Let?s Keep Our Heads Up (Editorial)

Now we know how the Oakland Raiders felt in the last quarter of the Super Bowl. The outcome of the competition to land the new Toyota truck plant had been clear for weeks, but Arkansas had to keep trying just because the time clock hadn’t officially run out.

So San Antonio, deep in the heart of the biggest pickup truck market in the world, will be getting an $800 million plant and a couple of thousand good-paying jobs. And Marion, that suburb of West Memphis that had been the other site left in the race, won’t be. At least not this time.

State economic development officials are disappointed, and we are too — if we had our druthers, we’d druther have landed the Toyota plant than see it go to Texas. But let’s consider the positives:

Like the Raiders, Marion may actually have had the better statistics going into the big game. And, despite this defeat, Marion — with its easy access to two interstate highways, a navigable waterway, an international airport and a metropolitan area work force — remains a force to be reckoned with for other similar manufacturing “superprojects.”

While not exactly a “moral victory,” Arkansas has shown that, when we get a mind to go after something, we actually have a fighting chance to succeed. Any team can lose to any other team under the wrong circumstances, and the fact that Toyota will be able to advertise Texas-made trucks to Texas-sized truck buyers may have been too much to overcome. Talk about home-field advantage.

Still, Marion’s fundamentals are formidable, and it will win the next time or maybe the time after that.

Arkansas’ chances of luring in an economic development superproject will be greatly enhanced if Gov. Mike Huckabee is successful in creating a new, well-funded pool of economic development incentives.

We long ago abandoned the idealistic hope that companies would stop demanding that government subsidize the opportunity to make a profit.

Now, we just hope the governor has enough money and the leeway to make deals with companies that bring the right kind of jobs, rather than simply those that bring enough jobs, no matter how low-paying.