With early voting starting today, former President Bill Clinton on Sunday urged central Arkansans to cast their ballots for Democratic congressional candidate Patrick Henry Hays and other Democrats at the top of the ballot.
Clinton, who's also a former Arkansas governor and attorney general, said Hays was widely regarded as one of the best mayors in the nation during the last decade of Hays' 24-year tenure as North Little Rock's mayor.
Hays helped revitalize the older part of North Little Rock, construct a new baseball park and arena in North Little Rock, lure businesses to North Little Rock and "worked with everybody," Clinton said, adding that people should tell others that "you'd like Congress to work the way North Little Rock worked with Pat Hays as mayor."
With U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor of Little Rock, Democratic gubernatorial nominee Mike Ross of Little Rock and Hays of North Little Rock at his side, Clinton spoke for 24 minutes at a downtown North Little Rock rally, which state Democratic Party spokesman Lizzy Price estimated 2,000 people attended.
Clinton later spoke Sunday in Pine Bluff and Forrest City on the third day of these rallies.
Clinton said votes for Pryor, Ross and Hays are "voting for a future of shared economic opportunity, shared educational opportunity, [and] a place where we rise together."
"That is the only thing that is working anywhere in America. It is the only thing that is working anywhere in the world," Clinton said.
Afterward, the campaign manager for Hays' Republican opponent, banker French Hill of Little Rock, said that "almost six years ago today, Patrick Henry Hays hosted a campaign rally for Barack Obama in the same place his supporters gathered today, and Hays even led the crowd in a pro-Obama, 'yes we can' chant."
"Today, Arkansas can't afford any more of the Obama-Hays big government agenda," Hill's campaign manager, Jack Sisson, said in a written statement.
As for the governor's race, Clinton said Ross "is right to concentrate on economics and education and abuse in the home and on the streets, and try to do something about it."
He said Ross wants to make sure that each 4-year-old, whose parents want their child to attend pre-kindergarten in Arkansas, has access to a program without regard to their income and ZIP code, but Republican gubernatorial nominee Asa Hutchinson says "we can't afford" Ross' proposed expansion of the program.
"In our family we disagree," Clinton said.
Ross, who was Clinton's campaign driver when Clinton ran for governor in 1982, has proposed phasing in an expansion of the pre-kindergarten program eventually costing the state $37 million a year. Hutchinson has said he wants to fully fund the existing program.
As for the U.S. Senate race, Clinton said Pryor "is right when he says we ought to keep the private option, we ought to have a bipartisan farm bill."
He said Pryor's Republican opponent, U.S. Rep. Tom Cotton, "retroactively justified voting against the farm bill because he said they polluted it with the food stamp bill."
"Farmers grow the food that people on that program eat. Arkansas farmers actually make money when the government buys the food and gives to poor people," Clinton said.
"A lot of the poor people that have been eating that food ... since the crash in 2008 are working for a living and don't make enough money to feed their kids," he said.
Clinton said Congress created the food stamp program in a bipartisan action during the late 1960s and the program has always been part of the farm bill because it involved farming.
"In other words, [Cotton] was looking for an excuse and doesn't care whether poor children in Pulaski County are malnourished or not when they go to school," Clinton said.
Cotton spokesman David Ray later said that "we're not bothered by President Clinton's support for Mark Pryor."
"What bothers us is Senator Pryor's support for President Obama, whom he votes with 93 percent of the time," Ray said in a written statement. "When President Obama asks Mark Pryor to vote for more spending, more taxes, or more food stamps, Mark Pryor can't wait to say yes."
During Sunday's rally in North Little Rock, Clinton said Pryor, Ross and Hays' Republican opponents "think they can run against the president because his numbers are down."
"They are going to do everything they can to repeal this private option -- the health care law -- and, if they can't repeal it, they will defund it," he said, referring to Republicans in Congress.
The state's private option takes advantage of the federal Medicaid dollars made available under the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act enacted in 2010. State officials said the private option helped cut the state's uninsured population from 22.5 percent last year to 12.4 percent through midyear this year, the largest drop in the nation.
The expansion of the Medicaid program, approved by the Republican-controlled Legislature last year, extends coverage to adults with incomes of up to 138 percent of the poverty level -- $16,105 for an individual or $32,913 for a family of four.
More than 180,000 Arkansans have enrolled in private health plans through the private-option program, according to the state Department of Human Services.
The federal government will pay the full cost of covering the newly eligible enrollees until 2017, when states will begin paying 5 percent of the cost. The state's share then will rise each year until it reaches 10 percent in 2020.
Clinton talked student loans during a stop at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff on Sunday afternoon, where about 1,700 people -- many of them students -- gathered in the middle of campus.
Clinton noted Pryor's support in June for legislation to allow people to refinance student loans at lower rates. The legislation was blocked in the Senate.
The former president also told attendees about Cotton's vote to block the legislation in the House and about his vote in 2013 against a compromise deal on student loan interest rates.
About 230,000 people in Arkansas have dropped out of college because "they ran out of money and financial options," Clinton added.
"I had six jobs while in college, and two loans," he said. "I couldn't sleep at night if I said you couldn't have the same chance I did to come from a family with no income and get a shot at an education."
The message resounded with 39-year-old Patryce Smith, who left college, returned and is now in her second semester of studying social work at UAPB.
"I came back, so student loans is a big thing for me right now," Smith said. "I was happy to hear about."
Metro on 10/20/2014