FAYETTEVILLE — Arkansas’ economy and culture are thriving, but the state’s politics are a mess, speaker Rex Nelson told the Political Animals Club of Northwest Arkansas on Friday.
“We have a largely incompetent state Legislature combined with a dysfunctional governor’s office,” Nelson told the crowd of at least 150 people attending the lunch meeting in Fayetteville. Nelson, a newspaper columnist and author, was director of policy and communications for then-Gov. Mike Huckabee — the father of current governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Sanders’ office had no comment when reached.
The state’s history is littered with disasters and setbacks, both natural and self-inflicted, Nelson said, from the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811 to 1812 before Arkansas was a state to the self-inflicted anti-integration crisis of 1957. Now Arkansas is poised to overcome all of those, Nelson said, unless state governing bodies derail progress.
“Thinking people have moved to the political sidelines,” Nelson said. “They’re not stepping up. People on the strip have filled that gap.”
For example, school board races attract candidates “who want to ban books instead of add them,” he said.
The Legislature and the governor’s office are full of careers, he said.
“Legislators used to come to sessions for 60 days every two years and then go back to their communities,” he said. “How many audiences do they have in Little Rock now? They have too many. They need the allowances” to make a living, he said.
“We need people who love our state more than their own political career,” Nelson said, to applause.
Instead, Northwest Arkansas continues to grow economically and culturally, Nelson said. Fort Smith has a major international training program for incoming Air Force pilots. South Arkansas has the prospect of a lithium mining boom possibly rivaling the region’s oil boom of the 1920s, he said. Northeast Arkansas has become the leading steel producing region in the United States. Central Arkansas has booming business in distribution centers for Amazon and others.
“Now I’m afraid we’re going to screw it up again and stop being serious,” Nelson said. “I love you Arkansas. Please prove me wrong.”
The crowd gave Nelson a standing ovation.
Tom King of Fayetteville said Nelson gave a very good talk. Don Nelms of Jasper, a businessman and former staff member of then-Gov. Mike Beebe, said he saw the early stages of the race focused on national partisan issues rather than the state interest at the time. Beebe stepped down in January 2015.
