John Brumment on the Saga of Nick and Mike

Now that Republican attacks have brought it up, the story of Mike Beebe and Nick Wilson bears telling. It was in the late 1980s when Wilson’s shadiness as a state senator became widely evident.

The late and lamented Arkansas Gazette reported that Wilson had somehow managed in the waning hours of a legislative session to slip an unnoticed rider to an appropriations bill. All it did was raise insurance fees to construct a new state agency office building.

You’re wondering how such a thing could happen.

You probably haven’t experienced the mad last hours of an Arkansas legislative session. You probably never saw firsthand Wilson’s sly resourcefulness or observed the allegiance he smartly extracted from some colleagues and legislative staff members.

The governor, Bill Clinton, had little choice but to sign the bill. The session had adjourned by the time the measure got to his office. He couldn’t very well leave an agency without an appropriation.

Legislators managed in a special session to undo the scandal. It was tense. Some senators were under Wilson’s wing and others feared his penchant for revenge. Afterward, he stood in the Senate and announced that he had a long memory.

Two senators were the most openly outraged. They were Stan Russ of Conway and Jay Bradford of Pine Bluff. These were the moral voices.

But it was neither Bradford nor Russ, but the young trial lawyer from Searcy, Mike Beebe, who commanded the floor procedure.

Wilson was always dismissive of Bradford and Russ. He thought they weren’t effective enough by themselves to bother him.

Those he disdained were Beebe and senators whom Beebe brought under his own wing to form a countering and eventually controlling clique - people like David Malone, Bill Gwatney, Lu Hardin and Wilson’s own reformed protege, Morril Harriman.