Dan Kuykendall

Dan Heflin Kuykendall (born July 9, 1924) was a U.S. Representative from Tennessee from 1967 to 1975. He is a member of the Republican Party.

Kuykendall was born in San Saba County, Texas. He was a pilot in World War II from 1942 to 1945. He graduated from Texas A&M University in 1947. Employment with Procter & Gamble brought him to Memphis, Tennessee. In 1963 he became chairman of the Shelby County Republican Party, which was just beginning its return to prominence after many years of near-irrelevance. In 1964 he received the Republican nomination for United States Senate against incument U.S. Senator Albert Gore, Sr.. Kuykendall ran a surprisingly competitive race. (At the same time, Howard Baker was running another competitive race against Democratic nominee Ross Bass for the balance of the term of the late Estes Kefauver.) The closeness of this race took many observers by surprise, especially given the size of the landslide, both in Tennessee and nationally, by President Lyndon B. Johnson over Barry Goldwater, and made Kuykendall very popular in Republican circles.

In 1966 Kuykendall ran for what was then the Ninth Congressional Disrict House seat and won, becoming Tennessee's first Republican congressman since Reconstruction to come from outside of East Tennessee. He was easily re-elected in 1968 and 1970. Kuykendall was known for being long-winded to the point of what many felt was verbosity, and as a consequence was given the somewhat derisive nickname "The Tennessee Talking Horse".

Reapportionment in 1972 based on the 1970 federal census caused Tennessee to go from nine House seats to eight, and gave Kuykendall a larger proportion of black constituents than he had previously. Kuykendall won re-election in 1972 against black pastor J. O. Patterson, Jr. in the midst of the national Republican landslide (in which Richard Nixon won 90 of Tennessee's 95 counties), but massive "white flight" in the Memphis area caused analysts to realize that this seat would not remain Republican for long. In 1974, the Democrats nominated Harold Ford, a young member of a prominent black funeral-directing family and a two-term state representative. Ford staged a tremendous get-out-the-vote campaign in the Memphis black community. On election night, it looked like Kuykendall had managed to hold onto the seat by a razor-thin margin. However, Ford's supporters found eight ballot boxes in the dumpster of the all-Republican Shelby County Election Commission. When those ballots were counted, it was enough for Ford to unseat Kuykendall. Since then, Republicans have never come close to retaking the Memphis-area district. The district became majority-black in the 1980s round of redistricting, and Republicans have lost interest in the seat.

As is the case with many former members of Congress, Kuykendall could not resist the allure of the Washington, D.C. area and is now a resident of Bethesda, Maryland.