Stomping ground minefield
Beebe's influence in senate wanes
Last updated Monday, December 4, 2006 5:10 PM CST in Columns
By John Brummett
The Morning News
The essence of Mike Beebe's candidacy was that we'd enjoy efficient government if the state's leading legislator for two decades got installed in the governor's office.
After Mike Huckabee, insiders longed for an engaged chief executive.
Huckabee's style was to stake out rhetorically strong positions, often morally simplistic ones, then step back from the legislative process.
He took credit when the Legislature obliged his rhetoric. He washed his hands and pointed fingers when it didn't.
That might have been the best way a Republican could deal with a Legislature more than 80 percent Democratic.
If he'd ever trusted legislators, Huckabee surely stopped after his first legislative session in 1997. That's when Democrats wrested the General Improvement Fund, which is the interest-earning capital project account, from a governor's control that had always been fine when the governor was a Democrat. Legislators chose to deliver pork barrel in their own names back home.
A decade later, the GIF issue contributes heavily to another in a growing list of ironies: As the governor spawned from the Legislature, Beebe confronts a deep and bitter chasm in the very body he once ran, the state Senate.
He's been gone nearly four years. Insurgent senators who never knew him or who knew him and rather resent him have taken control from his fading clique. They've done it by the lure and leverage of uncommon GIF riches emanating from the $800 million surplus.
Beebe wants to cut the grocery tax and spend the GIF mostly on statewide needs. He has the general alliance of the more responsible, hardworking and better-intended members of the Senate, people like Jim Argue of Little Rock, Dave Bisbee of Rogers, Shane Broadway of Bryant and Steve Bryles of Blytheville.
The insurgents are, among others, Bob Johnson of Bigelow, Steve Faris of Malvern, Terry Smith of Hot Springs, Randy Laverty of Jasper, Irma Hunter Brown of Little Rock, Tracy Steele of North Little Rock, Gilbert Baker of Conway and Shawn Womack of Mountain Home. And, oh, yes, there's Jack Critcher of Batesville, installed as president pro tem.
They call themselves the Brotherhood and their aim is provincial. They tend to be as detached as Huckabee from the hard detail of public policy. They spend their time, energy and wiles maneuvering to run the Senate and lining up at the GIF trough for equal and robust shares for their full local discretion.
They believe they were slighted by Beebe and his pals in the past. It's uncomfortably personal. Two years ago, Brotherhood member Faris was awaiting Broadway's arrival to provide a committee quorum. He asked me if there was a television camera crew in the Capitol. That, he said, was where Broadway would be.
This Brotherhood is an odd but mutually back-scratching coalition comprising rural Democrats, urban African-Americans and all the Senate Republicans except the best, Bisbee.
If the Brotherhood has any altruistic motivation, it's that members may honestly believe that their way is fair. They also may honestly believe their local legislative districts deserve an equal distribution of money.
Some of them will tell you that their constituents prefer a community center, fire equipment or improved sidewalks to a break on their sales taxes at the grocery store.
They're wrong about any wisdom or justice in an equal distribution for local pork. State capital needs do not fall equally around the state. But, if the Brotherhood senators are wrong about what their constituents prefer, only their constituents can tell them.
Beebe must resist the urge even to get involved. He's governor now, and the Legislature is a separate and independent branch that he must confront as it is.
Anyway, he doesn't have the votes. His old pals number 14. The Brotherhood stands at 21.
Actually, 14 would be enough to block appropriations, a matter about which you may hear more in March and April.
For now, simply be aware that Beebe's old stomping ground is, for him, a minefield.
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.
About this columnist
John Brummett has been writing about Arkansas and national politics for three decades and as a regular columnist since 1986. Email Brummett at jbrummett@arkansasnews.com.
Click here to read his blog.
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wlr wrote on Dec 5, 2006 7:17 AM:
Not already registered?
John wrote on Dec 5, 2006 5:52 AM: