Years of pent-up ambitions were being unleashedOn...
Years of pent-up ambitions were being unleashedOn the Democratic side, Jim Guy Tucker, Attorney General Steve Clark, and Rockefeller Foundation president Tom McRae, whose grandfather had been governor, all announced they would runThey were all friends of mine, and had good ideas and progressive recordsOn the Republican side, the contest was even more interestingIt involved two formidable former Democrats: Congressman Tommy Robinson, who didnt like Washington, and Sheffield Nelson, former president of Arkansas-Louisiana Gas Company, who said he had switched parties because the Democratic Party had moved too far to the leftIt was the standard explanation white southerners gave, but more interesting coming from him because he had supported Senator Ted Kennedy against President Carter in 1980
Robinson and Nelson, and their backers, all onetime friends, went after one another with a vengeance, in a race full of name-calling and mudslinging, which included Robinsons charge that Nelson and Jerry Jones, a long-time friend of both men who owned some of the gas fields that supplied Arkla, were rapacious businessmen who soaked Arklas ratepayers for personal gain, and Nelsons charge that Robinson was unstable and unfit to be governorAbout all they agreed on was that I had raised taxes too much and had too little to show for white chanel bag it in terms of educational improvement and economic development
On the Democratic side, Steve Clark withdrew from the race, leaving Jim Guy Tucker and Tom McRae, who took a different approach, more clever than that of the Republicans, to discourage me from runningThey said Id done a lot of good, but I was out of new ideas and out of timeTen years as governor was long enoughI couldnt get anything done in the legislature anymore, and four more years would give me too much control over all aspects of state governmentMcRae had met with focus groups of representative voters who said they wanted to continue the direction Id set in economic development, but were open to new ideas from a new leaderI thought there was something to their argument, but I didnt believe they could get more out of our conservative anti-tax legislators than I could
Finally, still uncertain of what to do, I set a March 1 deadline to announce my decisionHillary and I hashed it over dozens of timesThere was some press speculation that she would run if I didntWhen asked about it, I said shed be a great governor but I didnt know if she would runWhen I discussed it with her, Hillary said shed cross that bridge if I decided not to run, but what she might do should be no part of my decisionShe knew, before I did, that I wasnt ready to hang it chanel ceramic watches up
In the end I couldnt bear the thought of walking away from a decade of hard work, with my last year marked by repeated failures to fund further improvements in educationI never was one for quitting, and whenever I was tempted, something always happened to give me heartIn the mid-eighties, when our economy was in the tank, I was about to land a new industry for a county where one in four people was unemployedAt the last minute, Nebraska offered the company an extra million dollars and I lost the dealI was crushed and felt I had failed the whole countyWhen Lynda Dixon, my secretary, saw me slumped in my chair with my head in my hands, she tore off the daily scripture reading from the devotional calendar she kept on her deskThe verse was Galatians 6:9: Let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart
On February 11, I witnessed the ultimate testimonial to the power of perseveranceEarly that Sunday morning, Hillary and I got Chelsea up and took her down to the kitchen of the Governors Mansion to see what we told her would be one of the most important events shed ever witnessThen we turned on the television and watched Nelson Mandela take the last steps in his long walk to freedomThrough twenty-seven years of imprisonment and abuse, Mandela had endured, and triumphed, to tiffany toggle necklace end apartheid, liberate his own mind and heart from hatred, and inspire the world
At the March 1 press conference, I said I would run for a fifth term, although the fire of an election no longer burns in me, because I wanted another chance to finish the job of improving education and modernizing the economy, and because I thought I could do a better job of it than the other candidatesI also promised to keep bringing new people into state government and to bend over backward to avoid abuse of power
Looking back on it, I can see how the statement looked ambivalent and a touch arrogant, but it was an honest expression of how I felt, as I began the first campaign since 1982 that I could have lostI got a break soon afterward, when Jim Guy Tucker decided to withdraw from the race and run for lieutenant governor instead, saying a divisive primary would only increase the chances of a Republican victory in the fall, no matter who wonJim Guy had made a judgment that he could win the lieutenant governors race easily, then become governor in four yearsHe was almost certainly right, and I was relieved
Still, I couldnt take the primary for grantedMcRae was waging a vigorous campaign and had a lot of friends and admirers around the state from his years of good work at the Rockefeller FoundationWhen he made his formal mulberry bags announcement, he had a broom in his hand and said he wanted to make a clean sweep of state government, clearing out old ideas and career politiciansThe broom tactic had worked for my neighbor David Boren when he ran for governor of Oklahoma in 1974I was determined that it wouldnt work this timeGloria Cabe agreed to manage the campaign, and she put together an effective organizationMaurice Smith raised the moneyAnd I followed a simple strategy: to outwork my opponents, do my job, and continue to preach new ideas, including college scholarships for all high school students with a B average or better
