Arkansas Blog

Brummett figures he'll go negative directly.

My great grandmother used "directly" like this (pronounced drekley). She was born in an Ozark log cabin in 1878. Don't hear drekley much anymore.

Dragging up the Nick Wilson days at this point will be useless to them, much like them pointing fingers at Clinton so long after the act. They better find something more recent to rant about.

Besides, Beebe was a well-known thorn in Wilson's side, almost as thorny as Bookout.

Brummett is right - desperate times, and these are very desprate times for Hutchinson, may well bring the one of the nastiest negitive campaigns this states seen. The stakes are high, the once vaulted "Hutchinson" name has been tarnished by both Tim's. Double standardards and all.

I've seen one grainy and feel good commercial for Hutchinson, and I wondered what are we doing?

We are saving the dough to go "personal" against Beebe. Frankly, Hutchinson has no choice, and in this state - it's a gamble - folks don't like the politics of personal destruction expecially a guy that's up 14 points. If Hutchinson loses by a wide margin, the clan is gonna have to wait until the 3rd generation to make a comeback

Here's Brummett and Brantley on this subject:

Here's Max Brantley of the Arkansas Times on the pair, writing just days ago:

"But Beebe's soft spots transcend lobbyist pals. This acknowledged master of the legislative process was at his zenith when Nick Wilson and Co. pushed a felonious get-rich-quick scheme through the legislature. Beebe and his best legislative friends signed off on key elements of the smelly legal services deal and related legislation, if not the hidden fraudulent specifics."

And let's look at Brummett's column today:

"What happened was that a coterie of senators, lobbyists and lawyers close to Wilson nursed through legislation creating a pilot program providing legal representation for children in divorce custody cases. Beebe raised no opposition. The measure passed, Gov. Mike Huckabee vetoed it and the Legislature, with Beebe's vote, overrode the veto.

But another point is that Beebe, as the acknowledged legislative mastermind and leading Wilson counterbalance, could and should have been less obliging and more suspicious and vigilant."

And this is from a John Brummett column (2-21-06) analyzing Asa Hutchinson and Mike Beebe's plans for the GIF fund:

"Hutchinson comes to the debate with more reform credibility, frankly, since Beebe was in the Senate when legislators, influenced by Nick Wilson, wrested half the fund form the governor."

And let's look at what Brummett said about Mike Beebe and Nick Wilson just a few years ago... Its likely that Beebe was aware of Wilson's scheme, its an irrefutable fact that Beebe's best friend wrote the bill that created Wilson's scheme, and its also a fact that Beebe voted to keep the scheme in force after its authorizing legislation was vetoed.

John Brummett
Sept. 18, 1997

State Sen. Mike Beebe of Searcy golfed Thursday with Bill Clinton out at Chenal. Perhaps the president advised him between mulligans on how to overcome overwhelming political odds and
withstand the innuendo of scandal based on peripheral associations.

Beebe's problems are as simple as one-two-three:
1. Some Democratic legislative insiders cozy with Wilson, the official state rascal, got caught pushing through a measure they then abused to route absurdly lucrative contracts for representing children in chancery court custody cases to a pair of legislators, a lobbyist who formerly was Tucker's top aide and a former legislative staff lawyer. Beebe's best pal, Sen. Morril Harriman of Van Buren, sponsored one of the bills that got abused. Another of his pals, Sen. Steve Bell of Batesville, who formerly handled Tucker's legislation, prepared the incorporation papers for two of the abusing insiders.

2. Huckabee is milking for all it's worth his innocent outsiderism against these greedy maneuvers of Democratic legislators. Huckabee can boast, and ought to boast, that he vetoed an element of the bill setting up this spectacularly abused appropriation. The Democratic Legislature overrode his veto. Beebe voted to override after Wilson urged his Senate colleagues to join him in doing so.

3. Beebe is often described as an insider's insider at the Legislature -- as, in fact, the most accomplished and effective member therein. His command of legislative detail has been extolled in this space and elsewhere, nearly universally. His choices are to plead innocent in the aforementioned shenanigans and appear less the wise, savvy, all-knowing legislator, but one oblivious to this scheme and perhaps others, or to assert his legislative competence and vitality, in which case he would need to explain his acquiescence to such a disgrace.
I can hear the Huckster now in a debate: "Senator Beebe, it says in the paper that you run the Legislature. Lord knows I don't have any influence down there. I'm just trying to get you to own up to your press clippings. And then you might be so kind as to explain to us how you and Senator Wilson and assorted former allies of Jim Guy Tucker managed to feather the nests of pals to the tune of $750,000 by abusing a program designed for kids, for kids, even after I tried to do the right thing by vetoing this outrage."

And then there's this:

John Brummett
Sep. 25, 1997

Much of this story is printed in black-and-white in records of the recent legislative session, which show that:

* The budget of the Administrative Office of the Courts was amended by Todd to add $1.5 million each year of the biennium for grants to lawyers to represent children in custody cases in four pilot projects.

* A "Joint Budget amendment," a powerful little rider cleverly credited not to an individual but to a generic group, later mandated in effect that the $3 million would be fully funded ahead of various other constitutional agencies. Sen. Nick Wilson of Pocahontas admits to knowing about the amendment, understanding it and supporting it. He can't recall if he actually was the one who proposed it at a Joint Budget meeting, but he owns up to having explained the rationale to his colleagues.

* Huckabee line-item vetoed the amendment establishing the priority funding for the Administrative Office of the Courts, saying it was bad policy.

* On the day the Legislature reassembled to override vetoes, it overrode with little notice the governor's line-item veto of the priority funding amendment for the administrative office. The effect was to protect priority funding for that $3 million from which the $750,000 flowed to legislative insiders.

Wilson told me Wednesday that without the amendment, the Finance and Administration Department could have funded only the ongoing programs of the court's administrative office and denied the children's legal aid program if money ran short.

"Hey, there was nothing secret about this program," Wilson said. "Todd's been working on it for years, bugging people about it, including me at times. I'm not saying all 135 people knew about it. But, you know, the ones you would expect to know -- they knew."
One would expect state Sen. Morril Harriman of Van Buren to know. He sponsored the revisions in the juvenile code authorizing the new program. He is co-chairman of the special language subcommittee of Joint Budget. He is widely credited with knowing darned near everything that goes on in the Legislature in hip-jointed insiderdom with his best pal, Sen. Mike Beebe of Searcy.

Maybe Clint Reed can get these folks to put an ad about Nick Wilson on TV over here in NE AR. One of the fellows mixed up in all that mess was one Wayne Wagner, whose wife Charlotte is running for a representative seat long held by Republicans. Right now I think it's a toss-up since the Republican nominee Bruce Young beat a favorite son of the local party, Doug Bush, and doesn't seem to be getting much in the way of support from the local Republican party. But with an ad like that, maybe the Republicans can keep this seat and the Democrats get what they richly deserve by running the wife of a scoundrel instead of someone with integrity.

Or is a Democrat with integrity an oxy-moron?

"The most obvious lines of attack are that Beebe is entirely too close to big-time lobbyists,.."

As opposed to BEING a big time lobbyist!

I could think of a 30 sec spot showing messicuns flowing over the border with a grinning Asa superimposed, a deep-voiced narrator explaining Asa's responsibilities and showing a truckload driving past a Welcome to Arkansas sign with 2-3 headline cutouts about NWA emergency rooms being overcrowded. That should turn NWA agin Asa real quick. Would probably work in L.R. and Hot Sprgs too.
Anyone got $40,000 to produce the adv?