An admirer of Frank Scott Jr. wanted me to know that the Little Rock mayoral candidate has tapped into old Republican money for fund-raising help. Which brings up more than one historical political connection.

Rockefeller is the widow of Lt. Gov. Win Rockefeller and a frequent supporter of Republican causes, in keeping with the wealthy Arkansas family’s tradition begun by Winthrop Rockefeller, the two-term Republican governor.

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I’m sure Scott wouldn’t mind the benefit of a pleasant association in Republican heads, given the absence of a declared Republican in the mayoral race., which is nonpartisan. Scott, a Beebe Highway Commission appointee, declares himself a Democrat. Opponent Warwick Sabin, a Democratic state representative himself put together a West Little Rock fund-raiser backed by a host of familiar Republican names. Vincent Tolliver is also a Democrat.

There’s another angle here. Mayoral candidate Baker Kurrus was once a key business aide in Lt. Gov. Rockefeller’s automotive and other enterprises. Kurrus left the family business shortly after Rockefeller’s death when his widow assumed control of family affairs.

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There’s also this in the noteworthy bedfellows department. Earlier this year, Lisenne Rockefeller hosted a fund-raiser for successful Republican state Senate candidate Mark Johnson. Mark Johnson is the son of Justice Jim Johnson, whose 1966 gubernatorial campaign as a Dixiecrat against her father-in-law was an ugly affair. Johnson called Rockefeller a “Madison Avenue cowboy” and a “prissy sissy.” Johnson was a strident segregationist. Rockefeller reached out to black voters, who proved important in his victory.

That was then, of course But lest you think Mark Johnson fell a great distance from the family tree he spoke in favor of equal recognition of Robert E. Lee and Martin Luther King Jr. in state holiday observances.

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