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Biggest in Arkansas in 2005 Thursday, Dec 29, 2005 By John Brummett These are the top six developments in politics and government in Arkansas in 2005. One man's opinion, anyway. 1. In the struggle of Good Mike and Bad Mike, the public Jekyll-Hyde drama that has dominated Arkansas public life for a decade, Good Mike edged Bad Mike by a whisker. Good Gov. Mike Huckabee, defining leadership, took active personal control of the Hurricane Katrina response in Arkansas, and it went very well, save a little whining by the occasional county judge more beholden to the crutch of procedure than reactive competence. Good Mike completed two marathons, showing uncommon discipline. Good Mike parlayed this inspiring comeback in personal health and fitness into credible advocacy for good health initiatives in an especially unhealthy state in an especially unhealthy country at an especially unhealthy time. Good Mike ascended to the chairmanship of the National Governors Association and angled with mild credibility and limited success for a run at the Republican presidential nomination. Bad Mike was huffy and petulant and too big for his britches. Bad Mike flew too much on the State Police plane and demonstrated arrogance, tone-deafness and ham-handedness in his failed advocacy of two giant bond issues. 2. The state's Democrats and business establishment united to ante up nearly $2 million for Attorney General Mike Beebe's odds-on run for governor next year. Democrats crave a return to gubernatorial patronage. The business establishment has long liked Beebe. Republicans were driven to distraction that a Democrat could corner the business community, and alleged special interest coziness. It's a fair charge. Beebe is too close to big energy and big poultry. But Republicans aren't the ones to make it, especially with a presumptive gubernatorial nominee falling over himself to cash in on his service as a high-up in the federal Department of Homeland Security. 3. Clearly the biggest personal story, Lt. Gov. Win Paul Rockefeller's announcement that he had been diagnosed with a blood and bone disorder and would be forced to leave the Republican gubernatorial primary ranks only the third biggest political development because, most likely, the state's Republicans wouldn't have had enough sense to nominate him instead of Asa Hutchinson, the aforementioned of the cashing in. 4. U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor was among the two or three moderate senators most responsible for the formation of the Gang of 14, a bipartisan group that headed off a nuclear meltdown in the Senate over filibustered judgeship nominations and drastic changes in Senate rules and traditions. That the solution may well implode over Samuel Alito's nomination does not change the fact that Pryor made his pragmatic centrism work, at least for a few months, on something as essential as U.S. Senate functioning. 5. The 600,000 customers of Entergy in Arkansas, and some of those of local wholesalers, will see their rates rise markedly because Entergy is a multistate company and electricity moves across state lines in the punch of a keyboard. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has said Arkansas customers must share Louisiana customers' costs - costs that are higher down there because they use natural gas and we have nuclear. That's life. It also largely renders moot any state regulation of utility rates. 6. The Arkansas Supreme Court reopened the Lake View case and told the governor and legislators that it is serious that money for public schools must come first. It's a tiresome exercise, yes. But it is significant if it indeed means that the Legislature will henceforth take the judicial command more seriously. Then, if that lawsuit should prevail alleging the biennial slopping of pork from the General Improvement Fund to be unconstitutional local legislation, we might actually see progress toward strategic and responsible use of public money. Honorable mention: Vic Snyder's expecting. Well, his preacher bride is. ------- John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699. |
