Frank White had problems that went beyond the...
- Posted at 9:41 AM on Tuesday, March 16, 2010 by weipingqin396
Frank White had problems that went beyond the legislative sessionHis worst move was sending prospective appointees for the Public Service Commission to be interviewed by the Arkansas Power and Light Company, which had been seeking substantial increases in utility rates for the last few yearsWhen the story came out, the press pounded the governor over itPeoples electric rates were going up far more steeply than the car tags hadNow they had a governor who wanted to give APL prior approval of the people who would decide whether or not the company got to raise its rates even higher
Then there were the verbal gaffesWhen the governor announced a trade mission to Taiwan and Japan, he told the press how glad he was to be going to the Middle EastThe incident gave George Fisher the inspiration for one of his funniest cartoons: the governor and his party getting off an airplane in the middle of a desert, complete with palm trees, pyramids, robed Arabs, gucci handbag new collection and a camelWith banana in hand, he looks around and says, Splendid! Whistle us up a rickshaw!
While all this was going on, I made a few political trips out of stateBefore I lost, I had been invited by Governor John Evans to speak at the Idaho Jefferson-Jackson Day dinnerAfter I got beat he asked me to come on anyway
I went to Des Moines, Iowa, for the first time, to speak to a Democratic Party workshop for state and local officialsMy friend Sandy Berger asked me to come to Washington to have lunch with Pamela Harriman, wife of the famous Democratic statesman Averell Harriman, who had been FDRs envoy to Churchill and Stalin, governor of New York, and our negotiator at the Paris peace talks with North VietnamHarriman met Pamela during World War II when she was married to Churchills son and living at 10 Downing StreetThey married thirty years later, after his first wife diedPamela was in her early sixties and still a beautiful womanShe wanted pink chanel bag replicas me to join the board of Democrats for the 80s, a new political action committee she had formed to raise money and promote ideas to help Democrats come back into powerAfter the lunch, I accompanied Pam to her first television interviewShe was nervous and wanted my adviceI told her to relax and speak in the same conversational tone shed used during our lunchI joined her board and over the next few years spent a number of great evenings at the Harrimans Georgetown house, with its political memorabilia and impressionist art treasuresWhen I became President, I named Pamela Harriman ambassador to France, where she had gone to live after World War II and the breakup of her first marriageShe was wildly popular and immensely effective with the French, and very happy there until she died, on the job, in 1997
By the spring, the governor looked vulnerable in the next election and I began to think of a rematchOne day, I drove from Little Rock to Hot Springs miu miu bags to see MotherAbout halfway there, I pulled into the parking lot of the gas station and store at LonsdaleThe man who owned it was active in local politics, and I wanted to see what he thought about my chancesHe was friendly but noncommittalAs I walked back to my car, I ran into an elderly man in overallsHe said, Arent you Bill Clinton? When I said I was and shook his hand, he couldnt wait to tell me he had voted against meIm one of those who helped beat youI cost you eleven votesme, my wife, my two boys and their wives, and five of my friendsI asked him why and got the predictable reply: I had toYou raised my car tagsI pointed to a spot on the highway not far from where we were standing and said, Remember that ice storm we had when I took office? That piece of road over there buckled and cars were stuck in the ditchI had to get the National Guard to pull them outThere were pictures of it in all the papersThose roads had to be fixedHe replied, I dont fendi handbag sale careI still didnt want to pay itFor some reason, after all hed said, I blurted out, Let me ask you somethingIf I ran for governor again, would you consider voting for me? He smiled and said, Sure I wouldI went right to the pay phone, called Hillary, told her the story, and said I thought we could win
I spent most of the rest of 1981 traveling and calling around the stateThe Democrats wanted to beat Frank White, and most of my old supporters said theyd be with me if I ranTwo men with a deep love for our state and a passion for politics took a particular interest in helping meMaurice Smith owned a 12,000-acre farm and the bank in his little hometown of BirdeyeHe was about sixty years old, short and thin, with a craggy face and a deep, gravelly voice he used sparingly but to great effectMaurice was smart as a whip and good as goldHe had been active in Arkansas politics a long timeand was a genuine progressive Democrat, a virtue his whole family tiffany heart charm toggle necklace sha
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