Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 20, 1995 TAG: 9502220004
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Now he was home in his green, green grassy place, his folk-tale Arkansas, here to begin Act Two: a political life.
His relationship with his state was shaped by a triangular internal contradiction that would stay with him from then on. At one point of the triangle was myth: the way he would romanticize the Arkansas of huge watermelons and simple country folk, especially when he was away from it. At a second point of the triangle was pragmatism: the realization that Arkansas was the easiest base, the only base, for his political rise. At the third point of the triangle was ambition: a powerful desire to move beyond his provincial roots.
Not long after moving to Fayetteville to teach law at the University of Arkansas in August of 1973, he appeared at a watermelon party of the Washington County Democratic Central Committee. The event was held in the sprawling two-acre back yard behind the grand old house of Ann and Morriss Henry along Highway 45. The party regulars at the Henry house were local figures of the sort that any aspiring politician would need to know. Clinton swept through the crowd as though he were an honored guest. ``Somebody brought him,'' Ann Henry recalled later. ``He had just got to town, he shook hands, he talked, and by the time he left he knew every single person there. It was a perfect way for him to leave an impression.''
Years later, perpetuating the myth that his life progressed in a series of accidents and uncalculated events, Clinton would insist that he embarked on his first political candidacy reluctantly and only after he had failed to persuade several other people to make the race. In fact, he seemed eager, hungry - anything but reluctant.
He told Rudy Moore, a progressive state legislator who was an early Clinton backer, that he wanted to run for office but believed that a seat in the state legislature would not satisfy him. At age 28 there would be nothing extraordinary about Clinton serving in the state legislature. His boyhood friend, Mack McLarty, had gone to the state capital as a representative when he was 25. In the realm of state politics, Clinton was too old to be called a boy wonder. ``He felt he had to go bigger,'' Moore said later. ``He had his eye on a higher prize.''
There was one obvious choice. He would run for Congress.
|n n| Political aide Ron Addington was in Little Rock, spending the weekend with his girlfriend, when Clinton called him from Fayetteville on the Sunday morning of Feb. 24, 1974.
``I'm announcing tomorrow,'' Clinton said.
``Tomorrow?'' Addington gasped.
``Yeah, we're setting up some press conferences.''
``Okay, let's do it!'' Addington said.
That was Clinton, he thought: impetuous, hungry, thinking that he could conquer the world in a day. And this was not even a normal day. It was a Sunday. And Clinton wanted press conferences in four cities to kick off his bid for the Democratic nomination in the 3rd Congressional District - Fort Smith, the district's largest city; Fayetteville, Clinton's new base; Hot Springs, his home town; and Little Rock, the state capital and headquarters for the state press corps.
It would be a monumental feat to make it to all four sites in a single day. Addington told Clinton that he would go to work on rounding up the press and meet Clinton in Russellville, a midpoint in the triangle between Little Rock, Fayetteville and Hot Springs, where they would spend the night in preparation for the first press conference the next morning.
Clinton arrived in Russellville late, and he and Addington headed out over the mountain to Hot Springs, one of the most perilous drives in Arkansas. Clinton was driving as he always drove, carelessly, talking and gesturing the whole time, his eyes often off the road, every now and then swerving wildly into the oncoming lane or running his right tires onto the shoulder. The car had no passing power, but Clinton would try to pass anyway, usually when he was chugging uphill heading into a blind curve. Halfway through the trip, Addington turned to Clinton and said, ``If we survive, you are never going to drive again when I'm in the car!''
At 8 o'clock on Monday morning in frigid 22 degree weather, 60 Clinton friends and relatives gathered at the Avenelle Motor Lodge in Hot Springs for the announcement. Here, at long last, was the opening moment of Bill Clinton's political career. He went after his Republican opponent, John Paul Hammerschmidt, right away, ignoring his primary challengers. ``If the people demand more honest politics,'' he said, ``they'll get more honest politics.''
His mother, Virginia, stood nearby. ``All smiles,'' as Addington remembered her. ``All smiles and laughing.''
|n n| In the small world of Democratic politics in northwest Arkansas, the center of the action was Billie Schneider's little restaurant. At a long picnic table in her back room, Schneider's friends gathered several nights a week to drink beer and chew on large juicy steaks and even juicier politics.
It was an eclectic crowd ranging from long-haired college students to wealthy lawyers who looked to her for the latest town gossip. Schneider was the godmother of Washington County politics, a yellow dog Democrat who sometimes refused to serve diners whom she considered too Republican. She drank and swore and was not afraid to tell people what she thought about them. She had the outgoing personality of Clinton's mother, Virginia, and was not shy about offering the young law professor political advice.
One of the campaign's first press releases referred to William J. Clinton, which is how his name was printed in a local newspaper. Schneider saw it and called Clinton's campaign headquarters. Addington answered the phone. ``You and Bill get your butts up here and I mean just as soon as you can!'' Schneider yelled.
Addington explained that Clinton was out campaigning and would not be back until later that night.
``Well, when he gets in, get your butts up here!'' Schneider said.
Addington and Clinton walked into the restaurant just before closing. The sight of Clinton's formal first name and middle initial sickened Schneider's populist soul. She wanted to make sure Clinton understood that he was back in Arkansas. This was not Georgetown, Oxford or Yale.
``What is this William J. Clinton?'' she asked. ``You're not gonna run as William J. Clinton. You're Bill Clinton. And you're gonna run as Bill Clinton!''
|n n| Like so many of the people who were drawn into Clinton's orbit, the workers in his congressional campaign were alternately inspired and exhausted. College students accustomed to staying up late, but also sleeping late, had a hard time keeping pace with him.
In the May primary against three opponents and again in the June runoff, Clinton was a political whirlwind. He began with 12 percent name recognition and little money, and ended up easily prevailing in both races. He was always on the move from town to town, staying in the homes of friends or newfound political allies, or at his mother's place if they ended the night near Hot Springs. His schedule was invariably on the remake, thrown off by his compulsion to stop and chat. Sometimes the Fayetteville staff lost touch with him. If he was working the southern stretch of the district, they would leave messages at the ``Y'' City Cafe, certain that he would stop at that tiny crossroads eatery on his way between Hot Springs and Fort Smith, lured by the gossip awaiting him there and the seductive coconut cream pie.
For many politicians, the incessant demands of a campaign are the most enervating aspects of public life. One face after another, one more plea for money, one more speech where the words blur in dull repetition - at some point it can become too much.
Not for Clinton. To him, the prospect of attending a pie supper in towns such as Y City or Mount Ida seemed invigorating. Pie suppers rank among the most cherished political folk rituals in western Arkansas. On any Saturday night during an election season, communities gather for an evening of entertainment as pies and cakes baked by local women are sold at auction, with the money going to volunteer fire departments or other civic institutions. Homemade desserts, picnic tables lined with voters, plenty of talking and raucous storytelling, usually some barbecue at the rear counter - Clinton was never more in his element. He also realized that every pie supper he attended helped him transform his image from the long-haired Rhodes scholar and law professor into a young man of the people.
Clinton was worried that Hammerschmidt's campaign might make an issue of the manner in which he had avoided military service in 1969. Hammerschmidt was a World War II Air Force pilot who strongly supported the war and had close ties to veterans' groups in the district. The documentary record of Clinton's actions after he received his draft notice at Oxford five years earlier was resting in a file inside a fireproof half-ton vault at the University of Arkansas ROTC building a few blocks down the hill from the law school. The documents included a letter to the director of the ROTC program, Col. Eugene J. Holmes, in which Clinton denounced the war and thanked Holmes for eventually saving him from the draft.
Clinton's usual response to anyone who asked him about his military record was that he had received a high draft number in the lottery and was never called. He discussed the more complicated details of his draft history with only a few friends. One was Paul Fray, who had joined the campaign. ``He told me what he said in the letter about the war,'' Fray said later. ``I told him that he could get into a pickle if the Republicans got the letter and that he should try to get the original back.''
Holmes had retired, and was living in northwest Arkansas. How Clinton contacted him and persuaded him to return the letter is unclear. Some members of the ROTC staff believe that Clinton relied on intermediaries from the university administration, where he had several friends and political supporters. Decades later, the colonel would label Clinton a draft dodger and claim that he had been deceived, but the evidence indicates that in 1974 he was still willing to help Clinton.
ROTC drill instructor Ed Howard later recalled that Holmes called him that summer and ``said he wanted the Clinton letter out of the files.'' Howard, a non-commissioned officer, was alone in the office; most of the staff was at summer training at Fort Riley, Kan. He called the unit commander, Col. Guy Tutwiler, at Fort Riley and informed him of Holmes' request. Tutwiler instructed Howard to make a copy of the Clinton letter and give it to Holmes, but to keep the original. A member of Holmes' family stopped by the ROTC headquarters and picked up the letter.
Later that afternoon, Tutwiler called Howard again and told him to take the original letter and everything else in that file, which was among the records the ROTC had maintained on Vietnam War-era dissidents, and send it to him at Fort Riley by certified mail. According to Howard, Tutwiler later explained that he had ``destroyed the file, burned the file,'' because the military no longer maintained dissident files and he did not feel that Clinton's letter should ever ``be used against him for political reasons.'' According to Fray, Clinton ended up with a copy of his letter to Holmes, and assumed that ``the situation was done with.'' He did not know that Holmes' top aide, Lt. Col. Clinton Jones, had already made a copy of the letter.
|n n| Inside the Clinton campaign, they all called Clinton ``the Boy.'' ``The Boy's on a roll today,'' they would say. Or, ``The Boy's in a pisser of a mood.''
The nickname was in part complimentary: it evoked Clinton's youth, friendliness and achievement. But it also had a subtext that addressed the immature aspects of his personality. The Boy never wanted to go to bed. The Boy had no concept of money. Once, early in the campaign, the Boy called Addington and announced that he had to come over to Addington's apartment to shower and shave because he had forgotten to pay his utility bills and his water and power had been turned off.
The Boy had a tendency to talk too much and could not always be trusted to keep campaign matters in confidence. One day he told reporters about internal poll results, prompting Doug Wallace and David Ivey, the two aides in charge of press matters, to issue a blistering memo that was labeled ``To all District Headquarters Staff,'' but was directed primarily at Clinton. ``The damage done by the release of the last poll without the accompanying previous poll can only be judged after some time, but it is obvious that it has hurt,'' they wrote. ``From now until the time Bill Clinton finishes this campaign, NO ONE will talk, or even breathe in the direction of a news reporter, without first clearing it with David Ivey or Doug Wallace. THIS ALSO MEANS THE CANDIDATE.''
The Boy could throw a fit when he felt frustrated. He would explode in a flash, then act as though it had never happened. Harry Truman Moore, a law student who served as his photographer, remembered that Clinton would often snap at his travel aides when they tried to pull away from a crowd to keep him closer to his schedule. ``He'd say, `Don't ever pull me away from a crowd like that again!' Then, 10 minutes later, he'd say, `Why are we late?' We'd all get used to it.''
His most memorable eruptions came in arguments with Hillary Rodham, his girlfriend from Yale Law School days. Rodham had arrived in Arkansas in mid-August to help in the campaign straight from Washington, where she had just finished a grueling stint as a lawyer for the House Judiciary Committee's impeachment inquiry of President Richard Nixon. One day Addington, Clinton and Rodham were on their way to an event in Eureka Springs. Clinton and Rodham were debating how to handle a campaign issue.
``Bill wanted to do one thing. She wanted to do another,'' Addington recalled. ``They started shouting at each other. I was driving. Bill was in the front seat, Hillary in the back. He was hitting the dashboard. She was hitting the seat. They were going at it. We drove up a street near the headquarters and stopped at a light. Hillary said, `I'm getting out!' She got out and slammed the door. And Bill said, `Go on.' We got out on the highway and I was going fast because we were late. Bill started venting his anger on me. It was one of the most uncomfortable times I've ever spent with him. Then he took a short nap. When he woke up, everything was fine.''
Rodham was a central figure during the final weeks of the campaign. She was, thought campaign worker Mary Lee Fray, ``fighting for her man'' romantically and politically. One of the worst-kept secrets during the early days of the campaign was that Clinton had become involved in a relationship with a young female campaign worker who was a student at the university. Soon after Hillary arrived from Washington, the woman went into exile.
Rodham took on several aides whose style she disapproved of. Addington came to think of Rodham as a negative force. ``We lost the spirit because of her. Everybody started bickering with everybody else,'' he said later. In a memo to Clinton, campaign aide Doug Wallace noted that though he thought Rodham's ``intentions were the best,'' her presence was more negative than positive.
Most of Rodham's bickering was with Paul Fray, a strong-willed political operator. Their power struggle reached a critical stage near the end when they got into several arguments over money. The campaign needed more funds to compete with Hammerschmidt on television and to ensure a strong get-out-the-vote effort, but Rodham advised against borrowing too much or taking it from questionable sources. In one instance, according to the accounts of Fray and several other campaign aides, Rodham took the ethical high ground, Clinton vacillated, and Fray was willing to do whatever it took to win. Fray says that he was contacted by a lawyer representing dairy interests who had $15,000 ready for the campaign. The implication was that the money would come from the dairy industry with expectations that if Clinton became congressman he would serve their interests, and it would go to election boxes in Fort Smith where votes could still be bought.
In several parts of Arkansas in those days, voters still cast paper ballots that went into cardboard boxes. There were frequent allegations that different boxes were stuffed and that payoffs were required to prevent stuffing. ``The attorney already had the money,'' Fray said later. ``It was a question of me picking it up and delivering it. I knew there were places where we could spend a little money and it would turn out right.''
At a late-night meeting at headquarters, Fray discussed the deal with Clinton and Rodham. Rodham flatly rejected the proposal. ``She nixed it,'' according to Fray. ``She got adamant. She said to Bill, `No! You don't want to be a party to this.' I said, `Look, you want to win or you want to lose?' She said, `Well, I don't want to win this way. If we can't earn it, we can't go to Washington.' ''
|n n| On Nov. 5, election night, the mood was buoyant. Reports from the field indicated that the race was close. By midnight, every county had reported except the largest and most conservative one, Sebastian County, home to Fort Smith. Clinton was leading by several thousand votes, but Clinton supporters at the Sebastian County courthouse were picking up reports of vote tampering. Several aides piled into a car and drove to Fort Smith. They milled around for a while, but determined there was nothing they could do and drove back to Fayetteville.
The Fort Smith tally finally came in with an enormous swing in Hammerschmidt's direction. Clinton had lost by 6,000 votes. Fray started swearing and throwing things out the window. ``It was the goddamn money,'' he said.
Clinton realized, though, that he had won for losing. His race was the most talked about contest in the state. He had become the darling of the Democratic Party by taking on a tough incumbent and coming within 2 percentage points of defeating him. ``We accomplished a miracle out here,'' Clinton told his staff. ``We started with no name recognition and look what we accomplished. We scared the pants off that guy.''
One morning soon after the election, Clinton drove to the square in downtown Fayetteville and started shaking hands. He stood in the square all day. His friends thought it was his way of cooling down after nine months of nonstop campaigning. No, there was more to it than that. He was warming up. The next race had already begun.
Next: Turning points
Excerpted from ``First in His Class: A Biography of Bill Clinton,'' 1995 by David Maraniss. Published by Simon & Schuster Inc. Printed by permission. Distributed by The Washington Post Writers Group
by CNB