Flem D. Sampson

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Sampson's political career began in 1906 when he was elected county judge of Knox County, Kentucky, a position that he held for four years. In 1911, he was elected to the circuit court of the 34th Judicial District. He was re-elected to this post in 1916, but later that year, he was elected to the Kentucky Court of Appeals, which was then the court of last resort in Kentucky. He represented Kentucky's Seventh Appellate District, and he was elevated to chief justice on January 1, 1923. He was re-elected to the court in 1924.

Sampson and US Representative John M. Robsion organized a formidable Republican faction in the eastern part of Kentucky. In 1927, Sampson was a candidate for the Republican gubernatorial nomination. His opponent was Robert H. Lucas, a tax collector for the Internal Revenue Service. Lucas secured the support of Kentucky Senators Frederic M. Sackett and Richard P. Ernst, and Sampson was backed by longtime supporter John M. Robsion and the Jockey Club, a coalition of leaders who supported parimutuel betting on horse races. Sampson won the primary by a margin of 39,375.

The Democratic Party was badly divided over the parimutuel betting issue as well as Prohibition, and a severance tax on coal. The prohibitionist and anti-gambling faction of the Democratic Party, with the help of Louisville Courier-Journal editor Robert Worth Bingham, united to make former governor and US Senator J. C. W. Beckham the party's gubernatorial nominee. After Beckham's nomination, many pro-gambling and anti-prohibition Democrats hurried to the support of Sampson.

The sitting Democratic governor William J. Fields, who had been elected with help from the Jockey Club, was very passive in the campaign and refused to support Beckham.

The campaign was particularly contentious. Sampson contrasted his humble roots with Beckham's aristocratic ones by declaring, "I'm just plain old Flem. When I'm elected governor of Kentucky, come into my office and sit down and say 'Howdy Flem'." He also trumpeted his own moral purity, claiming he "never smoked, chewed, drank, gambled – not even bet on an election." He promised, however, to protect horse-racing in the Commonwealth. In response, Sampson's opponents dubbed him "Flem-Flam Flem."

Sampson won the election by a majority of over 32,000 votes although every other Republican candidate lost by small margins. In the lieutenant governor's race, Democrat James Breathitt Jr. defeated Sampson's running mate, E. E. Nelson, by 159 votes out of more than 700,000 cast. It was estimated that the Jockey Club spent half-a-million dollars to defeat Beckham, and the large majority for Sampson versus the close defeat of all other Republican candidates suggested some type of electoral fraud, but none was ever proved.

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