Clarke Tucker, Arkansas State Representative | Ep 110 | October 19, 2018
Clarke Tucker is a 7th generation Arkansan, business attorney, husband, and father of two. A lifelong member deeply rooted in our community, Clarke has dedicated his career to advancing Central Arkansas, serving as a State Representative since 2014 while working with non-profits and charities to make Little Rock Metro Area a better home for our families. Public service has been a life-long calling for Clarke, and now he is running for Congress in Arkansas’s 2nd District.
Being raised in Central Arkansas, Clarke’s family taught him that while you may disagree with others, you only have one chance to prove your character and protect your community. These are the values that led Clarke to serve in pivotal leadership roles such as Central High Student Body President, President of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics, Editor-In-Chief for the University of Arkansas Law Review, and most recently, in Arkansas’s State Legislature.
In the legislature Clarke wrote and helped pass critical legislation to protect Arkansan families including expanding access to healthcare through Arkansas Works, leading the fight for paid maternity leave for State employees, increasing funding for Pre-K education, and cutting taxes on middle class Arkansans. He fought for these bills by collaborating and building trust with Republican colleagues, rather than through the political gamesmanship that riddles our government today.
But last year, Clarke’s life changed forever. His fight for affordable, quality healthcare became a personal reality when he was diagnosed with cancer. No longer could he stand-by and let the Washington elites destroy our healthcare system and strip away protections for thousands of Arkansans with pre-existing conditions.
Arkansas needs leaders who believe that hard work should lead to opportunity, not just for the benefit of the elite. Arkansas needs leaders who understand what is at stake for all families.
Clarke lives in Little Rock on the street where he was raised, with his wife Toni and two children, Ellis (8) and Mari Francis (5).
Listen to the podcast to learn:
What Clarke believes to the most important issues facing Americans.
Why Lady Justice is blind
The facts about our children's pre-k education and development
Up In Your Business is a Radio Show by FlagandBanner.com
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EPISODE 110
[INTRODUCTION]
[00:00:08] CC: Welcome to Up in Your Business with Kerry McCoy, a production of flagandbanner.com through storytelling and conversational interviews. This weekly radio show offers listeners firsthand insight into starting and running a business, the ups and downs of risk taking and the commonalities of successful people.
Connect with Kerry through her candid, often funny, and informative weekly blog where you’ll read and can comment on life as wife, mother, daughter and entrepreneur.
Now, it’s time for Kerry McCoy to get all Up in Your Business.
[INTERVIEW]
[00:00:43] KM: Thank you, Chris. Like Chris said, I’m Kerry McCoy and it’s time for me to get up in your business. But before we start, I want to introduce the people at the table. We have who you just heard from, Chris Cannon, My co-host, who will be managing the board and taking your calls. Say hello, Chris.
[00:00:58] CC: Hello. How are you, Kerry?
[00:00:59] KM: I’m fine. How are you, Chris?
[00:01:00] CC: I’m good.
[00:01:01] KM: It’s a little rainy out there today.
[00:01:03] CC: Mm-hmm.
[00:01:04] KM: And recording this show to make a podcast available next week is our technician, Jayson Malik from Arise Studios in Conway, Arkansas. If right now you’re sitting at your computer, you might want to watch us live on flagandbanner.com’s Facebook page. I’m waving to everybody. It’s kind of fun to see what goes on behind the scenes, and at the breaks it’s real-time reality radio. If for some reason you miss any part of this show, you might want to hear it again, there’s a way. Chris is going to tell you how.
[00:01:35] CC: Listen to all UIYB past and present interviews by going to flagandbanner.com and clicking on Radio Show. Also, by joining our email list and liking us on Facebook, you’ll get a reminder notification the day of the show with a sneak peek of that day’s guest. Back to you, Kerry.
[00:01:53] KM: Up in Your Business with Kerry McCoy began as a platform for me, a small business owner, and my guest, to pay forward our experiential knowledge in a conversational way. Along with, originally, my team and I, thought it would appeal to entrepreneurs and want to be entrepreneurs, but it seems to have had a wider audience appeal, because after all, who isn’t inspired by everyday people’s American made stories?
To see people in their totality is humanizing. We all thirst to connect and make sense of an overcomplicated world, and on this show we have the luxury of time to go deeper than a sound bite or a headline. It’s no secret that successful people work hard, but other common traits found in many of my guests are the heart of a teacher, belief in a higher power and creativity, because business is creative.
My guest today is a 7th generation Arkansan and practicing lawyer, representative, Mr. Clarke Tucker. He is also the great-great-great-great, I think that’s enough great.
[00:02:58] CC: Wow!
[00:02:58] KM: I know, a lot of great. Grandsons of Arkansas’ 18th governor, James P. Clarke, his namesake, who took office in 1894 and later he served as a United States senator until his death in 1916. Clarke is an overachiever evident by all his involvements, awards and accomplishments. Just to name a few, because I didn’t want to list them all because I didn’t want to bore the audience to death, because it is long. He’s a class president of the famous Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. He’s a graduate of Harvard, where he studied government and was the student president for the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics. Magnum cum laude, graduate of law from the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, where he served as editor-in-chief of the Arkansas Law Review.
Today, Clarke is in private practice at the Quattlebaum, Grooms & Tull Law Offices and he’s serving his 2nd term in the Arkansas House of Representatives District 35, which includes portions of Pulaski County, Little Rock and
[inaudible 00:04:01].
It is a pleasure to welcome to the table, the hardworking, smart, idealist Arkansas House of Representative, Mr. Clarke Tucker.
[00:04:11] CC: Yes! Welcome.
[00:04:12] CT: Thank you. Thank you very much, Kerry. I appreciate that.
[00:04:14] KM: You’re welcome. I’ve known you for a while.
[00:04:17] CT: Yes, absolutely.
[00:04:18] KM: I know your mother.
[00:04:20] CT: And my father.
[00:04:21] KM: And your sister.
[00:04:22] CT: Yeah.
[00:04:22] KM: And your grandmother.
[00:04:24] CT: And my grandmother.
[00:04:25] KM: And your grandfather.
[00:04:26] CT: Yeah.
[00:04:26] KM: I mean, really. I think I almost know your grandmother better than I know you. She’s a charming person.
[00:04:31] CT: She never met a stranger. So if you’ve met her, then you know her.
[00:04:33] KM: And she tells good jokes.
[00:04:34] CT: She does.
[00:04:35] KM: She’s a great joke teller..
[00:04:37] CT: Absolutely.
[00:04:37] KM: I should actually have your grandmother on. She’s so entertaining.
[00:04:40] CT: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:04:41] KM: Your mother is Becky, and I think it’s fully interesting. I didn’t know that you’re from – I did not know that your grandfather was once of the governor, and I did not know he was who you were named after. Did your mother have some kind of premonition about you were going to go into politics and become a lawyer? Because he was a lawyer. He went into politics.
[00:05:00] CT: Actually, my name came from the fact. My first name is Everett, and my –
[00:05:04] KM: That’s your dad.
[00:05:05] CT: My dad did not have a middle name. He’s Everett Tucker III. My grandfather did not have a middle name, Everett Tucker Jr. So my parents just thought I needed – My granddad went by Everett and my dad goes by Ret, short for Everett, and everybody thought I needed to have something different to go by.
My grandmother, who you know, actually on the other side of the family, she likes to take credit for it. She jokes that she told my parents that if they didn’t give me a middle name, then she was going to call me IV, because that’s the Roman numeral for 4, and Everett Tucker IV. She takes credit for the fact that I got a middle name. That’s how Clarke came about.
[00:05:41] KM: Well, and it must have come from your family. I mean, she picked it right at your family.
[00:05:44] CT: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:05:46] KM: You were the class president of Central High School.
[00:05:50] CT: I was, yeah.
[00:05:53] KM: You played baseball.
[00:05:54] CT: I played baseball there. Going to Central was an extremely important part of my life. My sophomore year there was the 40th anniversary of the inauguration of Central, and that was really the first time that the City of Little Rock embraced the important history that we have here. I think it’s important for us to own our history and learn from it.
The fact that I watch that happen and to be a little self-promoting about it – My dad actually played a critical role in that, and so to watch my dad do that as a teenager and see it happen and get to see the Little Rock Nine and develop relationships with some of them to the extent that I couldn’t learn from all of them. That was a very important and informative experience for me.
[00:06:35] KM: Do you think that’s why you decided to go into politics?
[00:06:38] CT: I certainly think it has a lot to do with it. My parents always taught me that you have to serve others and for giving a lot, then a lot is expected of us. You can serve in a lot of different ways for sure. There are a lot of different ways to be involved in your community and try to make a difference in people’s lives. Politics is not the only one, but it certainly is one. But just seeing what they went through and the influential role that elected officials had in that process and what a difference you can make as an elected official certainly inspired me at the time.
[00:07:06] KM: Your whole family is overachiever. Your father is a successful real estate developer in downtown Little Rock. Your sister is a videographer. Your grandfather that I knew is a cinematographer, I guess. Your grandfather that I knew, Dr.
[inaudible 00:07:19], he was from Fort Smith. What type of a doctor was he? Was he a baby doctor?
[00:07:24] CT: He was a pediatrician. He opened a pediatric practice in Fort Smith in 1952 and he was only the third pediatrician in Arkansas. He was the only one between Little Rock and Tulsa from east to west and Springfield to Shreveport, north to south.
[00:07:42] KM: I guess he wasn’t home very much.
[00:07:44] CT: Yeah. They made houses in those days as you know. So my mom said they’d be having dinner. The phone would ring and my granddad would be out the door. A couple of things about his practice that I’m really proud of, one is when he opened his practice in 1952, he only had one waiting room and not very many doctors only had one – If any, only had one waiting room at the time. They had segregated wedding rooms for people of different races.
[00:08:09] KM: Oh, I see what you mean.
[00:08:12] CT: He had a waiting room for everybody to wait together, and the fact that he did and was right on the frontend of it in the early 50s is something I’m very proud of. He also always made sure that people got care. My grandmother told me a story that one time he had her give blood to a patient that he knew would not be able to make any payment at all. So that to me –
[00:08:34] KM: Your grandmother gave blood to a patient.
[00:08:37] CT: Yes, that my grandfather knew would not be able to pay.
[00:08:39] KM: Doctors don’t do that anymore, “Hey, honey! Come down here, will you? I need a little blood transfusion.”
[00:08:44] CT: Yeah.
[00:08:46] KM: That’s a good story.
[00:08:47] CT: Yeah.
[00:08:48] KM: You could have done anything. You really could have. You’re very smart. Everybody didn’t know that. You’re very, very smart, and you could have done anything and you chose government. You went to Harvard, to the Kennedy School of – How do you say that exactly?
[00:09:04] CT: I went there for College, and one of the extracurricular activities that I was involved in was at the Kennedy School, which is a grad school.
[00:09:10] KM: Did you get a scholarship to Harvard?
[00:09:13] CT: They don’t really give out.
[00:09:14] KM: Oh! They don’t give out scholarships. That’s exactly right. I forgot.
[00:09:17] CT: You can get other kinds of scholarships and we worked on that, but–
[00:09:19] KM: You’re so smart. I was wondering how you got up there. I was wondering if they did do some sort of an incentive. You’re right, I forgot that ivy Ivy League schools don’t do scholarships.
[00:09:26] CT: Yeah. They do, yeah. They make sure that you get to go, but they don’t give merit-based scholarships.
[00:09:34] KM: You were in government there, and then you decided to come back and become a lawyer and you went to – Or to get a law degree at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.
[00:09:43] CT: Right.
[00:09:45] KM: How did that come about?
[00:09:46] CT: I had a great experience and I made some great friends in college and I keep in touch with a lot of them to this day. But, to me, Arkansas is home. I also was dating a young lady who was enrolled in college at the University of Arkansas at that time. Fortunately, I ended up marrying this young woman.
I did, Arkansas is home for me. I knew this is where I want to spend my life. I didn’t know necessarily whether I wanted to be a lawyer, but I wanted to get that legal education and I had a great opportunity there, and it was close to the woman that I would eventually marry. So it all worked out.
[00:10:23] KM: you were voted in the class of 2006 – Some of the awards you got. I told you, it’s kind of boring listening to all of these. Reading about you is a little bit boring. It’s just like, “Oh, and then he did. Oh, and then he did that.” You were, in 2006, greatest contribution to the legal literature. Best trial advocate most likely to succeed. Those were some of the things in your graduating class they said about you.
[00:10:48] CT: Yup.
[00:10:49] KM: Can’t say anything –
[00:10:49] CT: Bad judgment on their part is the only thing I’ll say about it.
[00:10:53] KM: Why were you the editor-in-chief of the Arkansas Law Review?
[00:10:57] CT: That’s just something that in law school if you have an opportunity to do, then you just do. I had two very unique experiences as part of that process. One was – I was in charge of some commemorative issues for some people who had passed away. Judge Richard Arnold, who was an 8 circuit judge here in Little Rock passed away just before I became editor-in-chief of law review. So we had a commemorative issue just for him. He went to law school with Antonin Scalia. He also knew Bill Clinton very well. Both Bill Clinton and Justice Scalia made contributions to that addition of the law review that was in charge of. That was pretty cool. I got to work with both of them and their staffs on putting that together. That was a very fulfilling process. Then, actually, the dean of the law school who had served as dean my first two years at the school, Richard Atkinson, who was really a mentor of me, a man that I just flat genuinely loved, and he passed away. So we did a commemorative issue for him.
The law review in general can be a very stimulating thing where you –
[00:12:01] KM: Not just about law.
[00:12:02] CT: Yeah.
[00:12:02] KM: It can be also biographies about great people.
[00:12:04] CT: That’s right.
[00:12:04] KM: Tell stories.
[00:12:05] CT: That’s right.
[00:12:07] KM: What is it about law that you like? Is it the part about orate? You are a wonderful public speaker. I first met you at – I saw you at a podium and I thought, “This kid,” you were – 10 years ago, and I thought, “This guy is going to be our governor one day.” I had no idea that you were politically been at the time and I don’t think you were at the time. But I actually thought when I saw you speak for the first time, I thought, “Wow! He could be the governor of the State of Arkansas.” You were probably 30-years-old when I first saw you. What is it about being a lawyer? Is that the part that appealed to you, was that you get to orate?
[00:12:44] CT: Everyone’s supposed to have equal rights under the law. It’s really the same thing about being a lawyer that is public service and politics in general attracts me, because you can really make a very important difference in someone’s life if you do it the right way. Lady Justice is blind, and that’s the way that it’s supposed to be. Unfortunately, that’s not always the way it is in reality. But we can make it that way if we do it one person at a time. That’s the way that I’ve tried to do it.
[00:13:11] KM: I don’t know if Lady Justice is blind.
[00:13:13] CT: Yeah.
[00:13:15] KM: It doesn’t seem like that to me. Somebody’s got to defend the guy even if he’s guilty. How do you call that blind?
[00:13:21] CT: Well, that’s part of being blind, I think.
[00:13:25] KM: Oh!
[00:13:26] CT: Yeah. Everyone deserves due process. I mean, that’s what that means, I think.
[00:13:30] KM: It would be hard for me to be a lawyer and to know that my client was guilty and I still had to go to court and defend them.
[00:13:37] CT: I haven’t done a lot of criminal law. In fact, I’ve done almost none. I understand that. Part of it though, I think people need to understand in both civil law and criminal law is that, for example, if you have a client that’s guilty, it’s not that you always go to court and say that he’s innocent. Sometimes it’s negotiating a fair deal on behalf of your client with the prosecution. It makes sure that justice is administered fairly.
[00:14:03] KM: Okay. You graduate from school. You’re a lawyer now. You got a lot of credentials, a lot of creds. You’ve been given a lot of awards
[inaudible 00:14:11] semi-finalist in National Trial Competitions and you go and you get a job as a clerk –
[00:14:16] CT: Where did you get all these information?
[00:14:20] KM: No! Every one of my guest
[inaudible 00:14:20], when they come on they’re like, “Wow! You know –” One of my favorite parts about this show is I get to read all about my friends and stuff. Judge Leon Holmes. You went to work for him.
[00:14:33] CT: Yes. He’s a great judge.
[00:14:35] KM: You could have probably gone anywhere.
[00:14:37] CT: Well, I don’t know. To me, I always wanted to come home. So I spent four years out of state in college and then I spent three years in the northwest part of the state in a law school, but Little Rock is where I always knew I wanted to be. I’m a very family oriented and community oriented person. For me, this community and my family is part of my DNA. So it’s really inconceivable for me to live anywhere else, and I’d been to law school and I wanted to get a good job. That was a great opportunity.
[00:15:07] KM: Then you decided to go into private practice with Quattlebuam, Grooms & Tull in Little Rock, specializing in commercial litigation. Do you defend companies?
[00:15:17] CT: Yes. We do both. The practice was primarily commercial dispute. So it could be a contract, for example. Yes, we would defend a company who might have been sued for bridge of contract. But if we represented in another business or person who felt as though they were in a contract that someone else had breached, then we might file their lawsuit.
[00:15:35] KM: Because that seems like a conflict of interest. By day, you’re defending companies and corporations against the people who are suing them. Then by your public service, you’re over there working for the people. It seems almost like they don’t go together.
[00:15:50] CT: Well. No, that’s not the case. I mean, we represented all sorts of people in my law practice. Regardless of the practice of law, that never had any effect whatsoever on my public service.
[00:16:01] KM: All right. This is a great place to take a break. When we come back, we’ll continue our conversation with our Arkansas House of Representative and attorney, Mr. Clarke Tucker, who is currently running for the Democratic Congressional Seat against incumbent Congressman French Hill. We’ll get to know Clarke more. We’ll talk about his idealisms and ambitions for his life of public service. We will be taking calls throughout the hour. So get your questions ready and Chris will give you the number after the break.
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[00:17:47] KM: You’re listening to Up in Your Business with me, Kerry McCoy, and I’m speaking today with Arkansas House of Representative and attorney, Mr. Clarke Tucker. Tucker, who just happens to be a 7th generation Arkansan and a democrat running for congress in this November the 6th election. If you have a question for Clarke, you may call.
[00:18:06] CC: That is going to be 501-433-0088.
[00:18:10] KM: Say it again, Chris.
[00:18:11] CC: 501-433-0088.
[00:18:15] KM: Before the break, I was talking to Clarke about his family. He’s a family oriented guy. I know his whole family. We were talking about what an overachiever he was in high school. He was class president, student body president. What were you? Class president or student body president? Ain’t there a difference?
[00:18:28] CT: I think so.
[00:18:28] KM: I know. I can’t remember what it is though.
[00:18:30] CT: Yeah. Class president is in charge with the reunions.
[inaudible 00:18:33] president, which was a student council in school all the time.
[00:18:36] KM: Oh, he’s more serious. I’d be the class president in charge of the keg. Anyway, then we talked about you going to Harvard. Then we talked about you going to law school, and then we talked about coming back and clerking for a judge. Then we talked about you going into private practice. Now we’re moving up to you deciding in 2014 to run for the Arkansas House of Representatives. Why? What happened? Did something happen?
[00:18:59] CT: Yeah, I had a few screws lose, I think.
[00:19:02] KM: I think so too.
[00:19:02] CT: Yeah.
[00:19:03] KM: I think that about all politicians though.
[00:19:05] CT: Being a lawyer is a perfectly fine way to make a living, but I personally felt unfulfilled. I worked with great people. By and large, I like the people that I represented. But I still went home every day and felt like there was something missing. There was something more that I could do for the community here.
Leading up to 2014, I was getting more and more involved with different community organizations here, but it still wasn’t quite enough. That seat opened up. My predecessor, John Edwards, had been term limited for his service in the Arkansas House. So it was an open seat and I just decided to go for it.
[00:19:39] KM: What is the term limit?
[00:19:41] CT: At that point in time it was six years in the house. It actually changed the day I was elected.
[00:19:45] KM: To what?
[00:19:45] CT: You can serve up to 16 years in a legislature and some combination between either the house or the senate. If you serve 16 years in the house, you couldn’t serve any in the senate, but you could do it that way.
[00:19:56] KM: What is it about government that makes people like it so much? It’s very complex.
[00:19:59] CT: It is very complex. I don’t know that all that many people like it that much.
[00:20:03] KM: My sister teaches government.
[00:20:04] CT: Yeah. Well, it’s because you can have such a huge impact, I think, on people in our lives and our society.
[00:20:12] KM: Well, you still are in the house. Some of your accomplishments are pre-k funding.
[00:20:20] CT: Right.
[00:20:20] KM: What do you do?
[00:20:21] CT: I think pre-k, first of all, is just the right thing to do to make sure that every three and four-year-old child has every opportunity, fulfill all their God-given potential. I also think it’s the smartest investment that we can make as a society. We actually get the highest rate of return for pre-k dollars that we spend for any other government dollar that’s spent.
[00:20:39] KM: Why?
[00:20:39] CT: It’s because if a kid has access to a high quality pre-k and they go to kindergarten, then everything that want to see less of and that is expensive from a government standpoint, like remedial education, team pregnancy, drug use, crime rate, violent crime, government dependency in other ways, those all go substantially down if a kid has access to high quality pre-k.
[00:20:59] KM: I those few years, those years are that critical.
[00:21:02] CT: Yeah. The earlier the better. I mean, I can give you some facts that will blow your mind. This is one that I heard, and I may get it off slightly. But what I heard one day is that if the human body grew at the same right as the human brain, then at one-month-old a human would weigh 170 pounds. The brain, 85% of cognitive development takes place by the 5th birthday, and we spend 95% of our public education dollars after that 5th birthday.
[00:21:28] KM: Say that again. 85% of our –
[00:21:31] CT: Cognitive. So social, emotional and intellectual development.
[00:21:35] KM: 85% of our brain development is in the first five years of our life?
[00:21:38] CT: Yes.
[00:21:39] KM: We’re putting them in the bed with a bottle and pulling up the side on the crib. We’ve got that backwards. I had no idea.
[00:21:48] CT: We have to be reading to kids from the day they’re born, and if we do that, we change their life. Pre-k is a critical part of that.
[00:21:56] KM: Wow! I bet you’re proud of that. You also protected Arkansas’ private option, Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare. I don’t think people understand about how states can receive funding from the federal government about that. Can you explain that to everybody?
[00:22:17] CT: Sure.
[00:22:17] KM: Because some states opts for this and some states don’t, and I don’t know why every state doesn’t opt for it.
[00:22:22] CT: I don’t know why either.
[00:22:23] KM: Explain it to us and explain what I’m talking about.
[00:22:25] CT: Yeah. Traditionally, there was Medicaid, and that really provided healthcare for people who were well below the poverty level or had some kind of disability. What Medicaid expansion was under the Affordable Care Act is it would provide access to healthcare if you live to 138% of the poverty level. That’s about $16,000 of income per year from an individual, about $32,000 for a family of four here in Arkansas.
So these are people who almost entirely are working, because they have that income coming in. But they didn’t make enough to afford health insurance. I have tried to focus on policies that are both the smart thing to do and the right thing to do. Pre-k is a perfect example of that. This is another.
First of all, it’s the right thing to do to make sure that these people can go to the doctor and have access to care without going bankrupt.
[00:23:12] KM: What was the dollar amount you said they made? Where was this gap that they fell again in the income?
[00:23:17] CT: Yeah. If you’re an individual, if you made up to $16,000 a year in Arkansas, then you would have –
[00:23:23] KM: Ineligible for any kind of help.
[00:23:26] CT: Yeah. You basically fell in a hole in the system. You made too much to qualify for Medicaid, but you didn’t make enough to be able to afford it on your own.
[00:23:36] KM: Exactly.
[00:23:37] CT: So you just were out of luck.
[00:23:38] KM: Okay. Pick up where you left off. I just want to make sure we iterate that to everybody, because that’s a huge gap.
[00:23:44] CT: Huge. Huge.
[00:23:44] KM: Okay. Go ahead. So you did –
[00:23:46] CT: When the Affordable Care Act was passed, it said we’re going to provide federal dollars for these people to have access to care and have healthcare. In Arkansas, what we did is – States had a decision to make as to whether they would accept those federal dollars or not. Then in the beginning, it was paid for 100% by the federal government. Now, it’s going to be about 90%, paid for by federal government and 10% for the state. It’s still a great deal for the state to accept those dollars. It’s not like if we turn the dollars down, that money is not going to be spent and the deficit is going to go down. That money is going to be spent somewhere else. It’s just up to us whether it’s going to be spent in Arkansas or not.
[00:24:20] KM: Why would every state not opt to get that federal supplement?
[00:24:25] CT: The reason, and not to oversimplify it, but –
[00:24:27] KM: Well, do oversimplify it please.
[00:24:30] CT: I think there are people who make decisions based on ideology more than they do the facts in front of them and the evidence in front of the.
[00:24:37] KM: The ideology would be I don’t want my citizens to get federal funding for – I don’t understand that.
[00:24:43] CT: If the government is too big or whatever the case might be.
[00:24:45] KM: Oh, you think some state governors and legislator believe the government is too big as it is. So they refuse to take any supplemental handouts for their citizens.
[00:24:58] CT: Yeah. We can talk about this in a whole bunch of different ways. Here’s one concrete example.
[00:25:02] KM: Okay.
[00:25:02] CT: In Arkansas, we expand in Medicaid. Louisiana has now expanded Medicaid. It did it a couple of years after Arkansas did. Louisiana aside. The other five states that border Arkansas are Tennessee, Oklahoma, Missouri, Texas and Mississippi. That’s five. They have had a combined 36 hospitals close since this decade essentially.
In Arkansas we’ve had zero hospitals closed. The reason is because we expanded Medicaid and the other states did not. Louisiana, the only other state that borders Arkansas that expanded Medicaid, they’ve also had zero hospitals closed. It doesn’t matter how great your health insurance is if your local hospital closes. You know as well as I do that hospitals in the communities in Arkansas, they are a key part of the economic lifeblood. It’s not just hospitals, it’s every medical provider.
This is just something. In Arkansas, we used to have $100 million in the budget every year to pay to hospitals for the uncompensated care that they had. That line item is gone now, because hospitals are being paid for the care that they provide because so many more people have access to health insurance and healthcare.
[00:26:06] KM: What’s going to happen to healthcare?
[00:26:08] CT: Well, if you noticed, I didn’t say everyone has access to healthcare, because that number is still not at zero. In Arkansas, after we expanded Medicaid, we actually led the nation in reducing the percentage of uninsured adults from 21% to about 8% to 9%. In my opinion, we have to keep working until that number is zero, because every person deserves to have access to quality affordable healthcare. Then that word affordable is the other part of it. Healthcare is still so expensive in this country, and have to –
[00:26:34] KM: And everybody thinks it’s insurance companies, but it’s really not. It’s pharmaceutical companies that are driving the price up.
[00:26:39] CT: It’s really everything. I mean, you can come at it from a lot of different ways. Pharmaceutical drugs are way, way too expensive. You’re exactly right. That is an essential part of it.
[00:26:49] KM: No one ever talks about those lobbyist. They all talk about the insurance companies, like it’s their fault, but it really, more than not, it’s the price of medicine.
[00:26:58] CT: Medicine is way too expensive. It’s much more expensive than the United States than it is in other countries. By and large, these medications are developed here in the United States. It doesn’t make sense for that to be the case.
[00:27:11] KM: Do you feel like we’re going to lose Obamacare?
[00:27:15] CT: That’s one of the reasons. Last year, congress passed the American Healthcare Act, and that essentially – Medicaid expansion. The way we did it here was innovative and it was bipartisan. We changed the way that the president had proposed to expand Medicaid and did it in a new and different bipartisan way.
[00:27:34] KM: In Arkansas, we did that.
[00:27:35] CT: We brought healthcare – As I mentioned, we have not closed any of the hospitals and we brought healthcare to – At one point, it was 300,000 people. Right now it’s about 270 or 275,000. Regardless, it’s a whole lot of people in Arkansas who wouldn’t have access to healthcare otherwise. The vote that they took last year, the American Healthcare Act, it would have essentially dismantled the Medicaid expansion here in Arkansas and taken a part of that program that we worked so hard to put in place and that has made such a difference in Arkansas. That’s one of the reasons that I ran, is to protect that.
The other part of that is the bill that they passed would have removed protections for people with preexisting conditions. Now, nobody thinks that the Affordable Care Act is perfect. I haven’t met anybody who thinks it’s perfect. It needs improvement. But one of the most important things that it did is it made sure that if you have a preexisting condition, then you cannot be denied a policy. Also, probably even more important than that, is you cannot be charged more if you have a preexisting condition.
The American Healthcare Act they passed last year would have changed that second part. It would have allowed insurance companies to charge people more if they had a preexisting condition. That’s wrong in my opinion. We have to keep that in place. That’s one of the main reasons I decided to run.
[00:28:41] KM: Did you always feel that way, or was it because you now have a preexisting condition? Tell our listeners you’re a cancer survivor.
[00:28:47] CT: Yeah. I always felt extremely strongly about that. There’s no question about it. But at the same time, there’s no two ways about it. Having that experience does change your perspective. To me, pre-k and some of the criminal justice reform is another issue that I worked very hard on the state legislature. Making sure that people have good paying jobs. Those issues to me are extremely important. But having gone through cancer myself, healthcare really, to me, comes first, because it impressed upon me that if you’re not healthy, then there’s really nothing else that matters. Health comes first. If you’re not healthy, you can’t work and take care of your family. If you’re a kid, you can’t learn or go to school or develop.
[00:29:25] KM: I had a gentleman that worked for me who had healthcare through his wife who was going to lose her job and he thought – Oh! His daughter got sick and he thought it was going to be really dad. It turned out not to be bad, but he was very concerned that she was going to have MS or something.
So he was the person you’re talking about. He made over $16,000, I mean $16,000 a year. Way over that. But he didn’t make enough to afford healthcare for a daughter who had been diagnosed. It was now going to have a preexisting condition. His wife was going to lose her healthcare, because her job was doing a layoff. He was going to start trying to look for healthcare for his daughter with a preexisting condition. He was considering going on welfare and everybody in the house quitting working so that they could get Medicare, like you’re talking about.
That doesn’t seem right. It doesn’t seem like you want to get people to stop working to afford healthcare. The only way we’re going to afford healthcare is to stop working.
[00:30:25] CT: That’s exactly right. When we talk about preexisting conditions, actually one in four children have preexisting conditions.
[00:30:31] KM: Really?
[00:30:31] CT: Yes. Then if it’s significant enough, they have to base their employment decisions for their entire life on whether they have healthcare or not. It affects these people’s lives the most, but it affects our entire economy.
[00:30:44] KM: Yes. That’s exactly right. Before Obamacare or Affordable Care Act, I had to provide health insurance, and every year it was going up exponentially, and it was just about to bankrupt Arkansas Flag & Banner and I could only afford – So I couldn’t get any employees to come to work for me because there were a lot of people – Or not any, but I couldn’t get a lot of people that I might would have hired, because they needed healthcare so bad and they had to go work somewhere that they didn’t want to work as much. Like maybe for the state of Arkansas, they really wanted to work in the private sector, but they couldn’t because of their health. So they had to work for the state or for federal government, and it was kind of a shame that they were not going to fulfilled in their career because they were having to take jobs, like you said.
[00:31:34] CT: I mean, if you want to talk about sort of economic freedom in county –
[00:31:37] KM: Economic freedom, that’s a good word.
[00:31:38] CT: You don’t have it right now, number one, because of the healthcare situation, but also because of college debt too, college tuition.
[00:31:47] KM: What’s up with that?
[00:31:48] CT: We have to make a real effort to make it more affordable. Again, it obviously affects the young people who graduate with this crippling debt more than anyone else. But it does affect all of us. I read within the last year that entrepreneurship in America is at a 25 year low, and to me it’s obviously related, because you can’t take a risk and start a business if you know you have to hit that payment every month. You also can’t really go into public service in the way that you would like –
[00:32:14] KM: You can’t buy a house.
[00:32:15] CT: That’s right. That’s right.
[00:32:16] KM: Why is it so expensive? When I went to school or when my husband went to school, you were able to work a part-time job and go to college and pay your way through college. Why is it so expensive today? Because we even have the lottery that’s giving money and giving scholarships. I don’t understand why it’s gotten so expensive. Why is it?
[00:32:36] CT: The lottery is a whole another topic.
[00:32:39] KM: But why is college so expensive these days?
[00:32:41] CT: It has gotten so much more expensive and it’s grown exponentially more than the rate of inflation.
[00:32:47] KM: That’s right.
[00:32:47] CT: Yeah. We have to do what we can to reign in the cost and to make sure that what you’re describing is possible, that people can work their way through college with that, graduate. Right now, if you graduate from a public school in American, on overage you have $25,000 in debt. From a private school, it’s about 40,000, and that’s just way too much. We also need to work to make sure that that debt can be refinanced in the same way that any other kind of debt can, like you can with your home mortgage or whatever the case might be. But college debt is the only kind of debt that you can’t manage or refinance in any way, and that’s also wrong.
[00:33:18] KM: I had your father, Ret Tucker, and your sister, Katherine Tucker, on this radio show in August of 2017, and we talked about your father’s success as a real estate agent, and your sister was starting the Arkansas Cinema Society. While I had them on, we had a caller call in and ask your father if you were going to run for governor.
[00:33:39] CT: How about that?
[00:33:42] KM: To that caller, no. He’s going to run for congress. I really did think you would run for governor before you ran for congress.
[00:33:48] CT: Yeah.
[00:33:49] KM: All right. This is a great place to take a break. When we come back, we’re going to ask him why congress? Why is he going to go do – You have to live in Washington if you –
[00:34:01] CT: You got to spend a lot of time up there.
[00:34:02] KM: Yeah. That’s funny. All right. When we come back, we’ll continue our conversation with Arkansas House of Representative and attorney, Mr. Clarke Tucker, who is currently running for the Democratic Congressional Seat against incumbent Congressman French Hill. We’ll dig into the issues in Washington and find out where he thinks he can make a difference. We’ll be taking calls, so get a pen and paper ready. Chris will give you the number after the break.
But first, I want to remind everyone we’re broadcasting live every Friday afternoon at 2 PM Central Time on both KABF 88.3 FM, the Voice of the People, and flagandbanner.com’s Facebook page. Then after one week of every show’s airing, a podcast is made available on all popular listening sites and YouTube.
This mural and patriotism with a new flag or flagpole from Arkansas’ flagandbanner.com. We have poles, hardware, accessories, maintenance support, installation and custom flags. We have flags of all kind for the sports enthusiast, the world traveler or history buff, we have them all. Bring in your old flag and get $5 off a new one. Consult the experts at Arkansas’ flagandbanner.com. Come shop our historic location at 800 West 9th Street in Little Rock or visit us online at flagandbanner.com.
[00:35:16] CC: Flagandbanner.com is proud to underwrite Up in Your Business with Kerry McCoy, where listeners are offered firsthand insight into the humanity and commonalities of successful people shared in a conversational interview with Kerry along with this radio show. Flagandbanner.com publishes a free biannual magazine called Brave. First published in October 2014, Brave Magazine harnesses the power of storytelling and human empowerment.
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[00:35:58] KM: Thank you, Chris. You’re listening to Up in Your Business with me, Kerry McCoy, and I’m speaking today with the Arkansas House of Representative and attorney, Mr. Clarke Tucker, who just happens to be the 7th generation Arkansan and a democrat running for congress in this November the 6th election. If you have a question for Clarke, make a comment on flagandbanner.com’s Facebook page or write this number down and call.
[00:36:20] CT: 501-433-0088.
[00:36:24] KM: Say it again.
[00:36:24] CT: 501-433-0088.
[00:36:28] KM: If you’re shy, you can just sign up for a weekly blog where you can read about life as a small business owner at flagandbanner.come, or as Chris said earlier, listen to more than 100 podcasts on all listening platforms.
I want to take this opportunity to give a big shout out and thank you to Centennial Bank for partnering with the Friends of Dreamland Ballroom and sponsoring this year’s Dancing Into Dreamland, which is Friday, November the 2nd. Two weeks.
[00:36:53] CC: Wow! It’s coming up.
[00:36:54] CT: Chris, are you going to come?
[00:36:56] CC: Am I invited?
[00:36:57] KM: You are invited.
[00:36:58] CC: Okay.
[00:36:59] KM: There’s still tickets left, but the tables are going fast. I think we sold two more tables today. Thank you Centennial Bank for making that happen.
Before the break, I was talking to Clarke. At the beginning we were talking about how smart he is. Then in the second part of the show, we were talking about how service oriented he is and what he’s done in the Arkansas House, and I just love some of the stuff that you’ve done. I think it’s interesting how you’ve worked across the aisles to create a great healthcare program for Arkansans that really work and then you set as a model too. Everyone to the whole United States that we set records on, we were the shining example of how to do it right.
[00:37:41] CT: Right.
[00:37:42] KM: Then I thought it was really interesting that your brain grows. 85% of your brain development is up to ages one to five-years-old, and that pre-k is really important and it’s really important we invest money in pre-k. I did not know that.
[00:37:56] CT: Yeah.
[00:37:58] KM: So we’re up to today and you’re running for congress.
[00:38:00] CT: Yes.
[00:38:01] KM: Why congress?
[00:38:02] CT: It’s a great question.
[00:38:04] KM: Yeah. You don’t know the answer probably. It’s like I have no idea.
[00:38:06] CT: People say to me all the time that you must be crazy, and they’re probably at least partly right.
[00:38:11] KM: I think all politicians are crazy.
[00:38:13] CT: People also say to me between having had cancer last year, and I should say for the sake of your listeners who don’t know. I am 100% cancer-free today and that’s the most important thing.
[00:38:21] KM: Congratulations.
[00:38:23] CT: But between having had cancer last year and having kids who are 9 and six, why are you running? My answer to them is those other reasons why I am running. My healthcare experience combined with my experience in legislature just knowing how important healthcare is to every person. Then watching congress last year passed the American Healthcare Act, which would have taken healthcare from 23 to 24 million Americans. After they passed the bill, they went to the Rose Garden and celebrated about it. To me, that was reprehensible and we needed a new person in congress to represent the people here. Make sure we all have access to quality affordable healthcare.
Then that really feeds into the other part of what I mentioned. I think we can’t – Our country is as divided as its been right now certainly in my lifetime, probably well beyond that. It stems from the fact that you have our elected officials celebrate when they’re taking healthcare away from people and you have political ads in our discourse that are fear-mongering and race-baiting and that sort of thing. I want my kids to grow up in the same kind of country that I believe I grew up in and that we want our country to be.
I don’t think we can take the future for granted. I think we have to earn it. You don’t do that by sitting at home on a couch. You do it by getting out and fighting for the country and the way that you want it to be.
[00:39:42] KM: I think the voters want there to be – I think they’re tired of the strive. I think they want there to be –
[00:39:53] CT: Yeah, I agree.
[00:39:54] KM: What am I trying to say? Cross-party –
[00:39:56] CT: Yeah, collaboration.
[00:39:57] KM: Collaboration.
[00:39:58] CT: Yeah. In the state house where I serve now, there are 76 republicans and 24 democrats, and I still pass over 20 bills off the house floor. I did that, but you just sit there. There’s no substitute for hard work. But on top of working hard, what I have found is that you actually learn more from people who have a different perspective than you than if they already have the same perspective. I would sit down obviously with some people on the same side of the aisle as me, but with a lot on the other side as well and figure out what our shared goals were and how we could work together to get to that place.
If you do that, I would always learn something. I would always improve the policy that I was proposing. We would get it done and it would actually make a difference in the lives of the people that we’re supposed to represent.
[00:40:44] KM: That’s exactly right. You are working on the Affordable Care Act. It’s one of the reasons you want to go up there. But you also said on your website you want to expand the earned income tax credit for working families. What does that mean?
[00:41:00] CT: Yeah. Ronald Reagan actually called earned income tax credit the most pro-family, anti-poverty, most pro-job creation policy already come out congress, or one of the most kinds of policies. So what that does is if you’re working, it gives you a boost. It’s kind of the opposite of what you’re talking about now. The healthcare system, if we don’t make sure people have healthcare, then they might want to quit all their jobs to make sure they qualify for Medicaid and get access to healthcare.
Earned income tax credit actually motivated people to earn more money, because they get more of the boost if they do that.
[00:41:34] KM: What is earned income tax credit?
[00:41:36] CT: At the end of the year, every year when we file our taxes in April, some people have to pay more. Some people get a tax return, whatever the case might be. If you fall in certain income tax levels and it’s always on the lower end of the spectrum, because those are the people who are trying to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps out of poverty. Especially if you’re in a family, you have children, you’re in those lower income levels, you’re working hard, then you get a boost when you get the tax credit back at that point in time.
Actually, I think it’s a less than half of American families are one-$400 expense from a financial crisis. You break a wrist or break your dishwasher, then your family is in dire straits, and that’s not the way it should be. To me, two answers for that are; we need better paying jobs so people can sustain on a weekly and monthly basis moving forward. But then you also have to have something come in once a year. In this year, it’s the earned income tax credit. That gives you a boost that will let you put a down payment on a car or payoff the credit card bill or whatever the case might be.
[00:42:36] KM: It’s a savings plan, because most of us can’t save, including me. It’s kind of a savings plan. At the end of the year, you have a nice little check. Everybody waits on their IRS check, their income check to come back in, rebate, and then they spend it on something they need.
[00:42:49] CT: Right.
[00:42:49] CC: Vacation.
[00:42:51] KM: Vacation.
[00:42:51] CT: The two things about that are that I’ll just add real quick are; you do have to earn it. You have to be working to get that. But then the other part about it, which is the point that you just made. Everyone who gets that earned income tax credit check, they put it immediately back into the local economy, because they have to spend that money in order to survive. It actually boosts the local economy.
[00:43:09] KM: I haven’t thought about that. Yeah.
[00:43:10] CT: For every dollar that you generate, that you do with the earned income tax credit, I’ve read that it generates $2.5 in the local economy.
[00:43:18] KM: You probably don’t think about this, but I’m a businesswoman and I think about it. Everybody wants wages to be higher, but everybody wants the cheapest price they can get and everybody complains that wages have not increased, but everybody loves the fact that what used to cost you $300 now cost you $100. Everything is cheaper. I mean, my TV, I cannot believe how cheap my TV is.
[00:43:42] CT: Yeah.
[00:43:43] KM: Everything is cheaper. It’s a catch-22. You cannot continue to get cheap products and get high wages, because what do business owners do? When they want to make a sale, they lower the price so that consumers will buy from them. Now, their profit margin has been way cut. So who’s going to get raises? Nobody.
It’s a vicious kind of cycle there. How do you – I don’t know how to – You fix that. I have no idea how you would fix that.
[00:44:14] CT: Yeah. It’s obviously something that is very complex and we have to have a lot of work from a lot of different angles to put into. But the key to me is just having better paying jobs across the board.
[00:44:26] KM: You can’t get blood out of a turnip.
[00:44:28] CT: And better careers. Yeah. We have unfilled jobs in Arkansas right now that people – For example, I don’t know if this is correct or not. So I probably shouldn’t say it, but I know that there are electricians, plumbers, welders. There are underutilized professions, and you don’t have to have a college degree to do it. You can go get a certification on a career in technical school. That ought to be more affordable and accessible to people as well. If you get a certification like that, then you can earn 70, or 90, or $100,000, which is an outstanding living in this state. So if we do a better job of preparing for hire, better paying jobs, then they’ll be able to afford what they need in Arkansas Flag & Banner, and when that boosts Arkansas Flag & Banner’s profits, then you can pay your employees more and it just circulates around in that way. In that way we have an economy where we all get lifted up together.
[00:45:17] KM: So you think education is the answer to getting higher paid jobs.
[00:45:20] CT: I think that’s one of the major keys.
[00:45:22] KM: That would be great. But we had a guy on here one time. He owned a trucking company and he can’t find truck drivers. There’s a shortage of truck drivers.
[00:45:28] CT: That’s what I’m talking about.
[00:45:29] KM: Yeah. You just kind of – Yeah, there’s a real shortage of truck drivers.
[00:45:33] CT: Yeah.
[00:45:35] KM: I don’t know. You don’t have to have college degree for that.
[00:45:37] CT: No you don’t. You just have to –
[00:45:38] KM: Why don’t people get those jobs?
[00:45:40] CT: Yeah. We need to do a better job of communicating with people who wants jobs and workforce development, workforce training. Right now, we don’t know what all the jobs are going to be 10 years from now. So it’s not just – I’m not talking just about k-12 education. It needs to be continuing education for adults as well. Then there are so many different ways to talk about it, which is why I hesitate, because I don’t even know where to start. Another example is clean energy.
[00:46:01] KM: There’s a lot of jobs there.
[00:46:02] CT: And there’s so much economic potential in Arkansas specifically for clean energy and it will have such a positive impact on our environment as well. That is something that we need to be promoting. Right now, I think there are 25,000 jobs in Arkansas for solar and other forms of –
[00:46:17] KM: Are they filled?
[00:46:18] CT: Right now there are 25,000 filled, but there’s potential for a lot more. The way someone put it to me and it stuck in my brain, is that we live in a Saudi Arabia of the western hemisphere for solar energy, because we live in the sunbelt, right? We live in the sunbelt. So we have tremendous potential for solar energy in this part of the world.
[00:46:38] KM: I believe there are rebates too, government rebates.
[00:46:40] CT: Yeah, there are.
[00:46:42] KM: And then another one you have on your website is safeguarding elections and fighting voter disenfranchise.
[00:46:49] CT: Right.
[00:46:50] KM: That’s a big one.
[00:46:52] CT: That is a huge one. That is a huge one. There’s really two major ways to talk about that. One is just with voter integrity. We know that Russia interfere with the 2016 election. The president’s national security advisor says there’s incontravert 11 into that. So we need to be doing everything we can to make sure that they’re not interfering in the 2018 election, which is now 18 days away. I mean, the sanctity and the integrity of our democratic process, I mean that effects every other public policy issue that we have.
Then the other way is it’s the same thing, because every public policy issue we have is affected by who’s in office, and who’s in office is affected by the overwhelming role of money in politics and we have to do something about that as well.
[00:47:34] KM: How do people contribute to your campaign?
[00:47:37] CT: For me, they can go — It’s the system we have now.
[00:47:39] KM: There’s the one you love right there. I wish everybody can see you turn bright red. You’re a blusher boy. He blushes at the drop of a hat.
[00:47:46] CT: I’ve been blushing the whole hour when we’ve been talking about me. That is the system that we have now unfortunately and we do have to have money. It’s a nature of the beast right now to get our message out and reach voters where they are. If someone is so inclined to do that for our congressional campaign, they can go to my website, which is clarketucker.com and there is an E on the end of Clarke, C-L-A-R-K-E T-U-C-K-E-R.
[00:48:05] KM: Yes, there is. Clarke with an E.
[00:48:08] CT: Yeah, Clarke with an E tucker.com, and I’m confident there’s a big donate button on there somewhere.
[00:48:13] KM: I wish you should have probably bought Clarke Tucker without the E is possible.
[00:48:16] CT: Yeah, I should have.
[00:48:18] KM: And redirect it, because I spelled your name wrong, and I’ve known for you forever.
[00:48:22] CT: Right.
[00:48:24] KM: You’re a rising star in the democratic party.
[00:48:27] CT: I don’t know about that. I don’t know what that means.
[00:48:29] KM: Yes, you do. You are. You are a rising star. Has anyone ever just flat out ask you why should people vote for you?
[00:48:37] CT: Yeah, of course.
[00:48:38] KM: Okay. Why?
[00:48:39] CT: Every day.
[00:48:39] KM: Oh, really?
[00:48:40] CT: Yeah. I hope that they see in me someone who has their back and will be their advocate. Right now we have too many people in politics including, in my opinion, the person who holds this congressional seat right now, which that you just vote the party line. To me, no party is right 100% of the time. If your loyalty is the party that you’re with and it’s not to the people that you represent, and that’s not right. I am in this because I care about people and I want to make a difference in our lives on the issues that actually affect us on a day-to-day basis, like being able to go to the doctor without going bankrupt, having a decent paying job and having great educational opportunities for our kids. I will work across the aisle in an effective way to actually get that done. My loyalty and priority will always be to the people I represent here now.
[00:49:29] KM: But you know, it doesn’t make much if you don’t vote the party line for people to get mad at you and budge you out of office, because it happened to Pryor, Mark Pryor. Was it Mark Pryor? He served Arkansas well and then made one wrong vote, and Blanche Lincoln.
[00:49:50] CT: Yeah.
[00:49:51] KM: That’s why they vote the party line. You get voted out the office.
[00:49:55] CT: To me, my priorities are my conscience and the people that I represent. Those are my standards. It’s not the party line.
[00:50:01] KM: But the people that you represent will sometimes be mad if you don’t vote the party line.
[00:50:06] CT: Yeah.
[00:50:07] KM: You have to juggle that all the time.
[00:50:09] CT: You represent all the people, not just the people in your party.
[00:50:11] KM: How are you going to get the young people out to vote? Let’s talk about disenfranchisement. They won’t go out. They will not put their money where their mouth is.
[00:50:19] CT: I feel a lot of energy out there right now.
[00:50:21] KM: More so than ever before. But I felt that before and they still don’t show up.
[00:50:27] CT: Yeah. The ironic thing is that all the issues that we’re talking about will affect young people more than they will older people. I mean, the environment and the issues are going to affect people who are 20 more than they will me, because they’re going to live longer than I am. Social security and Medicare, it’s going to be safe for people who are there in the next 20 years, but we don’t know beyond that. Actually, we’re working on these issues almost more for younger people than we are for anyone else. Obviously, everyone’s affected and every voter and every person is important, and I’m not saying anything to suggest otherwise. But the reality is that these young people have on average a lot longer to live than the rest of us. So they have as much more invested in the system as anyone else as well.
[00:51:08] KM: I just want to take a second and tell everybody you’re listening to Up in Your Business with me, Kerry McCoy, and then I’m speaking today with Arkansas House of Representative and attorney, Mr. Clarke Tucker, who just happens to be a 7th generation Arkansans and the democrat running for the congress, running for congress is in the November the 6th election. Once you’re elected, how is your life going to be changed?
[00:51:30] CT: Yeah, it will change a lot.
[00:51:31] KM: A lot.
[00:51:33] CT: Yeah. My family will still stay here and we have a great support system here with family and friends and I don’t want to uproot them and move them to Washington. But, to me, that’s the one thing that I can never feel right about doing this, because I know it does take time away from your family. But I think the future of our country is important enough for me to do it. The way that I would do it is to fly up to Washington on the days when I need to be there and stay there for however many days I need to be and then come home at the end of the week.
[00:52:02] KM: You have to have an apartment in both places, I’m sure.
[00:52:05] CT: Yeah. My family would stay here and we would keep the place where we live here, and I would have to figure something out for Washington, and I have no idea what that would be.
[00:52:12] KM: Is there a term limit on how long you can be a congressman?
[00:52:15] CT: Not for federal office, no.
[00:52:19] KM: Are you ever going to run for governor? If you do get to be in congress, do you ever come back and run for governor? You run for senator next after that.
[00:52:32] CT: I’ve only got one election on my mind right now. That’s the one in 18 days.
[00:52:36] KM: That’s the politician. That’s good. Everybody does talk about you coming back and being the governor here all the time.
[00:52:41] CT: Okay. All right.
[00:52:42] KM: Okay. So what’s going to be the hardest, most challenging thing when you get to Washington? Challenging, sure, is going to be your family and missing your kids, because I see you all the time with your kids. You’re very close with your kids.
[00:52:56] CT: Absolutely.
[00:52:57] KM: But when you go to Washington, what’s going to be the most challenging?
[00:53:00] CT: Yeah. You’re right. My family, that’s number one. My wife and kids have been so amazing this year. I can’t even describe how awesome they’ve been. As far as the job goes though, I do see that we have tremendous gridlock in Washington, which is why I’m disappointed in members of congress who vote the part line all the time. I think we need to do a better job of working across the aisle to get things done. But that’s not the way is has been and it’s tough for one person to change that. But I don’t think we should give up on it. That’s just naturally who I am anyway. I try to work through things with people and figure out how we can get places together.
But I think it’s important for the future of our country right now and it’s going to take a monumental effort by more people than just me, although I will do my part to make sure that we can move forward together as a country and try to move forward from this division that we’re facing right now.
[00:53:53] KM: So y’all can donate again to Clarke Tucker’s campaign by C-L-A-R-K-Etucker.com. You can go to flagandbanner.com and click on radio show and then we’ll have links there also if you forget how to do it.
Thank you so much, Clarke, for coming on.
[00:54:11] CT: Thank you so much for having me, Kerry.
[00:54:13] KM: Look. Here’s your gift.
[00:54:13] CT: Oh, wow! Oh! I love it.
[00:54:14] KM: You need that to go – It’s a desk set. For our radio listeners, it’s a desk set, Arkansas
[inaudible 00:54:19]. You need that.
[00:54:20] CT: Absolutely, I need that. Thank you very much.
[00:54:21] KM: Do you have one of those already?
[00:54:23] CT: Maybe, but I need another one. I need another one.
[00:54:27] KM: You’re going to have two desks.
[00:54:28] CT: Yeah, that’s right.
[00:54:29] KM: So you need one in two different places.
[00:54:30] CT: That’s right.
[00:54:30] KM: There you go. Who’s our guest next week? Oh! This is going to make you mad when I tell you who it is. I’m out of town next week.
[00:54:37] CC: Yeah, and so I have to say it, right?
[00:54:39] KM: So you have to say it.
[00:54:40] CC: Incumbent republican Congressman French Hill.
[00:54:43] KM: Congressman French Hill was on in October of 2016. Since I’m out of town, we’re going to play his podcast from two years ago. He was running for office then. I cannot believe you’ll have to run every two years. It sounds absolutely awful. You need to listen, listeners, because these guys are both wonderful. They’re both friends of mine. They’re both wonderful men. They’re both outstanding guys, but they have very different views on the way they approach this seat, this new seat. Which one aligns with you? That’s what you need to find out about, and you need for – As everyone does, you need to vote for yourself.
They’ve got just very different philosophies on how to change. It’s not that’s one right or wrong. Just like you said, it’s across the aisle. There’s a little bit right about both, but you really do need to look at which one affects your life and which one is the one that’s going to be best one for you, and that’s how you need to vote and be informed. People are just not informed enough. Next week after that, we have –
[00:55:44] CT: And please vote. No matter who you vote for, please vote.
[00:55:47] KM: That’s right. Please get out and vote, everybody. The week after that we have artist Pat Matthew. He is the artist that paints the American flag and the Arkansas flag and people kind of copy his work. You’ll see him around town.
I’d like to give another shout out to Centennial Bank for partnering with the Friends of Dreamland Ballroom and sponsoring this year’s Dancing Into Dreamland, Friday, November the 2nd. Tickets and tables are still available online. If you have a great entrepreneurial story that you would like to share, I would love to hear from you. Send a brief bio or your contact info to –
[00:56:21] CC: Questions@upyourbusiness.org. That’s questions with an S, @upyourbusiness.org.
[00:56:28] KM: Finally, to our listeners, thank you for spending time with us. My hope today is that you’ve heard or learned something that’s very inspiriting or enlightening, and I can’t believe if you didn’t learn something today or hear something that’s inspiring or enlightening, because today was a great show. And that it, whatever it is, will help you up your business, your independence or your life. I’m Kerry McCoy and I’ll see you next time on Up in Your Business. Until then, be brave and keep it up.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[00:56:54] CC: You’ve been listening to Up in Your Business with Kerry McCoy, a production of flagandbanner.com. If you miss any part of the show or want to learn more about UIYB, go to flagandbanner.com and click on radio show, or subscribe to her weekly podcast whenever you like, wherever you like to listen.
All interviews are recorded and posted the following week with links to resources you heard discussed on today’s show, and Kerry’s goal is to help you live the American dream.
