stepdaughter, who later ran the Arkansas
Painting From Photo ,office in Washington, D.C., when I was governor. Eventually thousands of people gave, often one-, five-, or ten-dollar bills as we passed the bucket at rallies.On February 25, I formally announced my candidacy with my family and a few friends at the Avanelle Motel, where Mother went for coffee most mornings before work.Uncle Raymond gave me a little house in a good location for the Hot Springs headquarters. Mother, my Park Avenue neighbor Rose Cra
Painting From Photo ,ne, and Bobby Hargraves, a young lawyer whose sister I had worked with in Washington, set up a first-class operation. Rose later moved to Little Rock and joined my administration when I became governor, but Mother kept building the organization and put it to work in future campaigns. The main headquarters was in Fayetteville, where my banker friend George Shelton agreed to be campaign chairman and F. H. Martin, a young lawyer I played basketball with, signed on as treasurer. I rented an old house on College Avenue, which was kept open mostly by college students, and often
oil painting wholesale,on weekends by my cousin Roy’s fifteen-year-old daughter, Marie Clinton, alone. We painted bigCLINTON FOR CONGRESS signs and put them on both sides of the house. They’re still there, having been painted over many times as new enterprises moved in. Today there’s one word over the old signs:TATTOO. Eventually, my childhood friend Patty Howe opened a headquarters in Fort Smith, and others cropped up around the district as we got closer to the election.By the time I went to Little Rock to file on March 22, I had three opponents: State Senator Gene Rainwater, a crew-cut conservative
wholesale oil painting,Democrat from Greenwood, just south of Fort Smith; David Stewart, a handsome young lawyer from Danville in Yell County; and Jim Scanlon, the tall, gregarious mayor of Greenland, a few miles south of Fayetteville. I was most worried about Stewart because he was attractive, articulate, and from the Clintons’ home county, which I had hoped would go for me.The first big political event of the campaign was on April 6: the River Valley Rally in Russellville, a college town in the east end of the district. It was an obligatory event, and all the candidates for federal, state, and local office were there, including Senator Fulbright and Governor Bumpers. Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia was the featured speaker. He gave an old-time fire-and-brimstone speech and entertained the crowd by playing the fiddle. Then the candidates’ speeches started, with the congressional candidates scheduled to speak last. By the time everyone else had taken three to five minutes, it was past ten o’clock. I knew the crowd would be tired and bored by the time we got up, but I took a gamble and chose to speak last. I figured it was my only chance to make an impression.I had worked hard on the speech and had
Michael Jackson painting,hammered it down to two minutes. It was a passionate call for a stronger Congress that would represent ordinary people against the concentration of power in the Republican administration and its allied economic interests. Though I had written the speech out, I gave it from memory and poured my heart into it. Somehow it struck a responsive chord with the audience, who, though tired after a long evening, found the energy to rise to their feet and cheer. As the crowd walked out, my volunteers gave them copies of the speech. I was off to a good start.When the event was over, Governor Bumpers came up to me. After complimenting me on the speech, he said he knew I had worked for Senator Fulbright and thought he shouldn’t be trying to unseat him. Then he stunned me by saying, “In twelve years or so, you may be159
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