| I put out a response ad comparing Nelsons claim to what I had really said and told the voters that if they couldnt trust Nelson not to mislead them in the campaign, they couldnt trust him to be governorA couple of days later, I was reelected, 57 to 43 percent
The victory was sweet in many waysThe people had decided to let me serve fourteen years, longer than any other Arkansas governor in historyAnd for the first time, I had carried Sebastian County, which was then still the most hard-core Republican big county in the stateIn a campaign appearance in Fort Smith, I had promised that if I did win there, Hillary and I would dance down Garrison Avenue, the towns main streetA couple of nights after the election, along with a few hundred supporters, we kept our commitmentIt was cold and raining, but we danced away and enjoyed every minute of itWe had waited sixteen years for a general-election win there
The only really dark moment of the general election was purely personalIn August, Mothers doctor discovered a lump in her right breastForty-eight hours later, while Dick, Roger, and I waited in the hospital, Mother had the lump removedAfter the procedure, she was her usual chipper self and was back at work on the campaign in no time, though she faced months of chemotherapyThe cancer had aleady spread to twenty-seven nodes in her arm, but she didnt tell anyone thisincluding meIn fact, mens cartier watch she never told us how bad it was until 1993
In December, I resumed my work for the Democratic Leadership Council, launching the Texas DLC chapter in AustinIn my speech, I argued that, contrary to our liberal critics, we were good DemocratsWe believed in keeping the American dream alive for all peopleWe believed in government, though not in the status quoAnd we believed government was spending too much on yesterday and todayinterest on debt, defense, more money for the same health careand too little on tomorrow: education, the environment, research and development, the infrastructureI said the DLC stood for a modern, mainstream agenda: the expansion of opportunity, not bureaucracy; choice in public schools and child care; responsibility and empowerment for poor people; and reinventing government, away from the top-down bureaucracy of the industrial era, to a leaner, more flexible, more innovative model appropriate for the modern global economy
I was trying to develop a national message for the Democrats, and the effort fueled speculation that I might enter the presidential race in 1992During the recent campaign, I had said on more than one occasion that I would serve out my term if electedThats what I thought I would doI was excited about the coming legislative sessionThough I strongly disagreed with many of his decisions, like killing the Brady bill and vetoing the Family and best fake tiffany and co Medical Leave Act, I liked President Bush and had a good relationship with the White HouseAlso, a campaign to defeat him looked hopelessSaddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait, and the United States was beginning its buildup for the Gulf War, which in two months would drive the Presidents approval ratings into the stratosphere
On the morning of January 15, 1991, with ten-year-old Chelsea holding the Bible for me, I took the oath of office in Little Rock for the last timeFollowing the custom, I delivered my informal address in the crowded chamber of the House of Representatives, then, at noon, made a more formal address at the public ceremony, which was held in the Capitol rotunda because of inclement weatherThe new legislature had more women and blacks than everThe Speaker of the House, John Lipton, and the president pro tempore of the Senate, Jerry Bookout, were progressives and strong supporters of mineJim Guy Tucker was lieutenant governor, probably the ablest person ever to hold the job, and we were working together, rather than at cross-purposes, for the first time in years
I dedicated my inaugural address to the men and women from Ar-kansas serving in the Persian Gulf, and noted that it was appropriate that we were making a new beginning on Martin Luther King Jr birthday, because we must go forward into the future together or we will all be limited in what we achieveThen I outlined gucci bag the most ambitious program I had ever proposed, in education, health care, highways, and the environment
In education, I proposed a big increase in adult literacy and training programs; apprenticeships for non-college-bound youths; college scholarships for all middle-class and low-income kids who took the required courses, made a B average, and stayed off drugs; preschool programs for poor kids; a new residential high school for math and science students; conversion of fourteen vo-tech schools into two-year colleges; and a $4,000 raise for teachers over two yearsI asked the legislature to raise the sales tax half a cent and the corporate income tax half a percent to pay for them
There were also several reform measures in my package, including health insurance for pregnant women and for children; the removal of more than 250,000 taxpayers, more than 25 percent of the total, from the state income tax rolls; and an income tax credit to offset the sales-tax increase for up to 75 percent of the taxpayers
And for the next sixty-eight days, I worked to pass the program, bringing legislators to my office; going to their committee hearings to argue personally for bills; cornering them in the halls, at nighttime events, or early in the morning at the Capitol cafeteria; hanging around with them outside the chambers or in the cloakrooms; calling them late at night; and bringing opposing louis vuitton galliera pm bag legislators and their allied lobbyists together to hammer out compromisesBy the end of the session, virtually my entire program had passedThe tax proposals received between 76 and 100 percent of the vote in both houses, including the votes of a majority of Republican lawmakers
Ernest Dumas, one of the states most distinguished and astute columnists, said, For education, it was one of the best legislative sessions in the states history, arguably the bestDumas noted that we also passed the largest highway program ever; greatly expanded health care for poor families; improved the environment by passing proposals for solid-waste recycling and reduction and for weakening the hand of polluting industries at the states pollution control agency; and spurned a few religious zealots by providing school health clinics in poor communities
The legislature had its biggest fight over the school health clinicsI favored allowing the clinics to distribute condoms if the local school board approvedThe more conservative House was devoutly anti-condomFinally the legislature adopted a compromise offered by Representative Mark Pryor, who in 2002 became Arkansas junior Usenator: no state money could be used to buy condoms, but if bought with other funds, they could be distributedBob Lancaster, a witty columnist for the Arkansas Gazette, wrote a hilarious article chronicling the struggle of the condom pleated miu miu handbag Congre |