Marie Ragghianti was 33 when Tennessee's governor appointed her chairwoman of the state Board of Pardons and Paroles. It was 1976, and Ragghianti was an innocent and naïve woman, or so Gov. Ray Blanton and his aides suspected. In the end, they underestimated her.

It didn't take long for Ragghianti to realize that the governor's office was accepting payoffs for the early release of prisoners and that she was put there to rubber-stamp the corrupt activities. Instead of resigning, she contacted the FBI and helped launch an investigation into widespread corruption that went far beyond the prison system.

When she was fired for blowing the whistle, she turned to one of Nashville's most popular, up-and-coming Republican lawyers: Fred Thompson.

"I thought, 'If I stand a chance at all, it is with this man representing me,' " Ragghianti said in an interview with the Monitor.

Thompson, then 35 years old, helped win a settlement for Ragghianti, while Blanton, a Democrat, and several of his aides were convicted in separate criminal probes. Ragghianti's story was chronicled in a book that was later turned into a movie in which Thompson played himself. It was the first film appearance for an actor who would go on to appear in 21 movies and the TV series Law & Order, one of the most successful shows in American television history.

The case became part of a historic scandal that rocked the Democratic Party in Tennessee, solidifying Thompson's status as a Republican loyalist and launching a 30-year movie career. And it set the ambitious, young attorney on two parallel career tracks - politics and acting - that would help him build the connections and the fame he needed to position himself for a presidential run.

Republican takeover

Tennessee has long been a political battleground. Divisions date back to the Civil War, and many counties have maintained their loyalties over

the years. The central and western parts of the state have traditionally elected Democrats, while the eastern hill country has been a Republican stronghold for decades.

But by 1970, the tide had started to turn in favor of the GOP across the state. Voters that year elected Winfield Dunn, the first Republican governor in more than 50 years. Bill Brock, a Republican congressman from Chattanooga, ousted three-term Sen. Albert Gore Sr. And in 1972, Richard Nixon carried more than two-thirds of the vote in the presidential election.

"The Republicans had just totally taken over the state," said Kirk Loggins, who worked at the time as a reporter for the state's largest newspaper, The Tennessean.

Fred Thompson was working as an assistant U.S. attorney in Nashville, prosecuting federal criminal cases, including bank robberies, moonshine and stolen cars. He got his first taste of politics by starting a young Republicans group and working on several Republican congressional campaigns, despite coming from a family of Democrats.

"In Tennessee, if you were a young, ambitious lawyer, you could probably score points faster as a Republican than as a Democrat because the Republicans were just taking over," Loggins said.

Thompson worked his way into the inner circle of Republican Sen. Howard Baker and resigned his position with the U.S. attorney's office after three years to work for Baker's 1972 re-election campaign in central Tennessee. The day after his resignation, five men were arrested at the Watergate hotel for breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters.

A congressional committee was formed to investigate White House involvement in the break-in, and Baker chose Thompson to give legal advice to Republican members of the committee. He questioned witnesses during televised hearings that increased his profile back home.

Single page