The parade and banquet guest

Dear Gov. Mike Beebe:

Was pleased to hear of your planned visit to Fort Smith for the Martin Luther King Parade down Garrison Avenue. Hope you’re able to bring Arkansas’ First Lady. No offense, sir, but she adds a certain element of grace and charm to your otherwise well-polished political persona.

It would have been easier, and maybe even smarter, for you to attend the big Martin Luther King Parade there in Little Rock on Monday morning. Although that event is not a parade, we’ve been told. It’s a “Marade.” That’s a combo of a March and Parade. And maybe you’re in Fort Smith instead because a Marade sounds less fun than a Parade. A Marade, especially for those of us with a military background, sounds like work instead of fun. Also, the spellchecker wants to change Marade to Married or Marred. Unlike the folks in central Arkansas, the spellchecker does not offer an alternative to Parade.

Anyway, you’ll likely see a lot of friendly faces there at the parade, because even the conservative folks in the Fort Smith area can appreciate a good governor.

Speaking of good, it also is good of you to return Friday (Jan. 22) as the featured speaker at the Fort Smith chamber banquet. Beginning and ending your week in Fort Smith is certainly something thousands of area folks highly recommend.

As you look into the faces of folks at the parade and the chamber banquet, please know there is a growing level of belief behind the eyes and smiles that you’ve been and continue to be a good governor for this part of the state. We’ve had good reason with previous governors — Democrats AND Republicans — to not possess such belief.

What lies behind this growing appreciation? There is your support of the U.S. Marshals Museum, for starters.

There appear to be no doubts among those who recruited the national museum to Fort Smith that you were and continue to be an active supporter. And that’s the thing, sir — you’re an A-C-T-I-V-E supporter. We too often get politicians who support projects when the ribbon is being cut or the grand opening is held. But you’ve been there from Day One, with a $2 million check from your discretionary funds (taxpayer dollars, of course) to help get the effort from vision to reality. Those funds are directly responsible for the success so far in getting a building design approved, securing exhibit plans and launching the all-important fundraising effort.

It is on that fundraising effort you recently went above and beyond. Scuttlebutt is that the Dec. 18 Marshals Museum reception at the Governor’s Mansion planted the seeds for big dollars that will be harvested in the next couple of years. A few folks have said you and former President Bill Clinton “leaned heavily" but diplomatically on the about 180 folks who have the ability to write a six-figure check that won’t bounce. Let’s say that just 10% of those folks come through with at least $1 million. That’s not unreasonable. If so, you and the former President will have helped deliver $18 million to the $50 million fundraising goal.

Also, the word is that you spend many hours behind the scenes working to promote and secure funding for the museum. Those hours, according to folks in the know, reflects work of your own volition.

Another reason for the appreciation is the work of your administration — including Arkansas Economic Development Commission Director Maria Haley and her crew — to bring jobs to the Fort Smith area. Mars Petcare, Mitsubishi and Oxane are just a few of the recent examples. And while the Fort Smith region is WAY behind on lost jobs compared to new jobs, we should be more than 1,000 jobs better than we would without the three aforementioned companies. In other words, there are or will soon be about 1,000 area families enjoying the fruits of your labor. (We hope you’ll see fit to keep Fort Smith businessman Chester Koprovic on as an AEDC commissioner.)

Yet another reason we tend to like you more than previous governors is because of Morril Harriman. Mr. Harriman, your chief of staff and Running Buddy From Back In The Day, represented the Fort Smith/Van Buren area 16 years as a state senator. He knows us. We know him. He’s good people. Maybe this is silly, but there is some comfort in knowing that your right-hand guy won’t have a puzzled look on his face if a Governor’s office visitor says they live between Figure Five and Natural Dam.

Just a few paragraphs above, there was note about us being able to recognize a good governor. An election historian might object to such a statement and note that Sebastian County gave you just 47.08% of the 2006 vote in your first and successful bid for governor. That might somewhat be tempered in knowing that we gave Republican candidate Asa Hutchinson, a Fort Smith resident at the time, just 50.76% of the vote.

Or maybe not. The deal is, sir, that there is a growing faction of area folks who realize that our politics require larger parts Practical and smaller parts Ideology. Rep. Rick Green, R-Van Buren, for an example of Practical. (Although we are losing him temporarily to the nonsense that is term limits.) We’re trying to do a better job of being a reasonable player in Little Rock and Washington political circles. That doesn’t mean we will elect folks who always agree or support you. We’ll try to send folks who formulate objection based on rational discourse rather than knee-jerk pandering to a far-right element in town who confuse what is needed in Little Rock with what their preachers tell them is needed in Washington. (And we’d hope the liberal districts in Arkansas would seek the same practicality.)

Offering you praise and then commenting about the preferred nature of our local politics is not something in which a good journalist should engage. But I’ve never been much of a good journalist in the traditional sense, and my formal Press credentials were last seen in the desk of a local newsroom fervently managed by out-of-state number crunchers.

Nevertheless, all the above was just a way to say, enjoy the parade. And the banquet. And, more importantly, Thanks for everything — so far.

And one last thing. If you keep traveling east from the Parade route, you’ll see some highway construction between Barling and Fort Chaffee. The construction is on a VERY SMALL section of Interstate 49. No big deal, really, and the more than $3 billion needed to complete the tremendously important interstate between Alma and DeQueen has nothing to do with this essay. Just thought I’d mention it.