Thursday, May 6, 2010 - She became one of our best volunteersCato Brooks... |
| She became one of our best volunteersCato Brooks moved to Chicago not long after the campaignHe was too good to keep down on the farm
While I was working in Arkansas, Hillary joined the Carter campaign, too, taking on a much tougher assignmentShe became the field coordinator in Indiana, a state that traditionally votes Republican in presidential elections but that the Carter staff hoped his farm roots would give him a chance to winShe worked hard and had some interesting adventures, which she eagerly recounted to me in daily phone conversations and during my one trip to Indianapolis
The fall campaign was a roller coasterCarter came out of the convention in New York with a thirty-point lead over President Ford, but the country was more evenly divided than thatPresident Ford made an impressive effort to catch up, mostly by questioning whether a southern governor, whose main promise was to give us a government as honest as the American people, had the experience to be PresidentIn the end, Carter defeated Ford by about 2 percent of the popular vote and by 297 electoral votes to 240The election was too close for our side to prevail in Indiana, but we carried Arkansas with 65 percent, just two points less than President Carters 67 percent margin in his native Georgia and seven points better than the next largest victory margin, in West Virginia
After the campaign, Hillary and I settled back into our home for a few months as I completed my final teaching assignments, in fake hermes Admiralty and Constitutional LawIn three years and three months I had taught eight courses in five semesters and a summer session, taught two courses to law-enforcement officers in Little Rock, run for office twice, and managed the Carter campaignAnd I had loved every minute of it, regretting only the time it took me away from our life and friends in Fayetteville, and that little house at 930 California Drive that brought Hillary and me so much joy
F or the last couple of months of 1976, I commuted to Little Rock to prepare for my new jobPaul Berry got me some office space on the eighteenth floor of the Union Bank building, where he worked, so I could interview prospective staff members
A lot of idealistic and able people applied for jobsI persuaded Steve Smith to become my chief of staff, to make sure we came up with some good policy initiatives while handling the work that came in the doorThere were only twenty lawyers on the staffSome very good ones wanted to stay on with meI hired some new lawyers, among them young women and black attorneysenough to make our legal staff 25 percent female and 20 percent black, both numbers unheard of in those days
Sometime in December, Hillary and I found a house at 5419 L Street in the Hillcrest section of Little Rock, a nice old neighborhood close to downtownAt 980 square feet, it was even smaller than our home in Fayetteville and cost a lot more, $34,000, but we could afford it, because in the previous election the voters had approved replica louis vuitton wallet an increase in the salaries of state and local officials for the first time since 1910, raising the attorney generals salary to $26,500 a yearAnd Hillary found a good job at the Rose Law Firm, which was full of experienced, highly regarded lawyers and bright younger ones, including my friend Vince Foster and Webb Hubbell, a huge former football star for the Razorbacks who would become one of Hillarys and my closest friendsFrom then on, she earned much more than I did every year until the year I became President and she gave up her practice
In addition to issuing opinions on questions of state law, the attorney generals office prosecuted and defended civil suits on behalf of the state; represented the state in criminal appeals to the state supreme court and in criminal cases in federal court; provided legal advice to state boards and commissions; and protected consumer interests through lawsuits, lobbying the legislature, and appearing in utility-rate cases before the state Public Service Commission (PSC)The workload was large, varied, and interesting
The year got off to a fast startThe legislature went into session in early January and there was a PSC hearing on a request for a large rate increase for Arkansas Power and Light Company, based on the cost of APLs participation in a large nuclear power plant at Grand Gulf, Mississippi, that was being built by its parent company, Middle South Utilities (now Entergy)Since Middle South didnt serve customers directly, the costs of gucci fabric the Grand Gulf plant had to be allocated among its subsidiaries serving Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and the city of New OrleansThe Grand Gulf case would consume a lot of my time and attention over the next few yearsI had two problems with it: first, because the parent company was building the plant, advance approval by our state PSC was not required, even though our ratepayers were required to pay for 35 percent of it; and second, I thought we could meet the increased demand for electricity much less expensively through energy conservation and more efficient use of existing plants
In preparing for the hearing, Wally Nixon, a lawyer on my staff, came across the work of Amory Lovins, which demonstrated the enormous potential and economic benefits of energy conservation and solar powerI thought what he said made sense and I got in touch with himAt the time, the conventional wisdom among business and political leaders was that economic growth required constantly increasing electricity productionNo matter how strong the evidence supporting it, conservation was viewed as a harebrained fantasy of fuzzy-headed intellectualsUnfortunately, too many people still look at it that way
For more than twenty years, as attorney general, governor, and President, I tried to push an alternative-energy policy, using the work of Amory Lovins and others to support my argumentThough I made some modest progress in all three jobs, the opposition remained fierce, especially after the wholesale tiffany jewelry conservatives took over Congress in 1995Al Gore and I tried for years without success to get them to adopt a 25 percent tax credit for the production or purchase of clean energy and energy conservation technology, with mountains of evidence to support our positionThe Republicans blocked it every timeI used to joke that one of the most significant achievements of my second term was that I had finally found a tax cut Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay wouldnt support
Working with the state legislature was fascinating, not only because the issues were interesting and unpredictable, but also because the House and Senate were full of colorful people, and because sooner or later half the state seemed to show up to lobby for or against some measureOne day early in the legislative session, I appeared at a committee hearing to speak against a measureThe room was packed with people representing interests who were for it, including Vince FosterHe had brought her along for the experience, not knowing I would be appearing for the other sideWe just smiled at each other and did our jobsLuckily, the Rose firm had gotten an opinion from the American Bar Association saying it could hire the wife of the attorney general and setting out the steps necessary to avoid conflicts of interestHillary followed them to the letterAfter I became governor, and she was a full partner at the Rose firm, she gave up her portion of the annual profits made from state bond business, legal work the firm had been doing since the louis vuitton fabric 194 |
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