PETIT JEAN MOUNTAIN — From 1874 until 1980, Arkansas elected only one Republican governor. During successive two-year terms, he espoused more progressive policies than the Democrats he'd defeated.
That political flip is recounted at the Winthrop Rockefeller Institute atop Petit Jean Mountain, 65 miles northwest of Little Rock. Exhibits portray him as moderate enough that he'd have only the slimmest chance of winning the Republican gubernatorial nomination in today's deeply conservative GOP milieu.
Arkansas' nine-decade reign of Democrats ended in 1966 when the fabulously wealthy GOP transplant from New York won election over Jim Johnson, an avowed segregationist.
