In his 2003 memoir “The Best Lawyer in a One-Lawyer Town,” Dale Bumpers wrote about the momentous Arkansas political year of 1970 when he defeated former Gov. Orval Faubus in the Democratic primary and incumbent Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller in the general election.
“Every political writer in Arkansas wrote a post-election analysis on how the stars had lined up for me, how an unknown country lawyer had, just months apart, pulled off two of the biggest political upsets in the state’s history,” he said. “Most of the stories were flattering but highly embellished. My own analysis was more accurate and, unhappily, much less flattering. I had simply spoken, with passion but without getting maudlin, about how we had squandered our opportunities in the past by allowing ourselves to be distracted by race. We were dead last, or nearly last, in many categories because we had chosen to be.
“I harped on the deplorable condition of our state parks and the inexcusable low pay of teachers. I injected the environment into the campaign, the first politician to ever make it an issue. Since they hadn’t heard it, people saw it as a visionary concept, and more and more heads, especially of hunters and fishermen, began to nod affirmatively.”
Bumpers, who had begun the campaign as an unknown lawyer out of Charleston, would end his speeches with words along these lines: “When families in Arkansas sit around the dinner table and talk about what they love most, it isn’t that big car in the driveway or that posh office downtown, or the big fields of rice and soybeans out back. It is their children.”
He would later write: “Nothing else resonated nearly as powerfully as this short appeal to people’s best instincts. I never walked away from a voter without calling him by his first name. It told him I had been paying attention—plus, there’s no sound as beautiful to a person as the sound of his name.”
In last Sunday’s column, I wrote about the era of moderation in the governor’s office that began with Rockefeller’s election as a Republican in November 1966. I also wrote about how Rockefeller’s two terms forced what was then the state’s dominant party—the Democratic Party—to move away from its segregationist past. That opened the door for progressive candidates such as Bumpers, David Pryor and and Bill Clinton.
Heavily Democratic majorities in the Legislature blocked Rockefeller’s attempts at reform, but Bumpers was able to push through some of those proposals during his four years as governor.
“I had very little knowledge or understanding of what a governor did,” Bumpers wrote. “I had no legislative experience and knew very few members of the Legislature on a first-name basis. In short, the dog that caught the car knew a lot more about what to do with the car than I knew what to do with the governor’s office. I knew the Legislature had made toilet tissue of a $1 million study, for which Rockefeller had personally paid Peat-Marwick, on how our state government should be reorganized.
“The state had 67 departments. My brother, then group vice president of the Greyhound Corp., had told me that no executive could be effective with 67 department heads reporting to him. I readily understood the part of the study that recommended they be cut to 13. I had nothing else much in mind, so I took the study and made it my own. Why waste $1 million? In the end, there was blood all over the floor, but we passed it.”
During the past 10 years, Arkansas has transformed itself from a Democratic state to a Republican state. Coming into election day in 2010, five of the six members of the state’s congressional delegation were Democrats, all seven statewide constitutional officers were Democrats and there were heavy Democratic majorities in both houses of the Legislature. The speed of change was breathtaking for those of us who study Arkansas history.
Now, the Democratic Party in Arkansas finds itself where the GOP was in the 1970s: begging for candidates. Democrats left U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton unchallenged this year and ran only a token candidate for governor in 2018.
Let’s get this out of the way now: Arkansans will elect a Republican governor in 2022. Here’s the real question: Will that governor continue the style of moderate pragmatic leadership to which we’ve become accustomed for more than half a century. or will we have the kind of partisan rely-on-party-talking-points style of governance that has infected Washington for so many years? That’s the choice that will face us in two years in what I consider the most important election in this state since 1966.
I had the honor of serving on Republican Gov. Mike Huckabee’s senior management team for almost a decade. Based on his background—a Southern Baptist minister who had run a Washington-style race against Bumpers for the U.S. Senate in 1992 (unsuccessfully, it should be noted)—many Arkansans expected Huckabee to govern from the far right. It was fun to watch him constantly surprise his detractors.
He surprised them that first day in office—July 15, 1996—with his calm, reasoned leadership when outgoing Gov. Jim Guy Tucker briefly reneged on his promise to resign. I was there that day as hundreds of angry people descended on the state Capitol and can promise you that we could have had a crisis had Huckabee spurred those folks on with heated rhetoric.
He surprised his detractors again when he led the effort that fall to add a sales tax of one-eighth of a cent to revamp our state parks, wildlife management areas and other places that showcase Arkansas’ natural beauty.
He surprised them yet again in that first legislative session of 1997 when he led the charge for initiatives such as the ARKids First program, which provides health insurance for children.
He surprised them following the Arkansas Supreme Court’s November 2002 ruling in the Lake View case, which declared our system of funding public schools unconstitutional. Huckabee led a heroic effort during his final four years in office to revamp the public education system.
Huckabee’s 10 1/2 years in office were followed by eight years of Mike Beebe, who as a Democratic state senator had joined hands with Huckabee on issues such as ARKids First and the Lake View reforms. Beebe governed in the same pragmatic moderate style as his predecessors and had a productive eight years as the state’s chief executive.
We now have Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican who governs the same way. Hutchinson maintains sky-high approval ratings, even in the wake of a pandemic. As was the case for Huckabee, Hutchinson’s legislative headaches come from members of his own party.
This is what I’ve always referred to as the know-nothing caucus; people who demagogue on social issues that are settled at the national level in order to garner approval on social media rather than reading, studying and doing the truly hard work of state government. That work mostly consists of crafting an efficient, equitable budget.
Those who still identify themselves as Democrats need to vote in the Republican primary in 2022 to ensure that the know-nothings don’t have an ally in the governor’s office. When I became old enough to vote, I already identified myself as a Republican. Living in Clark County, though, I voted in Democratic primaries, because that’s where the action was. These days in Arkansas, the action is in the Republican primary.
For Arkansas to advance in the knowledge-based economy of the 21st century, it’s imperative that we elect another pragmatic, moderate governor. As noted, that governor will be a Republican. It’s our duty as citizens to watch the GOP candidates closely these next two years to see which one sounds most like our previous nine governors (five Democrats and four Republicans).
We’ve been fortunate as a state. I hope our luck isn’t about to run out.
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Rex Nelson is a senior editor at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.