otto and Frances Holcombe Hunt. At an early age, Hunt joined the Mt. Vernon Primitive Baptist Church, which became a critical influence for the future governor. Less than a year out of high school at only 17 years of age, Hunt married Helen Chambers on February 25, 1951, and the couple had four children who continued his family’s farming tradition.