Inside the Arkansas Legislature

Copyright © 2015 by Bill Scoop Lancaster.

Library of Congress Control Number:      2015908656

ISBN:        Hardcover            978-1-5035-7402-1

                  Softcover             978-1-5035-7401-4

                  eBook                  978-1-5035-7400-7

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Rev. date: 05/29/2015

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Mr. Witt, thanks for introducing me

to politics, and for my first limo ride.

INTRODUCTION

J ohn Wayne is my number 1 hero, Andy Griffith a close second. I mention the Duke here only because I remembered a quote from his daughter, Aissa, when I started to put this book together. Upon her father’s death, she talked about how movie moguls mistreated her dad. There’s some real SOBs in this business, she said of Hollywood.

I’d put some former members of the Arkansas legislature in that same dreadful category—rapacious SOBs sprinkled liberally among a host of gifted and talented good-government advocates. And I mention the Mayberry sheriff because the late senator Bill Gwatney once referred to me as the Andy Griffith of the Arkansas Senate in paying me what I considered the ultimate compliment. At the time, Gwatzilla (his nickname) was telling colleagues how I quietly consoled those around me while putting others in the spotlight, just as Andy did with Barney and the unmanageable gang on the old TV show. I never had a little brother, and I always thought of Bill Gwatney that way, as did all of us in the Mike Beebe Worm Club. My friend Don Tilton, who became a high-dollar lobbyist, always introduced me as the straw that stirs the drink, and I got a kick out of that too.

This book is my recollection of twenty-six years at the Arkansas State Capitol. My jobs were information director/assistant coordinator of the Arkansas House of Representatives and chief of staff of the Arkansas Senate. I started putting these thoughts down years ago, saving notes and photos, talking with various individuals, and I hadn’t thought anymore about pursuing the idea of a book until Governor Beebe encouraged me to go for it. He said there weren’t many of us still alive with institutional knowledge of how the Arkansas General Assembly existed prior to term limits, and he suggested, there might be a worthwhile reason to jot down some reflections of those long-ago days. I always did what Mike urged me to do because, well, he gave sound advice, and quite honestly, if it hadn’t been for him and a little meeting in 1985 at the Flaming Arrow Supper Club in Little Rock, I never would have been an integral part of the Arkansas Senate in the first place.

I worked with some great folks inside the Arkansas legislature, but certainly some were not so great and merited watching. As one dying senator whispered to me on his deathbed as he pulled me close, Listen to me—you be careful, you hear me. Some of those people out there will cut your throat and watch you bleed to death.

The man who said that was Tom Watson, a nice, quiet senator from East Arkansas who passed away far too soon in his career. I sat with him at the hospital, and as you can see, I never forgot his terrifying warning. Imagine saying that to someone, knowing you would never see them again. Better still, imagine my angst as I listened, but I knew these dying words were to be taken seriously, and they were.

My work was a fun, roller-coaster adventure with lots of ups and downs. I almost got fired twice: once for defending William Parks, a young black employee, against what I saw as a deplorable racist policy, and another time, much later down my career path, after I was accused of saying disparaging things about some term-limited, thin-skinned senators in a newspaper column. One lawmaker mentioned in the column was Jodie Mahony of El Dorado, one of the very best legislators ever, in my opinion. More about this controversy later in the book, and I’ll name my all-time favorite legislators, and as a bit of a preview, I’ll say now that Mahony was one of those.

Over my career, I dealt with bureaucrats, politicians, lobbyists, reporters, and the public. I traveled to exotic places and historical sites, and I made friends with men and women of every political persuasion. I ate triple-buttered popcorn with the Clintons, chicken-fried steaks with Bob Dole, Sims barbecue with Jesse Jackson, and foot-long hot dogs with Arnold Schwarzenegger, and I golfed with governors, college presidents, Razorback coaches, and PGA pros while coordinating schedules and running the show for my Senate bosses—some of whom became lifelong friends. Our golfing adventures became well-known at the capitol and in print, and Senator Nick Wilson, an archenemy of Beebe, sarcastically dubbed us the Young Golfers. I even hosted a golf event of my own, and dozens of lawmakers, including US Senator David Pryor and big-name college coaches, rolled into my hometown and partied down at my house in Sheridan.

I was privileged to take a leadership role in the Southern Legislative Conference, which allowed me to serve as moderator of national debates featuring leading politicians and reporters. I watched tinhorn senators like Mike Ross grow into national leaders while others more capable and much more courageous than Ross fell from grace and power and shuffled off to prison. Along the way, I fought my way back from a life-threatening injury; I helped save a young senator’s life by giving him mouth-to-mouth, and I carried another veteran legislator in my arms to the hospital to die.

I learned over a quarter of a century that there is a cyclical nature to politics, that new ideas and new problems rarely surface, and that senators and representatives seldom plow new ground, dealing with the same recurring issues year in and year out—education, prisons, highways, and health. This explains why politicians and, yes, the legal system just can’t leave things alone. Issues like abortion and voting rights continually show back up in lawmaking bodies and court jurisdictions. Fact is, most Arkansans don’t give a damn about politics except when they need something for themselves and/or they’re too cheap to hire a lawyer.

Fat-cat special interests can control the political agenda in Arkansas, and big money talks. I found that out firsthand. And regrettably, I saw that proselytizing radical fundamentalists do indeed get elected to the House and Senate every once in a while, though they usually self-destruct once they get there.

I met a lot of nice governors along the way. David Pryor, who officially left the governor’s office shortly before I arrived, was the most popular and told the best stories. His prizewinner is about two former legislators—senators Jack Gibson of Boydell (one of my favorites) and Dooley Womack of Camden. These two senators were in Las Vegas at a convention when a reporter asked Gibson what he thought of euthanasia. A quick wit, Jack responded, Hell, she’s a little old, but she looks pretty damned good for a stripper.

I thought Governor Jim Guy Tucker, a Harvard graduate, was hardworking. He’d work late at night and take two briefcases home with him. I guess it was all government work—hope it didn’t deal with those complicated matters that finally got him in trouble with the law.

Bill Clinton was erratic in his first term but got better after the jovial Frank White taught him a lesson in humility. Frank was charitable and put together a talented staff, and Mike Huckabee was a ton of fun at informal gatherings at Cecil Alexander’s house when he joined Mike Beebe in some serious guitar pickin’. And Huckabee kept an honest-to-goodness Arkansas historian, Rex Nelson, on his staff to help straighten out occasional messes.

The Senate staff I put together helped senators deal with legislative issues and personal problems. I went to work as the Senate’s first chief of staff in 1985, thanks to then senator Mike Beebe, and I stayed there until 2004, when I quietly walked out of my fancy office one sunny afternoon and returned home to Sheridan to take a new job at the Witt Stephens Grant County Museum. I never returned to the capitol building after that, and I honestly never missed any of it—the dreadfully long legislative sessions, the dishonesty, the knives in the back. And from what I heard from friends and associates, including Mike Beebe and Morril Harriman, I wouldn’t have enjoyed being at the capitol during the extended term-limited era anyway. Much of the trust factor, which was always strained but still present at times, disappeared after term limits made veteran legislators extinct. At least, this is what legislators and lobbyists told me later on.

In 1959, I was thirteen years old when I confided in a childhood friend that I wanted to grow up one day and become a person whom people went to for advice. I don’t know why I said that at such an early age, but I did, and looking back now on my time inside the Arkansas legislature and dealing with others in politics, I see clearly that my boyhood wish did, indeed, come true as I rose through the ranks and moved to one of the top positions in Arkansas state government. Leaders sought my advice on problems that confronted them, and they listened to me in the private moments too, sometimes over a late-afternoon cocktail, in private backroom dinners at Doe’s, riding in a golf cart at the remarkable Greenbrier resort, or just relaxing with a rod and reel in the middle of Wayne Hampton’s beautiful reservoir. I take comfort now in old age, believing that they listened to me because of a trust factor that you don’t always see in bureaucrats. I always spoke my mind, and what I spoke wasn’t always what my bosses wanted to hear. I still take pride in that.

Ray Thornton is a close friend, and I worked for him once in my career. He’s known best for his years in Congress, but he also served on the state supreme court and as president of our two leading public universities. He told me he liked our private conversations, which he called Sheridan talk, because he could always count on me to tell him the truth.

I used to get so mad at you, he told me once. But then I would be driving home, and I would realize that you were one of the few people who would tell me what I needed to hear instead of what I wanted to hear.

That meant a lot to me because I hold Ray Thornton, an old Sheridan friend, in high esteem. He was one of the most honest people I knew in politics, and our state benefitted greatly from his service.

Charlie Cole Chaffin, a fine state senator from Benton, was one of the very best too, and she—yes, Charlie is female—she said there weren’t enough guts among Arkansas lawmakers to feed a quail a chitlin supper. I believe that too, and that certainly was true when it came to the people who worked for the legislators.

Tim Massanelli, who helped train me in my years at the House, had a big ego, but he also had the courage to speak up and speak out when he dealt with his legislative bosses, and I learned from watching him.

And I had my newspaper career, which prepared me well for my work in politics because when you are a reporter for a big newspaper—and the Arkansas Gazette was very big before it turned to mush—well, you learn that you better stand up for what you believe in, or you’ll be stampeded.

Refusing to budge on principle got me a few hours in a jail cell once in my newspaper career. It happened in DeWitt during my coverage of a murder trial. The prosecutor was a friend, and he invited me into the judge’s chambers to hear pretrial motions. In those days, the Gazette was revered, and its reporters were well-known. The presiding judge didn’t take too kindly to me being in there, even though the prosecutor tried to explain that he had issued the invitation. The judge said the room’s window air conditioner wasn’t working properly and that I would have to leave. I responded that he didn’t have to come up with a lame excuse if he wanted me out, and then one thing led to another, and I ended up behind bars for a few hours until the Gazette lawyer made a phone call, and the local sheriff cut me loose.

So that being said, back to politics.

I remember my first sit-down meeting with new senator Jim Hill of Nashville. He asked me to join him in a drive-over to a duck club where we were invited to hunt. Jim had just been sworn in at the Senate, and he said the time together would give us a chance to talk. On the way, he asked why he had been denied an apartment at the Capitol Hill building. This was a building adjacent the Capitol, and he had asked to be considered if apartment space became available. At the time, the senators with seniority or who were closely associated with Senator Nick Wilson were most likely to be chosen by the secretary of state to get an apartment.

I want to be honest with you, I explained to the new senator. I’m probably the reason you didn’t get picked. The reason, I went on, was that senators Steve Bell and Joe Yates were moving into a two-bedroom apartment, and I helped them get the larger space because I wanted to room part-time with them. This decision set into motion other renovation plans that eventually meant Hill wouldn’t be chosen. So I told him, I might be the very person to actually blame if he wanted to blame anyone for his failure to get a room.

You didn’t have to tell me that, he said in a surprised tone.

Senator Hill, I won’t ever lie to you, I assured him because that was my personal code in doing my job at the Senate.

I had thirty-five bosses, some of whom hated their own colleagues, and I knew, going in in 1985, that I would always have to stand my ground, speak my mind, and answer truthfully. And I always did that. As for others who worked there, I’d refer you back to Charlie Cole Chaffin’s quote. Few staffers took risks and spoke their mind, most were overly timid, and they tried their best to stay out of sight in order not to rock a boat. Job security was their main goal, and I’d have to say most of them were awfully good at it.

I met some great people who taught me a lot. I learned about fine wines, political compromise, the beauty of art, the wonders of travel, the craftiness of politics, and the heartache associated with personal and professional failure. I made a ton of mistakes in my personal and professional life, but I earned enough money to build a nice home and get my kids a good education, and I always, always tried to professionally represent the Arkansas Senate.

I put up with a lazy, insipid columnist who had trouble with his facts and another who admitted he didn’t always check his facts when he wrote his own inaccurate articles. Unbelievably, one of them wrote that I was away on a Sunday outing at a duck club when I was at home in Sheridan and serving communion at my church. The minister asked me how a reporter could write such horrible things, and I told him not to fret, that people in my line of work were used to such paparazzi antics and acutely aware of the deteriorating reputation of the press. I told the minister to remember the Good Book’s lessons on forgiveness and let the issue pass, which he did. But I also dealt with professional journalists who did get it right—Bill Simmons and Carol Griffee to name two who, I thought, were a credit to their craft.

The two biggest changes in the Arkansas political landscape that I witnessed were Jay Bradford’s stunning defeat of Knox Nelson in 1991 and the passage of the term limits amendment in 1992. Senator Bradford’s defeat of the Senate’s kingpin changed the face of Arkansas politics. Weeks later, Senator Max Howell, the other kingpin and Nelson’s right-hand man, announced his retirement, knowing that he would be the next toothless tiger to fall. Then term limits changed what was left, literally wiping out more than a thousand years of experience overnight in the two chambers. Experienced legislator would no longer be a term in Arkansas’s political lexicon. The paradigm had shifted, and regrettably to some, there was no turning back. Forever, the Natural State would have no naturals in the well of the chamber, extolling the virtues of a bill, articulating as Lloyd George, Buddy Turner, and Wayne Dowd had done so artfully over the years. It appeared that the House and Senate would be lacking the gravitas of the past, saddled instead with computer geeks, e-mailers, and term-limited, abortion-crazed advocates who were pristine and politically correct, holed up in the Heights, sipping a latte instead of ordering up another round of big-boy drinks at the Flaming Arrow. Advocates of the old style would be asking: Where had all the real men like John Wayne and Andy Griffith gone? Like me, they boarded the slow train out of Little Rock and retired to the quiet life.

CHAPTER 1

S tate Representative Napoleon Bonaparte Murphy Jr. stumbled his way to center stage, and three thousand legislators and guests craned for a better view. Zorro-like, he unfurled his famous fiddle and reached nervously for the microphone.

That was when reality hit like a Sonny Liston uppercut. I would have to be the one to take action. No one else had the balls to extract the familiar intruder, yank him off the stage, and try to salvage the musical finale that had been meticulously choreographed to move Little Rock into the national limelight.

Understand, it was not unusual for N. B. Nap Murphy of LA (Lower Arkansas) to show up at parties after several tantalizing refreshments and pull out his fabled fiddle. In fact, it was unusual when he did not magically appear. A few years after the debacle that was unfolding this balmy night in 1987 at Little Rock’s amphitheater, he would be promptly escorted by the Secret Service from Bill Clinton’s White House lawn for pissin’ on the presidential shrubbery.

A lot of people liked ol’ Nap, and he could be extremely charming, but the aging legislator’s late-night antics had worn thin over the years. Sadly, he had become a comédie larmoyante for the Arkansas General Assembly, and by the time his career petered out in the late 1980s, he was public relations enemy number 1 for me and the legislature, regrettably placed in the same pathetic class as some others with whom I had to deal.

For every decent and honorable member of the 135-member assembly, there always seemed to be a handful of buffoons and slimeballs who deep-sixed the legislature’s would-be progressive image. Even before the Nick Wilson crime wave rolled across the Senate in 1999, there were sufficient numbers of self-inflicted wounds that periodically damaged the institution’s public image. The press loved to write about the occasional faux pas and blunder, and who could blame them? Arkansas legislators were masters at self-destruction.

Nap, for instance. The pride of Hamburg was a photogenic, brilliant businessman who became a fixture at the legislature from 1963 until 1995. But as the legislature changed and attempted to get serious about Bumpers-Pryor-Clinton era challenges to improve government, fewer and fewer legislative colleagues remained tolerant of Nap and his fiddling escapades.

As Clinton was moving into his second term as governor in 1983, having dethroned the gregarious Frank White, the legislature showed more and more encouraging signs of becoming progressive, willing to accept new ideas while shucking some of its questionable past. The born-again young governor had asked the public’s forgiveness for a Cubans-and-car-tag-marred first run, and he was returning to the capitol with newfound gusto.

The legislature’s image was changing too. Better staff was being hired as patronage slowly gave way to qualifications. Progressive leaders like Mike Beebe and John Paul Capps were making their voices heard above legislators labeled by the press as perennial bullies. Little Rock’s newspaper war was helping shape the new image too, as capitol beat reporters scripted more and more personality pieces. It was a sign of the times in society and in journalism—fluff over substance. Editors at the beleaguered Arkansas Gazette and ambitious Arkansas Democrat wanted more imagery, charts, and graphs—more on who was at the helm in state government. I was glad to help them from my new post as the Arkansas House information director. I had spent my career in journalism, and now I was on the other side of the fence, trying to handle public relations for political bosses while helping the hardworking reporters who wrote about these men and women.

Serious-minded legislators like John Miller and Mike Wilson wanted better tax programs and pay for teachers, and they talked about such things late at night with staff and administrators. Rock-solid legislators named Don Corbin and Jodie Mahony on the Democratic side and Carolyn Pollan and Preston Bynum on the Republican side were coming into their own as aging dinosaurs with limited ability and incendiary tempers were shuffling toward the exits, old ideas and tired philosophies in tow.

Nap Murphy’s embarrassing adventures, Representative Frank Willems’s occasional clowning on the House floor, or Senator Bill Moore attempting to bilk taxpayers for illegal air travel reimbursements—well, there was no