Readings in Arkansas Politics and Government

The Big Three of Late-Twentieth-Century Arkansas Politics: Dale Bumpers, Bill Clinton, and David Pryor

The Big Three of Late-TwentiethCentury Arkansas Politics Dale Bumpers, Bill Clinton, and David Pryor DIANE D. BLAIR In this essay, Professor Blair profiles the political careers of three of the most prominent Arkansans of the last century: David Pryor, Dale Bumpers, and Bill Clinton—the “Big Three.” She does so because she has a desire to share her thoughts, generated over decades of work as a social scientist and political activist, about each of them with her readers, and because the argument she makes later in the essay about the impact of The Big Three on Arkansas politics in the late twentieth century requires this individual, and somewhat personal, treatment. Blair notes that Arkansas is unique in the extent to which it has resisted the “rising tide of southern Republicanism” that swept across the region over the last generation or so and that has come to define contemporary politics in the South and, to a lesser extent, the nation. As a result, Arkansas remains quite possibly the most one-party-dominated state in the nation. The central argument of the essay is that this particular brand of Arkansas exceptionalism stems in large part from the collective impact of the BigThree on Arkansas politics during roughly this same time period. As she puts it, “in sustaining their own appeal to the Arkansas electorate the Big Three helped prolong the appeal of the Democratic label.” Diane D. Blair, “The Big Three of Late-Twentieth-Century Arkansas Politics: Dale Bumpers, Bill Clinton, and David Pryor,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly  (Spring ): –. Reprinted with permission. 2PARRY_pages_157-340.qxd 4/2/09 3:45 PM Page 307 The most publicized outcome of the  national elections was the Republican Party’s capture of both houses of the U.S. Congress for the first time in forty years. A subsidiary, but no less consequential, story was evidence that the long-predicted realignment of the South, from its once solidly Democratic status to a partiality toward Republicans, had finally materialized. The southern preference for Republican presidential candidates , well established by the s, penetrated in  to congressional choices as well, with Republicans capturing a majority of all southern seats in both the House and the Senate. Republicans also held a majority of southern governorships in the aftermath of  contests, and for the first time since Reconstruction, control of some southern state legislative chambers. As columnist David Broder observed, the Republicans “may have put the finishing touches on the -year-old effort to make the South their new foundation.”1 Arkansas was not entirely immune to the rising tides of southern Republicanism. For the second time in a row its four seats in the U.S. House of Representatives were split evenly between Republicans (Jay Dickey in the Fourth District, Tim Hutchinson in the Third) and Democrats (Blanche Lambert Lincoln in the First District, RayThornton in the Second). Republican Mike Huckabee, first elected lieutenant governor in a special  election, was resoundingly reelected with a comfortable  percent majority. Republicans picked up two seats in the State Senate, two in the state House, and seventeen in assorted county contests. However, compared with what was happening elsewhere in the South, these were marginal rather than momentous gains. Arkansas remained firmly in Democratic hands. Democratic Governor Jim Guy Tucker, despite a vigorous campaign attempting to discredit his fitness for office, carried all but two counties and was reelected with  percent of the vote. Since neither U.S. Senate seat was at stake in , those remained Democratic as well. Indeed, Arkansas is the only state never to have elected a Republican to the U.S. Senate. Of the five other statewide elected positions (attorney general, secretary of state, auditor, treasurer, and land commissioner), all five were filled by Democrats, the latter two uncontested and the others being won by margins, respectively, of  percent,  percent, and  percent. Democrats also remained in firm control of both houses of the General Assembly, with eighty-eight of one hundred House seats and twenty-eight of the thirty-five seats in the Senate. In other words, while Democratic  The Big Three of Late-Twentieth-Century Arkansas Politics 2PARRY_pages_157-340.qxd 4/2/09 3:45 PM Page 308 majorities were being dramatically reduced or reversed elsewhere in the South, the traditional—some would say tyrannical—grip of the Democratic Party in Arkansas continued to diminish at incremental rather than torrential speed. The reasons for Arkansas’s ongoing resistance to...