By Steve Brawner, © 2019 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.
First, Mike Beebe overcame an impoverished early childhood. Then, he overcame a Republican tide to be re-elected governor and win all 75 counties in 2010.
How he did both are subjects of a new hour-long documentary, “Men and Women of Distinction: Mike Beebe.”
The documentary was screened Wednesday at the Arkansas Cinema Society’s annual Filmland festival. AETN, which funded the $46,000 project, will begin broadcasting it Aug. 29. It also will be available for viewing at AETN’s website, aetn.org.
The work of first-time director Kathryn Tucker is an interesting look at one of Arkansas’ most important political leaders of the past half century. It’s well produced and worth an hour of your time – unless you can’t stand Beebe. That’s because it paints a very positive portrait of him, though everyone in the film seems to agree he had a cocky streak, including his wife, Ginger.
The film tells how Beebe was born in a tar paper shack in Amagon to a single mom waitress. They moved around during his early years. He never knew his biological father and had several stepfathers.
The graduate of Newport High School was smart, ambitious and really good with people. In the film, businessman Johnny Allison revealed that Beebe said during a late night study session at Arkansas State University that he wanted to be governor someday. He joined a Searcy law firm, became a partner in two years and won the largest jury award in Arkansas history at the time.
He was elected to the Senate and became a leader through an alliance with other like-minded senators and through his mastery of the budget process. He did not face an opponent through 20 years as a state senator and two terms as attorney general. His first actual campaign came in 2006, when he defeated current Gov. Asa Hutchinson.
He was re-elected in 2010 with more than 64% of the vote, easily defeating former state Sen. Jim Keet. He won all 75 counties in an election where Republicans won almost everything they contested.
A century and a half of Democratic dominance was being swamped beneath a Republican red tide. That tide has not yet receded. For Democrats to win now, he told me, “It would have to be cyclical and have to be the kind of Democrat that can reach across party lines. It’d have to be somebody who’s culturally in tune with our people.”
During his second term, Beebe worked with Republican legislators to expand Arkansas’ Medicaid population under the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. Arkansas was the only Southern state to participate in the expansion at the time. Instead of simply enrolling more people in Medicaid, the so-called “private option” used that money to purchase private insurance. It now covers about a quarter of a million adults.
Among Beebe’s greatest accomplishments was avoiding a budget shortfall during the Great Recession. Almost all other states fell into the red. In the film, Beebe described his leanings by saying, “I’m moderate to liberal on most social things but I’m real conservative about money, and I suppose it’s my upbringing.”
His style was pragmatic and nonideological. He balanced budgets and worked with both sides of the aisle. His mantra was to “underpromise and overdeliver.”
You still see that kind of politics practiced at the state level. Hutchinson also has governed as a pragmatist, although he is more conservative on social issues than Beebe.
However, you don’t see much nonideological pragmatism – and certainly no budget balancing – at the federal level. I asked Beebe after the screening if his political model still could work in today’s environment. He thinks it can. He believes the majority of Americans are like him – not one-issue voters, not on either extreme and “not so partisan they don’t look at the whole picture.”
If any Arkansas Democrat could be elected to a statewide office these days, it’s Beebe. But he’s 72 and assured me in a no-B.S. kind of way that he has no plans to run for anything.
“There’s not a better political job than being governor,” he said. “Everything else is downhill.”
Steve Brawner is a syndicated columnist in Arkansas. Email him at brawnersteve@mac.com. Follow him on Twitter at @stevebrawner.