Today, the plaid shirts symbolize Alexander’s claim to being an “outsider” in national politics. That seems to be working, despite the fact that Alexander has spent virtually his entire career comfortably on the inside. Alexander was a member of Richard Nixon’s White House staff and later served as George Bush’s secretary of education. He broke into elective politics – and won two terms as governor – as a protege of former U.S. senator Howard Baker of Tennessee. And even more than Bill and Hillary Clinton, Alexander and his wife, Honey, have benefited from their friendships with the rich and powerful.

So much so, in fact, that their net worth has grown from $151,000 in 1979 to at least $3.4 million today. The question now is how Alexander came to make so much money in public life. “I plead guilty to being a capitalist,” he says. But the truth is that Alexander and his wife have frequently participated in lucrative deals arranged by political cronies.

Take The Knoxville Journal deal. In 1980, while serving as governor, Alexander got the idea of buying the newspaper in a partnership with Baker and others. In a remarkably friendly deal with the paper’s owners, they paid $1 apiece for a purchase option. Then they approached the giant Gannett chain, which paid $15.1 million to acquire the Journal. Alexander got a 1 percent interest for his option rights. Converted into stock and stock warrants, that gave him a gain of $620,212 by 1987 – an astronomical return. An aide said that Alexander supplied “a lot of sweat equity, a lot of creativity and a lot of leadership” in arranging the sale to Gannett, and that there was no breach of law or ethics. “I’d do it again,” Alexander said.

Last week reporters zapped Alexander about a state audit claiming that he failed to disclose his wife’s interest in Blackberry Farm, a country inn that got state business while he was president of the University of Tennessee. Alexander conceded that he should have handled the matter “differently,” even though the university spent only about $64,000 at the inn. But the Alexanders took part in much bigger deals than that. One involved the Corrections Corp. of America, a privately held firm financed by the late Jack Massey, one of Alexander’s political backers. With Gov. Alexander’s endorsement, CCA bid for a $250 million state contract in 1985. It didn’t get the job, but Honey Alexander eventually made $131,904 on a $5,000 investment in CCA. Beginning in 1987 the Alexanders invested $6,600 in another Massey-backed venture, Corporate Child Care, Inc. Last year this investment was valued at more than $1 million.

It may be, as Alexander’s aides say now, that the governor is a “strategic genius” with a knack for making money. They say he was never involved in a company that did business with state government and that he and his wife have never covered up any of their financial dealings. But if their rise to wealth has been ethical and legal, it still owes much to his political friends.