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Saga of Mike and Nick Tuesday, Oct 31, 2006 By John Brummett Now that Republican attacks have brought it up, the story of Mike Beebe and Nick Wilson bears telling. It was in the late 1980s when Wilson's shadiness as a state senator became widely evident. The late and lamented Arkansas Gazette reported that Wilson had somehow managed in the waning hours of a legislative session to slip an unnoticed rider to an appropriations bill. All it did was raise insurance fees to construct a new state agency office building. You're wondering how such a thing could happen. You probably haven't experienced the mad last hours of an Arkansas legislative session. You probably never saw firsthand Wilson's sly resourcefulness or observed the allegiance he smartly extracted from some colleagues and legislative staff members. The governor, Bill Clinton, had little choice but to sign the bill. The session had adjourned by the time the measure got to his office. He couldn't very well leave an agency without an appropriation. Legislators managed in a special session to undo the scandal. It was tense. Some senators were under Wilson's wing and others feared his penchant for revenge. Afterward, he stood in the Senate and announced that he had a long memory. Two senators were the most openly outraged. They were Stan Russ of Conway and Jay Bradford of Pine Bluff. These were the moral voices. But it was neither Bradford nor Russ, but the young trial lawyer from Searcy, Mike Beebe, who commanded the floor procedure. Wilson was always dismissive of Bradford and Russ. He thought they weren't effective enough by themselves to bother him. Those he disdained were Beebe and senators whom Beebe brought under his own wing to form a countering and eventually controlling clique - people like David Malone, Bill Gwatney, Lu Hardin and Wilson's own reformed protege, Morril Harriman. When Mike Huckabee alleges that Beebe contested Wilson on what amounted only to a power struggle, not a moral one, he may be right. But you'd have to be inside Beebe's mind and heart to know. Huckabee's observation is rendered dubious or perhaps moot by the fact that Beebe used his power not to enrich himself, but to be a problem-solver, a fixer. It's laughable for Huckabee to say that Beebe's election would represent a return to "insiders." Huckabee has insiders, too. How could a person govern without bringing trusted people close? No lone mortal is all things good and right. Different strengths and styles must be meshed into a team. Yes, Russ and Bradford were moral exemplars. But Russ ran twice for Congress and lost. Bradford ran once for Congress and lost. Now Beebe is the one who leads the polls for the governorship. What does this portend for a Beebe governorship? It indicates that he would be effective. It suggests that someone might need to inject him with a little nerve now and then. But nerve is wasted when not combined with effectiveness. Huckabee showed a lot of nerve proposing massive consolidation. How did that turn out? It is true that Beebe and the entire Democratic Legislature went along in 1997 when Wilson declared that the presence of a green Republican governor offered the opening for legislators to wrest control of half the General Improvement Fund. But that wasn't a corrupt thing; it was a partisan thing about check-passing pictures on front pages back home. It also is true that Beebe was passive when a few senators - Wilson not among them at the time - advocated a pilot program providing lawyers for children in custody cases. But the bill ran the particulars through an agency that one had every reason to trust - the administrative office of the Supreme Court. The scandal was that Wilson and pals then pressured that office and ran off with the money. Beebe is entitled to say he was Wilson's chief nemesis. Huckabee is entitled to allege what he can't prove, which is that Beebe was motivated only by power. What should be dismissed out of hand is this Republican smear essentially calling Beebe an accomplice in a rival's criminality. ------- 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. |
