It's Bush v Clinton again as Arkansas goes to the polls

The Sunday Telegraph ^ | November 3, 2002 | Julian Coman

[MadIvan]

Arkansas residents will today and tomorrow witness what the rest of the country never got a chance to see: a political contest between George Bush Jr and Bill Clinton.

On the stump at Ouachita Baptist University, deep in rural Arkansas, the Republican senator Tim Hutchinson is standing in front of a cardboard cut-out of the President of the United States.

"I have a personal relationship with George W. Bush," he tells an audience of 300 students. "He is a good friend of mine. And President Bush will be here on Monday to push us over the finish line in the closest and most important Senate race in America."

Sixty miles away in Little Rock, the capital of Arkansas, the local Democratic Party chairman, Ron Oliver, is also preparing for a distinguished visitor - one whose credentials are more local if not quite as current.

"Mr Clinton will arrive back here on Sunday," said Mr Oliver, whose office walls are lined with photographs of the former president in his youthful days as governor of the state. "We will have the help of the best political campaigner of the previous century, back on his own patch, to give us the edge and get the vote out."

Control of the Senate is in the balance in Tuesday's congressional elections, with each party currently holding 49 seats, one seat vacant and one held by an independent.

Arkansas, the small southern state best known for its catfish suppers and the escapades of Bill Clinton, has once again taken political centre-stage.

The Senate race between Mr Hutchinson and the Democrat hopeful, Mark Pryor, is too close to call. The prize, amid the most tense congressional elections in recent memory, is valuable enough to have attracted the biggest names that the Republican and Democratic party machines can offer.

Anticipating the loss of at least one seat to a Republican in a handful of tight Mid-West contests, Democrats believe that they require a "flip result" of their own in the south to maintain control. Arkansas, which became a Republican Senate seat for the first time since the Civil War at the last elections, is the top target.

President Bush will speak at the Republican stronghold of Fayetteville tomorrow afternoon, on the eve of the national poll. Ex-president Clinton will speak today to the black Democratic heartland of Jefferson County. No other state can match that line-up.

In Little Rock, Mr Clinton's power base when governor of Arkansas and presidential candidate, it is quite like old times. Doe's Steakhouse is again full of politicians, strategists and hangers-on.

Waitresses at the Plaza Grille restaurant wistfully remember the times when tips were good and the gossip was even better. "It was never a dull moment with Bill Clinton," said one.

Pardon me whilst I'm sick in the corner - Ivan

In a race defined by who the two candidates know rather than what they say, the Republicans countered the Clinton factor with an extraordinary array of star appearances last week. Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, toured the state yesterday.

Charlton Heston, known locally as "Moses" after his most famous film role, spoke on the same platform as the Republican candidate the day before. Oliver North also made the trip to Little Rock.

The two candidates have meanwhile made a spirited attempt to keep a grip on their campaigns. Mr Hutchinson accused his opponent of favouring tighter legislation on gun ownership, a certain vote-loser in Arkansas. Mr Pryor responded by appearing in a television spot wearing military fatigues and brandishing a rifle.

Democrat campaigners have gleefully accused Mr Hutchinson, who is closely associated with the religious Right, of lax moral standards following his divorce and subsequent remarriage to a member of his Senate staff. To ram the point home, Mr Pryor appears on the hustings with a Bible. The poll ratings remain stubbornly even.

Among young Republicans at Ouachita Baptist University, there was a distinct air of apprehension. "Clinton is an operator and a pretty unscrupulous one at that," said Stuart Jones, the chairman of the university Republican group.

As he spoke, a student removed the cardboard cut-out of Mr Bush. With a fraught Senate campaign reaching its final stages, Mr Hutchinson will be relieved to see the President in the flesh tomorrow.

[KingKongCobra]

I'll just say "stupid is as stupid does". Then, I'm out of here.

[Cold Heat]

He is a lying sack of crap! That is for sure!

[kcvl]

Why not give poor kids in Arkansas the same kind of opportunity that Mark Pryor’s own children have? He sends his kids to private schools, doesn’t he?

General Pryor explains that he’s not against private schools, he’s just against using public money to send kids to them. That is, he believes that everyone, rich and poor alike, should be free to pay the same impressive tuition the Pryors do.

[Spyder]

I wouldn't put anything past the Clintons for putting out this CRAP!

Amen! Look at the lies the Democrats have spread everywhere to try to depress the Christian radical right. They've try to label the Republican candidate as gay in several states and I wouldn't put it past them at all to make a much bigger deal of Hutchinson's "affair/second marriage" than it really was. Amazing how the party that tends to be so immoral in the first place gets off on impugning that lack of morality to others.

[Irish Eyes]

My thoughts exactly. I can not beleive that he is asking Clinton for help. I suppose that Clinton is going to say how terrible Tim Huthinsons' divorce was and I am sure he will be carring a huge bible.

[Cold Heat]

They've try to label the Republican candidate as gay in several states and I wouldn't put it past them at all to make a much bigger deal of Hutchinson's "affair/second marriage

They have been working this angle on Hutch since before the campaining started. The religious community sucked up the BS as expected. They have been duped in the same way they have been for centuries.

They will never learn that this is the way the left destroys it's competition.

[kcvl]

Pryor believes in a woman's right to choose it in cases of rape, incestor to save the life of the mother.(That sounds like standard exceptions cited by some pro-lifers. So I ask for clarification.)Massanelli says Pryor does not necessarily believe in a woman'sright to choose abortion otherwise, meaning on demand, but would not support a law or constitutional amendment to restrict that right. Nor would he support a constitutional amendment on either side of the debate.

Meanwhile, Pryor opposes so-called partial-birth abortion as well as federal funding of abortions. "I am personally opposed, "Pryor said on the voice mail. "On any issue that comes along,I will analyze, read, study and evaluate. "Let me try, then, to summarize.

Put down Mark Pryor as pro-choice. Just don't put him down as a senator you'd want casting the tie-breaking vote.

JOHN BRUMMETT IS A COLUMNISTAND REPORTER FOR STEPHENSMEDIA GROUPIN LITTLE ROCK.

[sweetliberty]

" he believes that everyone, rich and poor alike, should be free to pay the same impressive tuition the Pryors do."

Pryor gives me the creeps. Just looking at him it is evident that he is not what he puts himself out there as being. He has shifty, dishonest eyes. And I consider myself to be a fairly good judge of character.

[olliemb]

Oh Well, I tried to leave, but I am back.

Abortion kills--end of life, no more, that's it.

Divorce doesn't kill, lives continue

You got to separate consequences and forgiveness. Forgivebess is always there, but yes, in the judicial system there are consequences. For example, if that TV of yours is stolen, yes, even if the TV is returned, the justice system demands punishment, retribution. But you wouln't forgive the person who took and returned your TV if they asked for your forgiveness?

I can't say what God does because I am not God. But the bible speaks of his mercy and his love for us.Do not killers sentenced to death, ask for forgiveness and i have no doubt that God forgives those who sincerely (only God knows what is in their hearts) ask for forgiveness. But justice system still exacts its punishment.

Yes, God forgives all of our sins if we ask for his forgivenss. Only God know if we are sincere. Not you nor me. But God also wants us to show his love to the world b/c that is the greatest commandment of God to us. Do you really think that God wishes us to allow abortions and not do anything for the lowest or the loneliest of his people? Do you really think that God is more concerned about Sen Hutchinson's divorce (how many senators have divorced their spouses)or the deaths of the innocents? You have yet to answer that question.

ARe you more worked up about a divorce or abortion and conservative judges and allowing God in our lives? Please answer this question.

[kcvl]

Mark Pryor supports a one-size-fits-all nationalized health care system that puts cost-cutting over people and where citizens must pay from 40 to 60 percent income tax rates to cover the costs,”

[Cold Heat]

but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to deter it by establishing consequences (for me, the consequence would be a vote AGAINST the lout)

I doubt that Jesus would be a decent candidate after the Rats got done screwing up his character. Anyone who lives can be abused in this way.

Get over yourself! It is not your job to lower the divorce stats by screwing the country for six years.

[churchillbuff]

ARe you more worked up about a divorce or abortion and conservative judges and allowing God in our lives? Please answer this question.

I don't think it's either-or. I want the GOP to retake the Senate - so we can get conservative judges, and Roe can be scaled back or reversed). But I want that to happen without Hutchinson, because there need to be consequences for dumping one's wife - not because I can't forgive him (or God won't forgive him) but because a culture that sanctions the dumping of wives is a diseased culture asking for all kinds of social problems (and the dumped women deserve some consideration as well).

[kcvl]

Mark Pryor’s own contributions to civil rights as attorney general of Arkansas, his latest has been to seriously argue that the state has a right to brand homosexuals as criminals. If you think that’s barbaric, Arkansas’ Supreme Court didn’t buy Mark Pryor’s argument, either, which speaks well not only of its grasp of the Constitution but its simple human decency.

Attorney General Pryor then accused his opponent of letting state employees choose to honor Robert E. Lee-yes, Robert E. Lee-as well as Martin Luther King Jr. It seems that the Legislature chose to set aside a holiday for both leaders, combining the best of the Southern heritage, black and white. It was a rare, solomonic decision by that body. Naturally Mark Pryor objects to it. Yet we will never be truly conciliated until we all share the same heroes.

Mark Pryor, who’s never been exactly a Deep Thinker, cannot have thought this thing through. As the Hutchinson people were quick to point out, the bill setting aside that joint holiday passed the Arkansas House 68 to 1, and it was sponsored by none other than the late Henry Wilkins of Pine Bluff and UAPB. Would Mark Pryor brand Henry Wilkins an opponent of civil rights, too? We can just imagine Representative Wilkins’ sharp, abrupt laugh in response, for he was a man always wryly bemused by the cheap ironies of politics.

Consider this a Distant Early Warning to a charming fellow when he isn’t playing politics or law: If Mark Pryor doesn’t start thinking about what he says-instead of just repeating his staff’s briefs and argumentshis whole campaign, not to say career, could amount to another one of those cheap ironies.

August 6, 2002
Source: Arkansas Democrat Gazette
By: Editorial Board

[churchillbuff]

It is not your job to lower the divorce stats by screwing the country for six years.

I'm a Teddy Roosevelt Republican on this one. As I wrote earlier, he said adultery and wife-dumping was loathesome, unmanly behavior that hurt not just the family but all of society. It's my right to vote against somebody in high office who does it, and I suspect there will be a number of conservative voters in Arkansas who will vote this way.

[Lauratealeaf]

Does anyone remember Mark Pryor's mother, David Pryor's wife? I was just a kid and can't remember when this occurred but sometime while Pryor Sr. was governor of Arkansas his wife ran off and got herself an afro haircut and then stayed separated from Pryor for quite a while because she said she had to "find herself". I wonder if she ever did. I figured that her nuttiness or infidelity is probably the reason that Pryor didn't ever run for higher office.

[kcvl]

Pryor's new campaign press secretary had been "sent down" by Daschle, the Democrat corrected me. I was advised that the new press secretary only so happens to have recently toiled for Daschle, and that he hails not from Washington so much as South Dakota.

This strategy is to defy party altogether and play instead to the unique and cursed independence of the Arkansas voting spirit, which was never so much one-party as no-party. And it is to ride the legacy of Dad, to turn an appearance of personal ease and an absence of pretension - a kind of unpolitics in an age defined by cynicism about politics - into a bit of a dynasty.

Dad could be an intensely partisan animal in private. In Washington he became an intimate of rich, powerful and interesting people. But to Arkansans he was always pure "aw shucks." He once answered a questionnaire of his favorite things by listing Arkansas products in every category.

Mark is playing to win. If that means risking ridicule for playing the dad card early, so be it. How many times can Marty Ryall, the state Republican executive director, say that Mark would be working for Taco Bell if his last name wasn't Pryor?

[Cold Heat]

because there need to be consequences for dumping one's wife - not because I can't forgive him

You make the argument that a woman should not vote convincing.

If I were you I would save this thread and attempt to justify your comments later.

They are quite vain.

[kcvl]

Source: Arkansas Democrat Gazette
October 31, 2002


SO YOU thought the race issue was dead in this newest of New Souths. Not in this year’s race for the U.S. Senate, it ain’t. Just listen to the commercials for Mark Pryor on radio stations aimed at black voters. “If Hutchinson had his way,” one says, “189,000 Arkansas children could go hungry.”

A similar contribution to the public discourse and lowering thereof is sponsored by the Democratic Party, which is no stranger historically to rousing racial passions in these lattiudes. This commercial says Tim Hutchinson “made a career in Washington of threatening the education and economic future of black children in Arkansas.”

What, didn’t the senior senator ever hurl a little old black lady in a wheelchair down a long flight of stairs, Richard Widmark style? That’s about the only claim Mark Pryor and his friends aren’t making about the sorry so-and-so they’re trying to run out of the U.S. Senate so their knight in shining armor can take his place. You may remember him, the nice young man who said he was going to wage a clean campaign.

Both commercials have a shaky basis: A couple of isolated votes Tim Hutchinson cast before he was a U.S. senator-the kind that can be found in any politician’s record and grotesquely exaggerated. Naturally both commercials ignore Tim Hutchinson’s voting to increase funding for school lunches by a total of some $1.6 billion since he’s been in the Senate, and his supporting some $20 billion in increases for education over the years-regardless of race. No need to go into those details; they wouldn’t fit the senator’s image as a monster this Halloween.

Mark Pryor’s campaign may not have reached the scuzzy level of our freelance essayist Gene Lyons’ highly personal attack in yesterday’s paper on Randi Hutchinson’s looks, morality, and general existence in Arkansas-but the Pryor people are getting there. In airing these commercials, they aren’t just playing the race card but a whole, dealer’s hand of them.

Somehow we knew this was coming from the moment Mark Pryor promised to run a positive campaign. Every election is a test of character; it reveals how much simple, human decency each candidate is willing to sacrifice in order to win. Mark, you may win this election, but the cost isn’t worth it. And we’re not talking about the cost in dollars.

[mountainfolk]

Just curious---how many other divorced persons running for elective office have you staked out for defeat? Looks like you got called on the little kiddo line. That takes the steam out of the abandonment thing. Two adults with grown children divorce. One remarries and the other goes to DC with a really good job. This bothers you big time. Wonder why? Tim Hutchinson is a good man and a great senator who has done more for Arkansas than Clinton did the whole time he was in office. You really, really, don't know what you are talking about. I truly hope your life is not as downhill as your posts on Hutchinson suggest. Peace.

[kcvl]

Meanwhile, five people — including GOP Gov. Mike Huckabee’s daughter — sued the state over a judge’s ruling that bans nearly 1,000 college students from voting next week.