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Up In Your Business is a Radio Show by FlagandBanner.com

EPISODE 167

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:03.2] GM: Welcome to Up in Your Business with Kerry McCoy, a production of flagandbanner.com. Through storytelling and conversational interviews, this weekly radio show and podcast offers listeners an insider’s view into the commonalities of successful people and the ups and downs of risk-taking.

Connect with Kerry through her candid, often funny, and always informative weekly blog. There, you'll read, learn, and may comment about her life as a 21st-century wife, mother, daughter, and entrepreneur.

And now, it’s time for Kerry McCoy to get all Up in Your Business.

[INTERVIEW]

[00:00:39] KM: Thank you, son, Gray. Before we start, I want to let you know, if you miss any part of today's show and want to hear it again or you want to share it, there is a way. Son, Gray, will tell you how.

[00:00:51] GM: Listen to all UIYB past and present interviews by going to Up in Your Business with Kerry McCoy's YouTube channel or Facebook page, arkansasonline.com, flagandbanner.com's website or subscribe to our podcast wherever you like to listen by searching Up in Your Business with Kerry McCoy. If you'd like to receive timely email notifications of each week's upcoming guests, go to flagandbanner.com, click radio show, and join the email list. Back to you, Kerry.

[00:01:19] KM: Thank you, Gray. My guest today, Mr. Ernie Dumas, is kind of famous around these parts, because he has been writing about Arkansas politics since 1954, the year Orval Faubus defeated Gov. Cherry. At the request or should I say nagging of CALS, the Central Arkansas Library System, Mr. Dumas has written a book, a political memoir called The Education of Ernie Dumas.

Through the eyes of this revered journalist, we read deeply personal untold stories and learn about the fragilities and strengths of some of Arkansas's most controversial and colorful public figures. How this young boy, Ernie, born in a rural South Arkansas town that had little book learning in the town grew up to be the associate editor of the largest newspaper in Arkansas is the story of what makes America great.

With no further ado, I'll say it's a pleasure to welcome to the table political journalist, first turned author or writer, and now historian, Mr. Ernie Dumas.

[00:02:32] ED: Thank you, Kerry.

[00:02:33] KM: You’re welcome. Before we get into politics and your life's work, let’s talk about your rural town you grew up in, your mother, and your father. I asked you right before we came on to pronounce the name of the town, and you said it's not even there anymore.

[00:02:49] ED: It’s called Champagnolle and it’s C-H-A-M-P-A-G-N-O-L-L-E.

[00:02:55] KM: French I guess.

[00:02:56] ED: It’s French and it’s named after a town in the middle of France, which I passed through there about eight or nine years ago when we saw the highway sign Champagnolle, and I said, “This is where we’re from.” So that’s the story about the Champagnolle. But Champagnolle was a – When I grew up, it really didn’t exist then in 19 – I was born in 1937.

[00:03:17] KM: But I thought it was a sawmill town, because your father worked for the sawmill.

[00:03:20] ED: Well, there was a sawmill. There were sawmills all around the area. That Union County and that part of Arkansas is a big – Lumber and timber is the biggest part or used to be the biggest part of their economy, except for oil. The two of those, oil and timber, were the big things.

So my daddy was a – He hauled load. That’s basically what he had after. He had early on hauled oil when you had the first oil boom there. But after hauling oil for this rich woman for a few months, she never paid him. So he found a lawyer and sued her and won the lawsuit. But the lawyer took all the money and said my daddy still owed him more money. So he didn’t –

[00:04:03] KM: Why would a rich person not pay you?

[00:04:05] ED: Well, I don't know. But anyways, my daddy said, “I don't care what you do but you cannot be a lawyer.” So he thought all layers were that way.

[00:04:15] KM: So he became a reporter. Is that any better?

[00:04:17] ED: Yeah. So Champagnolle was a – It had been the county seat of the county, Union County. El Dorado subsequent was after the oil boom, but Champagnolle had been just a little – It was a little community on the Ouachita River where de Soto allegedly had camped one night on the banks of the river there at Champagnolle. So that’s how Champagnolle came to into being.

[00:04:39] KM: It’s the county seat you said it was.

[00:04:41] ED: Well, it was the – It had been the county seat for a time in the 19th century.

[00:04:45] KM: But it’s gone now.

[00:04:46] ED: But it’s – There’s nothing there. Maybe there's – It used to be – When I grew up, there was a kind of a bar down at the foot of the hill where you could get a beer.

[00:04:55] KM: Of course.

[00:04:56] ED: But that was it. But there’s nothing at Champagnolle now, and I don’t think – Except the cemetery where all my relatives are buried up on top of the hill.

[00:05:04] KM: I read this in your book, and it felt like I really loved the way you wrote this and I felt like I really knew your mother and I loved your mother and I loved your honesty when you wrote this. In your book, you wrote, “My mother grew up farther south on a truck farm near the sawmill Town of Strong. Those sickly and possessing only one good eye went to high school, passes the state teacher examination, and as a single girl taught in several tiny country schools.”

[00:05:35] ED: She came to teach in the little community of Champagnolle, and there was a wood frame building. I never saw it. It was gone by the time I was old enough to recognize anything. So that's where she taught and in a one-room schoolhouse, and that's where she met my father who had gone to the sixth grade. Down there, nobody went past the sixth grade.

[00:05:59] KM: How did that town produce you?

[00:06:01] ED: Well –

[00:06:01] KM: Nobody in that town went to college until your brother went.

[00:06:03] ED: Yeah. As I said, it was not really a town. It was just, even when I grew up. It was just a –

[00:06:08] KM: Nobody stopped in the road.

[00:06:09] ED: It was a place in the road. It was a place in the road on top of –

[00:06:12] KM: So how did you and your brother, the only two people to go college from those parts?

[00:06:16] ED: Well, we started to school the little Champagnolle school where my mother taught until she met my father. My father was the oldest of about eight kids, and so two of his brothers were in school under my mother. I think maybe the year or maybe two years she taught there. So she got – She married my daddy, and then the school closed. I guess when my mother –

They couldn't find another teacher I guess, so the school closed. So we were then routed to a little school called Quinn, which was over on the highway, and Quinn had 24 of us. The total enrolment in the school district was 24. My brother –

[00:06:57] KM: From 1st to 12th grade?

[00:06:58] ED: Well, we didn’t – Nobody went to the 12th grade.

[00:07:02] KM: Eighth grade.

[00:07:01] ED: But you go through the sixth or eighth grade but you – So it was one where we had one teacher and she would – There’d be the first grade row and a second grade row and then maybe third grade row and a fourth grade. If there was – Might not be a fifth grade and there might be one sixth grade or something. So she would start off the morning at the first grade and she would give our lessons and into the second grade. She’d step over about one or two feet and talk to the second-graders.

So as a student, you got to hear all the lessons all day from one through fourth or fifth or sixth grades. So that was until I was going to be in the fifth grade, and the teachers there, the single teacher and her husband who was a superintendent and the bus driver and disciplinarian and built a fire in the classroom and so forth and whipped us when we needed it. So they left and so they abolished the school district, and we went into El Dorado after that. So we got –

[00:08:01] KM: They went all the way to the 12th grade.

[00:08:02] ED: They went all the way to the 12th grade.

[00:08:03] KM: You had –

[00:08:03] ED: El Dorado was a big, rich town.

[00:08:05] KM: Because it had oil.

[00:08:06] ED: It had oil. There are many millionaires in El Dorado.

[00:08:10] KM: You had a teacher suggest to you that you should go get a job in a newspaper.

[00:08:15] ED: Well, I was a – As I said, my father said – Because nobody go into college, and he had gone to the sixth grade, and my mother had actually gone to high school. But nobody else down there had gone to college. But everybody was going to college by that time. So my father thought that we might go to college. He suggested, “You ought to be an engineer, so you need to get some math and science.” My senior year, I was taking a lot of advanced mathematics and chemistry and all those kinds of things. But I took journalism, of course, because my older brother had taken journalism, and it was easy.

[00:08:57] KM: Easy class.

[00:08:57] ED: He was the sports editor of the little – The high school paper and, of course, he’d have – He’s a big football player and track star. So I covered the games for him and wrote up the stories for him. I was two years behind him when I was in the 10th grade, so when I was a senior. So that was easy stuff. I will just take this journalism stuff. That’s easy. You don’t have to study or anything.

So I took journalism in my senior year. The teacher was a woman named Ruth Jenkins, and I guess I owed my career to Ruth Jenkins. About three or four weeks into the term, and we put out one little high school paper, and I wrote some sport stories for it I guess. So she came to me one afternoon. She said, “Would you like to work at the El Dorado Daily News?” I said, “Doing what?” She said, “As a reporter, writing.” I said, “Well, sure.” She said, “Well, go down and see Bob Hayes at the evening – News-Times office this afternoon and talk to him.”

She said they need a reporter badly. So I skipped the bus and walked down to the News-Times office and went in to see Bob Hayes, who was the old guy, who was the editor. He’d been the editor for 34 years. He sat me down and tossed me three or four news releases and said, “Boil these down to 150 words or something.” So I did. I sat there and typed them and put them back on his desk. He looked at them and he said, “All right. When can you – What time do you get out of school every day?” I said, “Well, 3:30 or something.” He said, “All right. Well, come on down here every day when you get out of school.”

So that’s what I did. After I left school, I have school every day, I’d go down and I’d go over the courthouse and go to all the courts and the prosecuting attorney and the sheriff. Go down to City Hall and Police Department and get all the news and come back and I’d write up all of the editors.

[00:10:53] KM: How old are you?

[00:10:54] ED: I would have been – I was 16 when I went to work there but I was soon to be 17. So that’s what I did.

[00:11:01] KM: That’s why you should live in a small town.

[00:11:04] ED: So that’s what I did. I worked 40, 50, 60, 70 hours a week. My high school, I never cracked a book the rest of my senior year.

[00:11:12] KM: They graduated you?

[00:11:13] ED: Yeah. I graduated all right.

[00:11:13] KM: You went on to college and did the same thing, didn’t you?

[00:11:18] ED: Yeah. So then I went to college.

[00:11:22] KM: Did the same thing.

[00:11:23] ED: I did the same thing. I had – We went into town every Saturday to the feed store to get the feed for the chickens and hogs and stuff out there and seeds. We planted. We had a little truck farm of sorts.

[00:11:40] KM: Where’d you go to college? [inaudible 00:11:41]?

[00:11:42] ED: I went to Henderson State Teachers College for three years until they kind of ran me off.

[00:11:47] KM: All right. This next segment is going to be fun, and people that know you are going to think this is going to be really hard for you, because you’re going to have to give me one word. That’s the funny part, which you probably is not going to be able to do but one word or two or maybe a sentence to describe each of these Arkansas governors. Your book starts with Orval Faubus.

[00:12:11] ED: One word, Orval Faubus. I guess cunning would be Orval Faubus.

[00:12:19] KM: I would have thought bigot.

[00:12:21] ED: Well, he really wasn’t. I think he wasn’t.

[00:12:23] KM: I think I got that from your book. For people that don’t know, Orval Faubus is the one that did the Central High crisis and pull that, because a lot of people don't realize that.

[00:12:31] ED: I think he spent the rest of his life after that trying to live that down in his own mind, trying to – Hoping that somehow he could transform history. They would not recognize him as the villain in all of that. I had a number of conversations with him toward the end of his life in which he was – You could see him struggling to try to justify what he did to improve his place in history. But anyway, that's Orval Faubus. Kind of a tragic figure.

[00:13:02] KM: Tragic? Cunning and tragic. All right. Winthrop Rockefeller.

[00:13:07] ED: Winthrop Rockefeller.

[00:13:08] KM: He’s your favorite one, isn’t he, in the book?

[00:13:09] ED: Well, in a way. He's the most unusual politician in the history of Arkansas, a successful politician.

[00:13:17] KM: One word.

[00:13:17] ED: One word. I guess genuine. He was committed to doing something for Arkansas. It became the passion of his life to resurrect his kind of reputation, because he had fled New York City. He was part of the Rockefeller clan. He had fled New York City in disgrace because he had – He was a big, notorious drunk and playboy gambler.

[00:13:45] KM: Gambler.

00:13:46] ED: Gambler. He married Bobo Sears, the kind of fleshy, B-grade actress. Then they divorced. That was on the front page of all the tabloids and everything. He was a disgrace to the whole Rockefeller family.

[00:14:02] KM: That's why he came to Arkansas.

[00:14:04] ED: He came to Arkansas to escape all of that and the notoriety after his divorce. Here, he discovered his mission in life, which was to take this poor state and transform it into a modern state. That was his dream, and so he ran for office. Amazingly, with the help of a great fortune, of course, gets elected and then felt like in the four years he was governor that he had failed. So he died I think a very unhappy and bitter man.

[00:14:38] KM: He didn’t live very long, did he?

[00:14:40] ED: He lived about two years after his defeat. He’d got cancer and died.

[00:14:45] KM: You have a great story about him because of his drinking.

[00:14:48] ED: Oh, yes. All right. Well, that was a story I told because a number of these stories in the book are stories that I revealed that I was a part of. As a reporter, you’re never supposed to be part of the story and you try not to be. But there were several instances when I became a part of the story.

This one that I think that you were referring to is, as I’ve said, he was notorious for drinking. That was his reputation, and he’s supposedly – There were rumors going around that he had this vast trove of pornography up on Petit Jean Mountain, and it had all this liquor, these fancy liqueurs and whiskeys from all over the world up there.

There were all kind of rumors like that spread about Winthrop Rockefeller, which we in Arkansas – This was a southern Bible Belt state, and drinking was not an acceptable thing in much of the state, and you couldn't sell alcohol in much of the state and particularly yin the governor's mansion. People didn’t expect the governor would not be drinking in the governor's mansion, at least since Jeff Davis was governor at the turn of the century. He was a notorious drunk, and people loved him for drinking. So he was – He called himself a – He said there were [inaudible 00:16:04] Baptists and Court Baptists and he was a Court Baptist. Then the Baptist church expelled him.

Anyways, so Rockefeller, he had – This is at the end of his first term, and he's running for second term in 1968 against the very formidable Democratic candidate, Marion Crank, who was the Speaker of the House of Representatives and a very accomplished and smart man and backed by the Stephens’ interest and so forth. So it was going to be a very, very tough race for him, because he’d been so for kind of unsuccessful in getting anything done and had kind of champion civil rights. So he was supposedly in deep trouble.

[00:16:46] KM: It was early morning. He was making a speech.

[00:16:48] ED: Well, that's right. So he called a special session of the legislature in the summer of 1968. The election is coming up in November, and he calls a special session of legislature to get some things done. He's got a prison reform bill, and he moved past, trying to transform this corrupt prison system. So he's got all these big things he wants to do.

At special legislative sessions, typically they all – The senators and House members all gather in the House of Representatives usually at 10 o'clock in the morning at the first day of the session, and the governor comes before them and addresses the session and lays out his program, what he wants them to pass. So that usually happens kind of in the middle of – About Monday morning.

So Rockefeller addresses the legislative session, and he was not a good speaker. He was dyslexic and he had to have his speeches written out in great huge letters, so he can read it easily. He had problems sometimes speaking, and he often slurred a few words and stopped and had to start over again and so forth. That was -- He was not a great speaker. So he makes his speech. I'm covering it for the Gazette, so typically what you do at the speech, I go around to key legislators and ask them about the governor's program and what they think and what might he pass and be able to pass and so forth.

I go up to Sen. Clarence Bell of Parkin, who was a big powerful man. He was from Parkin, Ark over in the over October that over in the Delta, and he is a very powerful man, chair of the Education Committee and in some ways the most powerful man in the House of Representatives. So I asked Sen. Bell about the governor’s speech, and he says, “Well, I thought he had two or three shots too many before he came here this morning. Now, this is morning. You don’t drink in the morning, do you?”

Anyway, I write it down on my notepad, and Sen. Richard Earl Griffin from Crossett is standing nearby and he echoed that. He said, “Yeah. People should be able to watch that speech and be ashamed of their governor.” So I go down a little afterward. I go down to the governor's office to ask Gov. Rockefeller's comment about it and see whether he had been drinking that morning. That’s – Normally, we don't do things like that. But since a senator mentions his drinking, then I feel compelled to ask him about it.

So I get down to the governor's office and going to the front door of the governor's office. As I’m going into the governor's office, Bill Conley, his press secretary is coming out of his office. So I’m in the doorway, and my notepad is in my hip pocket. I remained in the doorway and I said, “Bill, I need to see the governor.” He said, “What about?” I said, “Well, I need to ask him a question.” “About what?” I said, “Well, Sen. Bell said he had two or three shots too many before he addressed the legislature this morning.”

So poor Bill Conley, just a wonderful sweet man. He said, “Ernie, I was with him all morning, and he had one drink.” Anyway, I said okay and. He said, “But the governor’s going up to Petit Jean, and he won’t be back until this evening.” He goes on, and I pull out my notepad then and I write his thing down in my notepad.”

[00:20:17] KM: One drink.

[00:20:19] ED: Bill Conley I had to quote. So then I write a story. It’s the next day in the front page of the Gazette. Of course, the lead story of the governor’s speech and the big program that he laid out. Down at the bottom of the page on the three-column headline and I can still see it, the headline. It said, “Sen. Bell says WR had “two-three drinks too many. Aide says had only one.” So that was the headline.

So Bill Conley's account later, Bill was – He was at the house the next morning and he was still in bed early in the morning and he gets a call. It was from Tom Isley, who was executive secretary to the governor. Later a United States District Judge for many, many years, died about two or three years ago, G. Thomas Isley. So Isley says, “Conley, write a letter of resignation and be at the mansion at nine o’clock or something [inaudible 00:21:14].”

[00:21:15] KM: He wanted Conley to resign from being Winthrop’s –

[00:21:17] ED: Yeah. Press secretary.

[00:21:19] KM: Press secretary because that happened.

[00:21:21] ED: Yes. So Conley said, “Why?” He said, “Have you read the Gazette this morning?” He said, “No, I haven’t.” He said, “Get the Gazette and read the front page and write a letter of resignation and be at the mansion.” So Conley goes out, picks up the paper, and there he sees that story on the front page, and his just heart sinks. So he sits down and writes a little two or three-sentence letter of resignation and walks. He goes out and drives out to the governor's mansion. When he gets out there, they’re all – All the moguls were gathered there.

John Ward, who was his – Rockefeller's communications director and Marion Burton and Bob Faulkner. They’re all had brain trust around there. They were all sitting in the living room ,and he goes in, and they’re – Rockefeller's not there. He’s back in his – He’s still asleep. So they sit there and just chew on poor old Conley for an hour, “How could you do such a thing? How could you write such a thing? You've defeated him now. He’s going to be beaten because of this thing. The governor’s drinking at the mansion. How could you be so stupid?” He said, “Well, Dumus didn’t have his – He didn’t have a notepad. I didn’t know he was going to quote me.”

John Ward supposedly said, “Well, Conley, that’s – He’s a reporter. That's what reporters do. They quote you.” Anyway, they stay in there and they just harangue them forever. Finally, Rockefeller – Somebody comes in and says, “The governor is awake.” So they all troop back to the bedroom, and Rockefeller was sitting there on the edge of the bed in his pajamas, scratching his head. He said, “What the hell are you guys doing in here?”

Isley goes over and grabs the letter out of Conley’s hand and takes it over and hands it to Rockefeller. Rockefeller puts his glasses on and reads it, and he said, “Why is Conley resigning?” Isley goes and gets the Gazette and he’s got it folded back to that little thing about my little story at the bottom of the page and so hands it to him. Rockefeller looks at it again and reads a little bit, and he starts laughing. He said, “Hell, I’m not going to fire Conley for lying for me. He knows I had five drinks if I had one. Now, get the hell out of here. I got to get dressed.”

So that’s what happened. The next day, he went over to North Little Rock and was supposed to talk to the Rotary Club or the Kiwanis Club or something. Somebody at there asked him about how many drinks he had before he got up to talk that morning. So Rockefeller just kind of grinned sheepishly and held up one finger. That’s that story.

[00:23:47] KM: I love that story. Hell, I’m not going to fire him for saying I had one when I had five. That’s good job. All right. One word for Dale Bumpers.

[00:23:56] ED: Integrity I guess.

[00:23:58] KM: That’s nice of you to say.

[00:23:59] ED: He was a – I say that because, one, he was the most effective governor in history. I mean, he was a governor for four years. He had no experience. He was from a small town.

[00:24:13] KM: His daddy thought politicians were an honorable profession.

[00:24:17] ED: Yeah. Politics was a noble profession. He went and got into politics because he thought his daddy expected him to be a politician. In those four years as governor, he passed a lot of taxes and the biggest program in Arkansas history for education and healthcare and parks. He created a number of new parks and redeveloped the other state parks. He had a big highway program. He did more in that four years.

But the thing that I think separated him from everybody else was his obsession with honesty, and he was – One of the I think revealing things in the book is that he tells me that his happiest day of his life was the day after he was elected to the Senate. So he immediately resigned as governor, so he could go be sworn in to get a little seniority in the Senate.

But the day he resigned as governor, leaving about six weeks left in his term, he said it was the happiest day of his life, because every day, every night, he went to bed worrying about corruption. That somewhere among these 25 or 30,000 state employees, somebody was doing something rotten. Somebody was doing something dishonest. He was afraid that his children were going to read that their father was corrupt. He said it just drove him crazy and he talked about it to his wife every night.

[00:25:47] KM: Because the buck stopped with him.

[00:25:48] ED: Yeah. He said he was this vast relief when he got [inaudible 00:25:51].

[00:25:51] KM: Because when you're a senator, you just answer to yourself.

[00:25:53] ED: Yeah. You got four, five employees.

[00:25:56] KM: All right. David Pryor.

[00:25:59] ED: Well, David Pryor. Just the most decent human being you could ever expect to meet and had no ego, which was unusual for a politician not to have any kind of ego.

[00:26:12] KM: That is.

[00:26:14] ED: The only successful politician I knew who did not have an ego and loved everybody and tried to do his best. I think that was – His four years as governor were difficult, because we sank into recession, just about the time he became governor. Dale Bumpers is also the luckiest man alive. He was just kind of born under a lucky star, because everything he did worked out when he took office. The economy was booming. Farm prices were sky-high. The crops were good. Everybody has made a ton of money. The treasury filled with income, so he could build buildings on all the college campuses and everything.

[00:27:00] KM: Got a lot done.

[00:27:00] ED: He was just lucky as well.

[00:27:02] KM: Here’s a good governor, Bill Clinton.

[00:27:05] ED: Bill Clinton was in some ways I guess the most accomplished and the most brilliant politician I've ever known.

[00:27:15] KM: So brilliant.

[00:27:15] ED: He was brilliant, and you recognize that immediately about him. Not only he was brilliant. He was a speed reader. He could read vast amounts of stuff very quickly and absorb it. He could read books and just flip the pages and do it. People write a speech for him.

As we talked about here a couple of weeks ago when you spoke here, somebody would write a speech for him, and he would just kind of riffle through the pages very quickly and put it down. He could just deliver that speech not verbatim but very beautifully. So that's what he did. Plus he had real charisma. So he had everything it took to be president. You recognize right away as many did nationally that this guy is probably going to be president someday.

[00:28:06] KM: Ambitious too would be another –

[00:28:07] ED: He was ambitious as well.

[00:28:09] KM: You said in your book he’s probably the most ambitious politician you ever covered.

[00:28:12] ED: Yeah. He was ambitious when he had confidence. He knew he was good and he wanted to be a great politician. He wanted to do great things.

[00:28:23] KM: Frank White.

[00:28:25] ED: Frank White. He was just I guess honest. He was not a great politician. He didn't have in mind – When he got elected governor, he didn’t have a clue that he is going to be elected governor. He didn't expect to be elected governor.

[00:28:39] KM: Who was he running against?

[00:28:40] ED: He was running against Bill Clinton.

[00:28:42] KM: Oh, that’s right! He beat Bill Clinton, because Bill Clinton – Yes.

[00:28:46] ED: He had kind of angered just every interest in Arkansas in his first year in office. So, Frank beat him and didn't expect to. He expected to get his name out there and run. He decide to run right at the last minute. So he wanted to run for Congress. That was his purpose. He wanted to run for Congress but he couldn’t, so he needed to file for something. He run for governor, so he could get well-known in campaign. Then the next – In 1982, then he'd run something real. But he got elected.

[00:29:19] KM: A lot of young people don't probably realize that Bill Clinton was the governor, then got defeated, and was the governor again for eight years. All right. Here’s the one I really enjoyed reading about, Jim Guy Tucker.

[00:29:30] ED: Jim Guy Tucker was the unluckiest politician I guess. He and Bill Clinton were kind of contemporaries and sort of adversaries, because they were both bright, dimpled, Ivy-League-educated politicians and with great ambitions. They were maybe equally brilliant.

[00:29:51] KM: So they were vying for the same.

[00:29:53] ED: They were in the same party and same philosophy about everything. They were both the modernists. They wanted to get things done. They were – Would have a big program. But Jim Guy – Their ambitions clashed very early on, and so they became not mortal enemies but they were adversaries.

[00:30:14] KM: You called Jim Guy in your book swashbuckling Ivy Leaguer. Nobody uses the word swashbuckling anymore.

[00:30:21] ED: Yes. Well, he –

[00:30:23] KM: Except for maybe in Huckleberry Finn's book.

[00:30:25] ED: Well, he wanted to be a warrior or a gym guy with –

[00:30:27] KM: He’s a marine.

[00:30:28] ED: He was a marine.

[00:30:28] KM: I was surprised to hear he was a marine.

[00:30:31] ED: He joined the Marine Corps and then he wanted to go to Vietnam but he flunked the physical. He had this disease that later afflicted him and nearly killed them but he had this kind of liver disease. He didn’t get to go to Vietnam, and so he tried again and instead flunked physical again. So he just went on on his own, so he just –

[00:30:53] KM: As a war correspondent.

[00:30:53] ED: He went over there and did a book.

[00:30:55] KM: And ended up writing a book about the Arkansas servicemen.

[00:30:58] ED: He did. I remember George Fisher and all of the cartoons of Jim Guy Tucker. He would always have him in fatigues and carrying a gun around with him.

[00:31:11] KM: Colorful, interesting guy. He’s coming on the radio. I can't wait to interview him. I really enjoyed reading about him too. Then –

[00:31:18] ED: He was unlucky because, as I said in the book, we recount how he got Kenneth Starr investigation of the Clintons over Whitewater. Never got anything from Bill Clinton. They never were able to accuse Bill Clinton of doing anything or Hillary of doing anything in those seven or eight years that they investigated Whitewater and all the other ancillary issues flowed out of the Whitewater thing.

But they did succeed in getting Jim Guy Tucker because the strategy of prosecutions in these things is to flip people. You start off with somebody who's not some lower level person and find something that they did illegal, and everybody's done something illegal. So I did find somebody that got a loan from Jim MacDougall's outfit and maybe got it under false pretenses. Anyway, they charged that guy with something, and then you flip – Get him to flip and say okay on Jim MacDougall, for example. You keep going up until you get to the big guy, Bill Clinton, who was the object.

So they went after Jim Guy Tucker over two things. One, he’s bankrupt. He had started some cable television franchises and declared bankruptcy in one of them. So they accused him of having a false bankruptcy. So he was charged with fraud on the bankruptcy and then also for some kind of fraud connected with the lending operation of Jim MacDougall.

[00:32:48] KM: Misappropriation of funds or something.

[00:32:52] ED: So the small business administration thing that got involved in all of that. In both instances I think he was convicted of both. One of them he pled guilty to finally, because he was suffering from this liver ailment and he was dying. So he pled guilty to that. It turns out later on, he did not – The bankruptcy was not fraudulent. In fact, the IRS probably owed him money. But all of that was – They concluded that long after he had pled guilty and was sentenced. But then –

[00:33:25] KM: Which he did because he was so ill. He couldn’t have fight it.

[00:33:30] ED: But the problem was the great injustice was done to both his reputation and to his career was that he's now a convicted felon, and there’s nothing he can do about it. But they – Because Kenneth Starr and the Whitewater investigation never would say what part of the bankruptcy code he had violated. The court, the judge wouldn’t order the IRS or the Justice Department to Kenneth Starr to say what part of the bankruptcy code he violated. After he finally pled guilty and he didn’t have to go to prison, then he went up and had his –

[00:34:16] KM: Liver transplant.

[00:34:16] ED: Liver transplant. Finally, he said, “Well, you got to – You obviously owe the IRS some money. We got to establish how much money you owe the IRS.” So finally in 2001, long after the Whitewater investigation had ended, the judge says, “Okay. You got to tell them, so we can calculate what you owe.” When they finally said okay with section so-and-so, that had passed years later. So he was not the law when Jim Guy Tucker took bankruptcy. So he did not violate the bankruptcy law.

So he tried to get it overturned, and the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals said, “No, once you plead guilty. No matter what, that's it. You can’t go back and reverse it.” So he's a convicted felon forever.

[00:35:01] KM: They ended up sending him a check I saw on your book for $1.41.

[00:35:05] ED: A dollar and something. $1.41 I believe or something like that, yes. Then finally, they couldn’t establish what is the – They probably owed him some money but they couldn’t establish how much. So finally, let’s strike a deal. So they send you this check for whatever it was. $1.42.

[00:35:22] KM: $1.41.

[00:35:23] ED: $0.41. He framed it and put it on his wall in his living room.

[00:35:27] KM: This is crying shame right there. You had quit reporting I think when Mike Huckabee was – Became in office. Give me – But you could still – But you’re still involved. You’re still doing a lot of stuff. Give me one word for Mike Huckabee.

[00:35:40] ED: Well, I’ll give you a word that not many people will agree with, and he would object it. Progressive.

[00:35:47] KM: Really?

[00:35:48] ED: Contrary to all of his image and what he claimed about himself, his record as governor, he was in office nearly 12 years, almost as long as Bill Clinton and almost as long as Orval Faubus. But what he did as governor, not what he said as governor. But what he actually got done. He raised more taxes than any governor in Arkansas history.

[00:36:13] KM: I don’t think people realize that.

[00:36:15] ED: That's right, and I know that because I researched it. When he was proclaiming, when he ran for president that he was the first governor to cut taxes and he had to constantly stop the legislature from Democratic legislators raising taxes. So I went back and computed all the tax increases that he passed as governor and signed and all of those by Bill Clinton, who was governor for 12 years. Mike Huckabee raised more taxes than Bill Clinton or Dale Bumpers, who was also a tax and spender I guess. So I think that that's his record as governor, and in spite of his protests that he was an archconservative and then he was against taxes.

[00:36:57] KM: Mike Beebe.

[00:36:59] ED: Mike Beebe, an efficient governor. I don't think that he could be ranked as a great governor because The Times determined whether you’re a great governor or a disastrous governor I think, and there were easy times. So I don't know what much that he was an effective governor. There were no scandals in his administration. There’s not much you could say that he accomplished, except he balanced the budget.

[00:37:26] KM: Everybody loves him.

[00:37:27] ED: Everybody loves him, and he was a very effective governor. He could get things done. He didn't try to get a great deal done, because it was not a lot I guess. You don't need it to be done. So I would rank him as an effective governor but not as a historic governor as you would count. I think you Dale Bumpers and maybe Winthrop Rockefeller who tried to do more than any governor in Arkansas history, the most liberal governor in Arkansas history and perhaps in American history.

[00:37:57] KM: And he’s a Republican.

[00:37:58] ED: He was a Republican.

[00:38:00] KM: Okay. That brings us up to date. Asa Hutchinson. Is the jury still out?

[00:38:03] ED: Jury is still out on Asa Hutchinson. Again, he’s a hard-working and effective governor. He knows what he's doing. I wouldn't agree with a great deal that he has done, particularly in the area of healthcare. I think he damaged the healthcare system but I think he's had to work with his own party, and that’s difficult to work with your own party when you might disagree with a lot of them.

[00:38:34] KM: You wouldn’t think that would be difficult.

[00:38:36] ED: Well, I mean, it is in the current times since he's relying upon Republicans to reelect him.

[00:38:42] KM: You said in your book. You wrote, “In my long experience, three Arkansas politicians; Winthrop Rockefeller, Dale bumpers, David Pryor; nearly always followed the unpopular course of moral conviction.” What do you mean by that?

[00:39:01] ED: Well, I think they thought about things that had to be done. In the case of all three, I think they all thought that we needed to raise taxes because you had to build highways, you had to improve education, you had to improve higher education, you had to provide healthcare for people, and that's raising taxes is not a popular thing to do ever any time by anybody. Although I think the voters were receptive to all of that, they never punished Dale Bumpers for raising taxes. They didn't punish Bill Clinton for raising taxes. They didn't punish –

[00:39:38] KM: They did the first time.

[00:39:38] ED: Mike Huckabee. The first time, he raised a few. He raised one tax the first time, and that was the tax on vehicle and truck license fees. They punished him, because he yielded to the pressure groups and accepted a revision of the vehicle license tag that lured the taxes on the big trucks and raised among those who had pickups in small vehicles that proved to be very, very unpopular in the rural areas of Arkansas. That’s what beat him in the first time.

[00:40:09] KM: We haven’t taken any breaks, because it's so interesting. But I do want to tell everybody that you’ve been listening to Up in Your Business with me, Kerry McCoy, and that I've been speaking today with Mr. Ernie Dumas, politico historian, past editor of the Arkansas Gazette, and author of the book The Education of Ernie Dumas.

So newspaper policies and ethos at the time of Whitewater were these. You even alluded to it earlier that you wouldn't talk about something unless you got a quote from them. The policy of newspapers then was no critical article can be published without the subjects involved, having a chance to explain or justify their actions, even if they said no comment.

[00:40:56] ED: Yes, and I think I –

[00:40:57] KM: Is that true today?

[00:40:58] ED: I think it's probably not as true today as it was, although some of the media like the New York Times and Washington Post, that’s kind of their policy still. But it’s not as rigid as it used to be, because you could get somebody to talk about it. I think I made that reference in connection with the Whitewater.

[00:41:19] KM: You do.

[00:41:20] ED: Reporting and actually before that in the end. I think the critical part of that book and the reason I think most important part of the book starts with 1978 is an election in 1978. That's the year that Bill Clinton was elected governor but there was all simultaneously – There was a Senate election, where David Pryor gets elected to the Senate to succeed John L. McClellan, who had died. There were three candidates in that race. Jim Guy Tucker and David Pryor who was sitting governor, and Jim Guy was the congressman from the second district, and Ray Thorton who was a congressman from South Arkansas.

[00:41:57] KM: Who is the nephew of the Stephens.

[00:41:59] ED: And the nephew of the Stephenses.

[00:42:00] KM: Lots of money.

[00:42:01] ED: I think the critical point of the book is this family feud that started early in the 1970s, the family feud between, one, the Stephens family, Witt and Jack Stephens who were brothers. Witt had made a vast fortune in the gas business and also in financial. They had a –

[00:42:25] KM: Penny stocks or something.

[00:42:25] ED: Pennies – All of that and had an investment company. So he and his brother made vast fortune and became the most powerful men in Arkansas. They kind of ran politics for many years. They had made a young man who was also like Bill Clinton and Jim Guy Tucker, a kind of a rising star in Arkansas; good-looking, smart, good speaker, ambitious, and all about the same age as those guys. Witt Stephens made him hearty matter right out of college and then turned over the gas company to him and made him president and stepped out. Then they had a great falling out.

[00:43:05] KM: Made who the gas president?

[00:43:07] ED: Made the Sheffield Nelson the president of the gas.

[00:43:08] KM: Sheffield Nelson. That’s right.

[00:43:10] ED: President of Arkansas Louisiana Gas Company.

[00:43:11] KM: Then he turned on him.

[00:43:13] ED: Then they had a falling out. You could say both of them were kind of justified. They both had their own theories.

[00:43:19] KM: That’s an interesting –

[00:43:21] ED: Yeah. It’s a complicated thing.

[00:43:21] KM: That’s a whole interesting chapter. What was the name of that chapter?

[00:43:26] ED: I forgot what the name of the chapter was. But anyways, late in the book, which starts at ’78.

[00:43:30] KM: It’s really good. We are almost out of time. One minute. I'm getting a signal. Y’all, this book is so good. It should be mandatory reading for everybody in Arkansas. Ernie, thank you for coming on the show today.

[00:43:43] ED: Thank you. Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure.

[00:43:45] KM: Thank you for writing this book. We are forever grateful to you. Here’s your gift today, in case you don’t have one, a US and Arkansas flag for your desk. Do you have one already?

[00:43:55] ED: I do not. I do not.

[00:43:56] KM: Ain’t it amazing how many people don’t have a US and Arkansas flag on their desk?

[00:43:58] ED: Yeah. I don’t.

[00:44:00] KM: I just want to say to everybody, thanks for listening today. We hope you’ve heard or learned something that’s been inspiring or enlightening and that whatever it is, we hope that it will up your life, up your business, and up your independence,

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]

[0:53:40.30] GM: You’ve been listening to Up in Your Business with Kerry McCoy. For links to resources you heard discussed on today’s show, go to flagandbanner.com, select radio, and choose today's guest. All interviews are recorded and posted the following week. Subscribe to podcasts wherever you like to listen. Kerry’s goal is simple, to help you live the American dream.

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