Sheila Galbraith Bronfman

LITTLE ROCK — To really know Sheila Galbraith Bronfman, you have to go back. Back, back, back to last weekend.

Then, hundreds of fervent Democrats from the Heights to Hillcrest, Texarkana to Paragould, California to New Hampshire and a few in between descended on, first the Capital Hotel, then the Arkansas Studies Institute, then the Masonic Temple and finally the William J. Clinton Presidential Center. There, the newest exhibit opened - “Making Politics Personal: The Story of the Arkansas Travelers.”

The Travelers are a group of more than 500 Arkansans from Blue Mountain to Lake Village to you-get-the-idea who dipped into their own savings to travel to New Hampshire, then other keyvoting states, for presidential-candidate Gov. Bill Clinton in 1992, the incumbent president in 1996, and Sen. Hillary Clinton in 2008, to get out the vote for their man, and then, their woman.

“Hordes of Arkies running around in the snow led by a woman blowing a whistle,” was how one Beltway insider put it to author Brenda Blagg in Political Magic: The Travels, Trials, and Triumphs of the Clintons’ Arkansas Travelers.

Galbraith Bronfman - aka The General, aka Attila the Hen - was that woman with the whistle.

“Sheila can stand in a room full of lawyers, judges, doctors, millionaires, and blow a damn referee whistle so loud that it piercesyour ears, and say, ‘Time to get on the bus,’ and have people who are used to giving orders take orders,” says Rogers lawyer and key Clinton campaigner David Matthews. “Can you imagine how hard it is to be around that many damn egos?”

Among these egos, former U.S. Sens. Dale Bumpers and David Pryor, the late state Sen. Jerry Bookout, former Little Rock Mayor Lottie Holt Shackelford, former presidents of the Arkansas Education Association Sid Johnson and Peggy Nabors, former state Rep. Jay Bradford, Central Arkansas Library system Director Bobby Roberts, Grammy-winning songwriter Randy Goodrum, philanthropists Carl and Margaret Whillock. Some of the foot soldiers for Clinton became the brightest political and civic lights of the last 20 years, such as former U.S. Reps. Marion Berry and Vic Snyder, PulaskiCounty Judge Buddy Villines, Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola, former state Democratic Party chairmen Vaughn McQuary and Ron Oliver, former state Rep. Robert Gregg Reep, state Sens. Mary Ann Salmon and Paul Bookout, late Arkansas Economic Development Commission director Maria Haley, film and arts trailblazer Vincent Insalaco, University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service Dean James “Skip” Rutherford and Clinton Foundation Director Stephanie Streett and others.

“You want evidence that she can do it - they’re still big egos, and they’re here to enjoy the reunion, and that’s all because of Sheila.” EARLY LIFE

Folks who win friends and influence people easily often attribute that gift to a shiftless childhood, and Galbraith Bronfman had one. She was born in Shreveport. Her father - a branch manager with Arkansas Best Freight System - moved the family to Little Rock, then back to Shreveport, then to Dallas, and finally, when Sheila was 14, to North Little Rock.

From an early age the Galbraiths’ only daughter showed an aptitude for corralling her peers. In kindergarten she organized a musical band, not out of a nascent artistic ambition but “because I wanted them to play certain instruments, and march around.”

At North Little Rock High School, any “happening” on a weekend night, well, probably “cruising,” maybe “hanging” at Paul’s Lamplighter or her parents’ basement, was, if not her design, her coordinated effort.

Galbraith Bronfman has twodegrees, one from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock in psychology and an advanced degree in counseling from the University of South Carolina.

In the mid-1970s she was working for a group called the Arkansas Environmental Barriers Counsel, organizing a day of disability awareness that asked select legislators and officials to simulate a particular disability. The politician she got to push around in a wheelchair was the young attorney general, Bill Clinton. Shortly after, Clinton had just announced his first run for governor when they ran into each other. He remembered her by name and asked if she would be a campaign volunteer.

“He looked into my eyes .... Well, I didn’t realize he was saying that to like 500 other people that day. I took it as a personal invitation.”

Throughout the late 1970s and 1980s Galbraith Bronfman involved herself in the Young Democrats of Arkansas, an affiliation that has gotten two of its own - Ed Fry and Mark Stodola - elected president of the National Young Democrats of America. It’s where she credits her professional transformation from health care to politics.

POLITICAL HONEYMOON

Her very first campaign as principal manager was in 1988 for lawyer Annabelle Tuck (nee Clinton) to a chancery judgeship, and it was then that she met Dr. Richard Bronfman.

At a parade in Jacksonville, Galbraith Bronfman had her candidate standing in the bed of a pickup truck throwing candy to kids. Bronfman was the driver. When Galbraith Bronfman wasn’t in the back telling Tuck to throw right, no, left, she was in the cab telling Bronfman to slow down, no, speed up.

“He thought I was bossy because of the speed-upslow-down.”

“I mean, we’re only going 2 miles per hour,” he says.

Nonetheless, he asked her out some days later, and she blew him off then and twice more - she was also heavily involved in Patrick Hays’ run against North Little Rock Mayor Terry Hartwick. Finally, they had dinner, at Louis Petit’s old place, Piccolo’s.

In time, she made herself indispensable to him. Bronfman was remodeling a house on St. Charles Boulevard as well as growing his podiatry practice. He became overwhelmed by contractors and projects, and Sheila, as is her wont, stepped into the breach. It wasn’t long before he asked her to marry him.

“I didn’t realize getting engaged meant you were going to get married. I thought it was like getting pinned. You know, you date, you get engaged, and then, if you think about it and you really want to, you get married,” he says. “I came home from work the next day and found out we already had a date and a minister - that’s what happens when you marry an event planner.”

The ceremony was presided over by two rabbis, a minister, and Bill Clinton.

Sheila calls her now 23-year-old marriage to Richard “a very ecumenical arrangement.” She is a member of Pulaski Heights United Methodist Church but also attends Temple B’nai Israel. The family celebrates Chanukah and Christmas; Passover, then Easter.

“I can do ‘Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu melech ha olam,’” but inter-faith marriages can be challenging, she concedes.

“Not nearly as challenging as Carville and Matlin,” Richard says, referring to the famous inter-political marriage of James Carville, Clinton’s old campaign manager, and Mary Matalin, the Republican operative.

They laugh, but the truth is if Richard had been a Republican, Sheila today would have only one hard-to-pronounce last name.

FROM CAMPAIGNS TO THE CAPITOL

Imagine, being able to boss your way right through life and watch heavy-hitters heed your words. Sheila Galbraith Bronfman has been doing it now for 27 years.

The founder and president of Southern Strategy Group has saved on her laptop an impressive list of candidatesshe has “run”: state Supreme Court Justices Donald Corbin and Annabelle Tuck (retired), former state Senate president pro tempore Jim Argue, Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola’s failed bid for the 2nd Congressional district in 1996, former Pulaski County Sheriff Randy Johnson, former Little Rock Mayor Jim Dailey.

“Ask any of my clients, men or women, I tell them, ‘If I’m going to do your campaign I’m going to run your life. You don’t have it anymore.’”

She has hired consultants to dress her female candidates - they tend to dress too conservatively. She has coached men to “use your big-boy voice,” shake a woman’s hand firmly.

Never drink and drive; in fact, don’t drive - find an aide for that. Women should always have an aide, if not for security then to carry your purse. Tell your kids to answer the phone politely, and if the spouse isn’t charming, keep him or her at headquarters. Never flash another campaign’s bumper sticker or yard sign - win your own campaign first.

“I always sit a client down on a Friday afternoon and give them every worst-case scenario - your kids won’t like you, you’ll be tired, cranky, spending your own money. I spend an hour or two kind of depressing the hell out of them, and I make the wife or husband be there, too. If they come back on Monday and still want to run, they’vethought about it.

“That’s why I admire people who’ve run for office because your life gets turned upside down, even [a race] like state rep. You’re walking blocks every night or on the phone, you’re raising money or going to a meeting andmaking a speech. I admire that they want to do it.”

In 2002, during an arteriogram, she went into cardiac arrest and was rushed into bypass surgery. In a hospital bed, recovering, she picked up a laptop and edited the newsletter for the Arkansas chapter of the American Institute of Architects (of which she was executive director). She also convinced the nurse it would be no trouble to let her have her cell phone - to make work calls, of course.

“To which they all said, ‘Therein lies the problem.’”

It was then, though, that she began relinquishing bit by bit the heaviest duties of her trade.

Today, Galbraith Bronfman, 64, is a lobbyist at the state Capitol, where much of her job involves examining public policy proposals and going back to her clients, such as the law firm Mitchell, Blackstock, Ivers & Sneddon, which represents several health-care associations. The legislative session of 2007 was the first for partner Mike Mitchell and her.

“She would introduce me as her boss,” Mitchell says. “I said, ‘Sheila, stop introducing me as your boss - because they see you giving me orders and I take ’em!’” LIFE-LONG JOURNEY

Life is more serene for Galbraith Bronfman today. No rope-a-dope political donnybrooks on the horizon, no more marching an “Arkie” army across the Russo-winter landscape of the Live Free or Die state - that is, unless there’s a “Clinton 2016.”

Her favorite army these days is an ungovernable special force of tenderfoots whom she calls grandkids, the offspring of three “ godchildren” she took under her wing when they themselves were youngsters.

“They actually call her ‘Nana,’” says Jim Davis, the oldest godchild. “It’s this kind of thing where the relationships here are very deep even if they aren’t necessarily blood relations.”

Up the river from the Clinton Presidential Center, up the steep banks of the palisades along the Heights neighborhood is another museum to Sheila’s life in politics. It’s her French country home, where each room’s floor is something different - oak and pine, marble and cork tile.Along one wall she displays her collection of more than a hundred donkeys. Inside her office there are signs for former state Treasurer Jimmie Lou Fisher sporting a beehive hairdo and former Attorney General Steve Clark with the slogan “Keep Clark in your heart.” There are campaign buttons for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry Truman, “Johnson-Humphrey ’64” - hundreds of buttons. In one corner hangs a gavel given this past president of the state lobbyists association, and over the lintel a photo of Clinton getting ready to run the Turkey Trot 5K - he’s wearing the No. 241 race bib, and he’s standing with Richard, who’s No. 1.

In her little library there’s a candid photo taken in the Oval Office of Clinton introducing her to a remarkably young-looking Al Gore.

“We were all young then,” she says.

In 1992 Galbraith Bronfman distributed a document informally dubbed “The Travelers’ Rules.” In it is written, “I can promise you that your days will be long, you will be extremely tired, you will bein a bad mood at least one time during this trip. I can also promise you that at least one person will get on your nerves .... If you have a problem, please, for the sake of unity and our mission - take it up with Sheila.”

That still holds, she says. If any of the Travelers have a complaint, by all means, they can take it up with her.

It was the commitment she made to all of them.

Really, to anyone she has ever loved.

SELF PORTRAIT Sheila Galbraith Bronfman

DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH: Jan. 14, 1949, Shreveport

WHO SAID IT BEST? Dwight Eisenhower: “Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen.”

YOU WANNA WIN IN POLITICS? You gotta have money, friends, fire in the belly and a good consultant.

WHAT’S ALWAYS IN MY REFRIGERATOR: Good cheese and my friend Fred’s vodka in the freezer.

IT’S A CLICHE, BUT my mentor Joann Martin told me never to ask anyone to do anything I wasn’t willing to do myself. That advice has served me well.

MY BEST JOB: In graduate school, I worked in a 94-year-old general store in Irmo, S.C., pumping gas, selling hardware and loading feed.

I WOULD HAVE LIKED TO CAMPAIGN FOR Harry Truman.

A PERSONAL HERO OF MINE: My dad, Doyle Galbraith, who passed away in 1999.

SOMETHING FEW PEOPLE KNOW ABOUT ME: I was a summer youth minister at Pulaski Heights United Methodist Church.

ASK BILL CLINTON ABOUT ME AND HE’LL TELL YOU I’m persistent, organized and committed.

I’M A SUCKER FOR my grandchildren.

THE MOST EXCITING THING I HAVE EVER DONE is fly in a military transport helicopter, where you had to run up the back with the blades turning and the back remained open while you were in the air. I was doing advance work heading up the motorcade on a trip to Germany.

RIGHT NOW I’M READING my friend Kay Goss’ book, Mr. Chairman, The Panther by Nelson DeMille, and Political Magic by Brenda Blagg.

I LIKE to cook and bake.

ONE WORD TO SUM ME UP: Loyal