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Immediately after getting into the State Senate, he began campaigning for Lieutenant Governor. Theme song: Sonny Boy. At the 1931 State convention, he was nominated despite potent opposition by obtaining a last-minute switch of the Louisville delegation. His campaign for Governor began as soon as he started presiding over the Senate. Whenever Governor Ruby Laffoon left the State, Lieutenant Governor Happy played Governor. Among other smart tricks, he made Jim Farley and the late Louis Howe honorary colonels.
When he fought and beat Governor Laffoon's sales tax, Laffoon got a bill through stripping the Lieutenant Governor of his powers, then rammed the sales tax through. Happy seized upon it as a prime issue of his campaign for Governor in 1935.
Laffoon wanted a nominating convention that year, despite Franklin Roosevelt's request for a primary. Happy waited until Laffoon left the State, then called a special session of the Legislature, to order a primary. Furious, Laffoon got it made a double primary, calling for a run-off between the two leading candidates. His man. Thomas Rhea, won the first round but Happy won the runoff, then threw himself into an election campaign that took him into every Kentucky hamlet from Big Sandy to Mills Point. Aided by Senator Barkley and Franklin Roosevelt's prestige, he beat Judge King Swope, Republican, by 96.000 votes. Then he squared off at Frankfort to bring about the reforms he had promised.
He killed the sales tax, substituted income and liquor taxes. With Governor Byrd's Virginia as his model, he reorganized the State government, abolishing 130 boards and commissions, consolidating 119 divisions into 22, including a new Department of Welfare. Aided by largesse from Washington, he balanced his budget, attacked and refunded the $28,000,000 State debt so that next year it will be all gone. He ended company police in the coal mines, cleaned up old State prisons. He got Kentucky to ratify the Child Labor amendment to the U. S. Constitution.
Kentucky law limits her Governors to one term. When Federal Judge Charles H. Moorman died this year, a way was seen for "Happy" Chandler to go up to the U. S. Senate without fighting Alben Barkley for his seat. Who approached whom with the idea of giving Senator Logan the judgeship to make way for Happy is a matter of dispute. Friends of Senator Barkley, who has ambitions to be President, say he killed the idea, lest his path to the White House seem to have an unworthy detour in it. Franklin Roosevelt asked Happy to be a good boy and wait; his reward would come. But Happy said: "The time to run is when you're in office." He went ahead full steam.