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| First, the board and the people running the prison system felt it would be much harder to maintain order and minimize violence if the lifers knew they could never get out no matter how well they behavedSecond, a lot of the older inmates had extensive health problems that cost the state a lot of moneyIf they were released, their health costs would be covered by the Medicaid program, which was funded mostly by the federal government
The case featured in the ad was truly bizarreThe man whom I made eligible for parole was seventy-two years old and had served more than sixteen years for murderIn all that time, he had been a model prisoner with only one disciplinary mark against himHe was suffering from arteriosclerosis, and the prison doctors said he had about a year to live and probably would be completely incapacitated within six months, costing the prison budget a small fortuneHe also had a sister in southeast Arkansas who was willing to take him inAbout six weeks after he was paroled, he was drinking beer with a friend in the other mans pickup truck, with a gun rack in the backThey got into a fight and he grabbed the gun, shot the man dead, and took cheap chanel knock off bags his Social Security checkBetween the time of his arrest and his trial for that offense, the judge released the helpless-looking old man into his sisters custodyA few days after that, he got on the back of a motorcycle driven by a thirty-year-old man and rode north, all the way up to Pottsville, a little town near Russellville, where they tried to rob the local bank by driving the motorcycle right through the front doorThe old boy was sick all right, but not in the way the prison doctors thought
Not long afterward, I was in Pine Bluff in the county clerks officeI shook hands with a woman who told me the man whod been killed in his pickup was her uncleShe was kind enough to say, I dont hold you responsibleTheres no way in the wide world you could have known hed do thatMost voters werent as forgivingI promised not to commute the sentences of any more first-degree murderers and said Id require greater participation by victims in the decisions of the Board of Pardons and Paroles
And I hit back at Tucker, following my own admonition to take the first hit, then counterpunch as hard as I couldWith the help of David Watkins, a local advertising executive who louis vuitton backpacks was also from Hope, I ran an ad criticizing Jim Guys voting record in CongressIt was poor because he had started running for the Senate not long after he began his term in the House of Representatives, so he wasnt there to vote muchOne of the attendance ads featured two people sitting around a kitchen table, talking about how they wouldnt get paid if they showed up for work only half the timeWe traded blows like that for the rest of the campaignMeanwhile, Joe Purcell traveled around the state in a van, shaking hands and staying out of the TV-ad war
Besides the air war, we waged a vigorous ground campaignBetsey Wright ran it to perfectionShe drove people hard, and lost her temper from time to time, but everybody knew she was brilliant, committed, and the hardest-working person in our campaignWe were so much on the same wavelength that she often knew what I was thinking, and vice versa, before we ever said a wordIt saved a lot of time
I started the campaign by traveling around the state with Hillary and Chelsea in a car driven by my friend and campaign chairman, Jimmy Red Jones, who had been state auditor for more than twenty years and who still had a black prada bag good following among small-town leadersOur strategy was to win Pulaski and the other big counties, carry the south Arkansas counties where I had a leg up, hold a large majority of the black vote, and turn the eleven counties in northeast Arkansas, which had all switched their support from me to Frank White in 1980I went after those eleven counties with the same zeal Id brought to winning the rural counties of the Third District in 1974I made sure I campaigned in every little town in the region, often spending the night with new supportersThis strategy also got votes in the larger cities, where people were impressed when the pictures of me shaking hands in places candidates never visited appeared in their newspapers
Betsey and I also signed up three young black leaders who proved invalubleRodney Slater left Attorney General Steve Clarks staff to helpEven back then, he was a powerful speaker, drawing on his deep knowledge of the scriptures to fashion powerful arguments for our causeI had known Carol Willis when he was a student at the law school in FayettevilleHe was a great old-fashioned politician who knew all the players in the rural areas like the chanel bag back of his handBob Nash, who was working on economic development for the Rockefeller Foundation, helped on nights and weekends
Rodney Slater, Carol Willis, and Bob Nash stayed with me for the next nineteen yearsThey worked for me the whole time I was governorWhen I was President, Rodney served as federal highway administrator and secretary of transportationCarol kept our fences mended with black America at the Democratic National CommitteeBob started as under secretary of agriculture, then came to the White House as director of personnel and appointmentsI dont know what I would have done without them
Perhaps the defining moment of the primary campaign came at a meeting of about eighty black leaders from the Delta who came to hear from Jim Guy Tucker and me so that they could decide which one of us to supportTucker had already won the endorsement of the Arkansas Education Association by promising teachers a big pay raise without a tax increaseI had countered with the endorsement of several teachers and administrators who knew the states bad economy wouldnt permit Tuckers promise to be kept and who remembered what I had done for education in my first discount tiffany jewelry |
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