Clinton’s Arkansas--Folksy, Neighborly, Lively

America thought it knew Arkansas: A puny, poor state down South full of illiterate Bubbas, their gun racks and pickup trucks. Orval Faubus. Central High. Hee Haw.

Then Bill Clinton came along and messed with the myth.

The President-elect is a Rhodes scholar who quotes Martin Luther King. He has a Yale-educated lawyer-wife. And his favorite twang comes from Paul McCartney’s guitar.

Worse yet, Yankees call him something that they never--never, never--used to call Southerners: Slick.

“Can you imagine?” Clinton friend Skip Rutherford said. “An Arkansan too slick for the rest of America.”

So what should America make of Arkansas now? Here’s a look at the state that Clinton proudly calls home.

THE BASICS:

Arkansas is an Indian word meaning “downstream people.” It became a state in 1836 and seceded from the Union in 1861. Arkansas has 53,000 square miles and a population about the size of Brooklyn, 2.4 million.

The state is diverse as it is misunderstood.

The eastern Arkansas Delta is among the poorest regions in the nation, with high infant mortality and teen-age pregnancy rates. Shotgun shacks and antebellum mansions dot the flat landscape. Farming is the region’s lifeblood.

Still, the state (especially the northwest) is home to some of the richest people in America. The late Sam Walton started Wal-Mart in Bentonville, Ark. Don Tyson turned his Springdale, Ark., poultry company into the world’s largest. One of the largest investment houses off Wall Street, Stephens Inc., was founded by a belt buckle salesman in Little Rock.

Northern Arkansas, with the Ozark foothills, is a retirement haven, home to some of the best fishing and prettiest views in the country.

The Texas pine forests dip into the river valley of southwestern Arkansas. Farming is big here, too.

POLITICS:

Arkansas is mostly a one-party state. The feeble state GOP is still trying to shake its carpetbagger reputation from Reconstruction.

Clinton, governor for 12 of the last 14 years, has a database full of political contacts and has filled nearly every post a governor can fill. He has friends in big business who do big business with the state, but he rarely faced conflict-of-interest charges at home.

“In a state this small, anybody who’s anybody either has a friendly relationship, or is related,” a longtime aide said recently.

But his political machine is nothing like the operations that died out in the 1960s. Former county Sheriff Marlin Hawkins, who wrote a book called, “How I Stole Elections,” says he used to be able to predict within 500 votes how many people in his county would cast ballots for a particular candidate.

“Part of the art of stealing elections is helping your neighbors,” he wrote. That included bending--sometimes breaking--the rules governing welfare eligibility, speeding tickets and the like.

Faubus, who was governor from 1955-67, primed his machine to raise taxes for education and other services, drag the mental health system out of the dark ages and build hundreds of miles of badly needed roads.

But he tarnished an otherwise progressive record by refusing to allow nine black students to integrate Little Rock’s Central High in 1957. Federal troops had to enforce the U.S. Supreme Court order.

Faubus can still be spotted at the state Capitol, a bright, cheerful and articulate statesman on one hand; a pathetic reminder of the state’s darkest days on the other.

“I’ve always said that I regret it ever happened,” Faubus said recently. “But I would not change a thing because I was trying to stop property damage, injury or death. And in that, we succeeded.”

Despite its reputation, Arkansas is a politically progressive state. For example, Hattie W. Caraway in 1933 became the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate.

It also is an independent state. In 1968, millionaire Republican Winthrop Rockefeller was elected governor, liberal Democratic J. William Fulbright was re-elected to the Senate and ultraconservative presidential candidate George Wallace carried the state.

PEOPLE:

Arkansans tend to be thin-skinned when it comes to criticism from outsiders. “We don’t care how you did it in Cleveland,” said a sign in a county courthouse a few years ago.

In a way, the myths about Arkansas breed pessimism in its people.

“I’ve always had a passion about trying to get rid of this ‘poor me’ attitude a lot of people have about Arkansas, or this sense of limitation, or ‘What do you expect--this is just Arkansas, we can’t do this, that or the other,’0 “ Clinton once said.

Some say Clinton’s biggest achievement was convincing Arkansans they are better than their critics think. “He didn’t always deliver, but he got people to believe they could make a difference,” political science professor Bob Savage of Fayetteville, Ark., said.

The major characteristic of Arkansas people, like many Southerners, is their pleasant, easygoing nature. Reporters and political operatives living in Little Rock during the campaign were frustrated and enamored by the slower pace. Finding a place to eat after 10 p.m. was a challenge.

The average Arkansas resident makes about $10,520, but $300 a month can rent you a nice apartment in most parts of the state.

“A lot of people don’t understand that living in downtown Manhattan on $30,000 a year is a lot worse than living in Scott County, Ark., on $15,000,” said Jim Blair, legal counsel for Tyson Foods Inc.

The social scene is not as dull as some might think. There is an arts center, a theater, festivals and a zoo in Little Rock. Some of the best fishing and hunting in the nation is in Arkansas. The University of Arkansas football team--nicknamed the Razorbacks, or Hogs--are the focus of Saturday afternoons.

BUSINESS:

Arkansas is a right-to-work state with little union influence, a low wage base, relatively low business taxes and hard-working people. Clinton and others have sought to woo higher-paying technical jobs to the state while training its work force for the new type of work.

Tyson Foods is the state’s largest employer, with 22,000 jobs. There were 1.82 million people employed in September, with 965,400 in nonfarming jobs. Of those, 240,600 were in manufacturing.

The state’s unemployment rate was 6.9% in September, and the national rate was 7.5%. The state normally has a higher unemployment rate than the rest of the nation.

RACE RELATIONS:

It wasn’t until the late 1960s that blacks could eat in the state Capitol cafeteria. Today, several top Clinton aides are black. Corporate boards are no longer lily white.

Bob Nash, a top Clinton aide who campaigned with the governor, said he has run into hundreds of blacks who left Arkansas in the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s for better opportunities. “When I tell them I worked for seven years down the hallway from Clinton, they are shocked,” he said.

A gap still exists. For example, the per-capita income for whites is $11,472 and for blacks it is $5,729, according to the 1990 Census.

The state is still coming to grips with its history. Never is that more clear than during a tour of the Capitol building, where one can pay homage to the bust of Faubus and the portrait of Daisy Bates, the civil rights leader who advised the Little Rock Nine.

ARKANSAS AT-A-GLANCE

Population: 2,350,725

Ethnic mix: Whites 82.7%, Black 15.9%, Asian 0.5%, Indian 0.5%

Age of Population: Under age 18: 26.4%, Over age 65: 14.9%

Sept. Unemployment rate: 6.9%.

No. of jobs: 1.82 million.

No. of nonfarm jobs: 965,400

No. of manufacturing jobs: 240,600

Top employers: Tyson Food Inc. 22,400, Georgia-Pacific 4,800, and ConAgra 4,800