ieghh73qpz's Journal

It was an all-night event out in the country, at...
It was an all-night event out in the country, at which men who loved their dogs as much as their kids (and took just as good care of them) showed the dogs and then cut them loose to chase foxes and bay at the moon while the women kept mountains of food out on picnic tables all through the nightI was even getting some strong support from Harrison, the congressmans hometown, from a few brave souls who werent afraid to take on the small-town establishment

One of the most exciting rallies of the election occurred one fall afternoon on the White River, not far from the infamous Whitewater property I later invested in but never sawThe Democrats in the area were all stirred up because the Nixon Justice Department was trying to send the Democratic sheriff of Searcy County, Billy Joe Holder, to jail for income tax evasionUnder our 1876 constitution, the salaries of the state and local officials have to be approved by a vote of the people; they had last been raised in 1910County officials made just $5,000 a yearThe governor made only $10,000, but at least he had a mansion, and his transportation and food costs were coveredA lot of the local prada bags cheap officials were forced to use their expense accounts, which as I recall were about $7,000 a year, just to liveThe Justice Department wanted Sheriff Holder to go to jail for not paying income tax on his personal expenditures from the accountI believe the Holder case was the smallest income taxevasion prosecution ever brought by the federal government, and the hill people were convinced it was politically motivatedAfter an hour and a half of deliberations, the jury returned a verdict of not guiltyIt turned out they voted to acquit right away, then stayed in the jury room more than an hour longer just to make it look rightBilly Joe walked out of the courthouse and drove straight to our rally, where he was greeted like a hero home from war

On the way back to Fayetteville, I stopped in Harrison, where the trial was held, to discuss it with Miss Ruth Wilson, a public accountant who did tax work for lots of hill peopleI told Miss Ruth that I understood she had helped Holders lawyer, my friend FMartin, with the jury selectionI asked her half jokingly if she had packed it with DemocratsIll never forget her reply: No, Bill, I didntActually, there buy chanel bag were a fair number of Republicans on that juryYou know, those young men who came down from Washington to prosecute the sheriff were smart fellows, and they looked real good in their expensive suitsBut they just didnt know our folksIts the strangest thingNine of those twelve jurors had been audited by the Internal Revenue Service in the last two yearsI was glad Ruth Wilson and her boys were on my sideAfter she worked over those Washington lawyers, the Justice Department began to ask prospective jurors in tax cases about their own experiences with the IRS

With about two weeks to go, the congressman finally got his campaign in gearHe had seen a poll that said if he didnt, my momentum might carry me to a narrow victoryHis people pulled out all the stopsHis business friends and the Republicans went to workSomeone began calling all the papers asking for the nonexistent photo of me demonstrating against President Nixon at the 1969 Arkansas-Texas game, giving birth to the infamous tree story I mentioned earlierIn Hot Springs, the chamber of commerce had a big dinner to thank him for all hed doneSeveral hundred people showed up, and it received coco chanel handbags extensive coverage in the local paperAcross the district, Republicans scared businesspeople by charging that I had so much support from unions, I would be a puppet for organized labor in CongressIn Fort Smith, six thousand postcards we sent to political supporters identified in our phone canvass were never deliveredApparently my labor support didnt extend to the postal workers thereThe cards were found a few days after the election in the trash outside the main post officeThe state branch of the American Medical Association came out strongly for Hammerschmidt, hitting me for my efforts to get doctors in the Springdale area to treat poor people on MedicaidHammerschmidt even got federal revenue-sharing funds to pave the streets of Gilbert, a small town in Searcy County, a few days before the electionHe carried it 3834, but it was the only township in the county he won

I got an inkling of just how effective his work had been the weekend before the election when I went to a closing rally at the Hot Springs Convention CenterWe didnt have as many people there as had attended his dinner a few days beforeOur people had worked their hearts out, gucci women's watches but they were tired

Still, on election day, I thought we might winAs we gathered in my headquarters to watch the returns, we were nervous but hopefulWe led in the vote count until nearly midnight, because the largest and most Republican county, Sebastian, reported lateI carried twelve of the fifteen counties with fewer than eight thousand total votes, including every voting box along the Buffalo River in Newton and Searcy countiesBut I lost five of the six biggest counties, suffering narrow defeats of fewer than five hundred votes each in Garland County, where I grew up, and Washington County, where I lived, losing Crawford County by eleven hundred votes and getting killed in Benton and Sebastian counties, where my combined losses were twice the total margin of victoryWe each won one county by about two to oneHe won Sebastian County, the biggest, and I won Perry County, the smallestIt seems ironic now, when rural Americans vote overwhelmingly Republican in national elections, that I began my political career with a profoundly rural base, born of intense personal contact and responsiveness to both their resentments and their real dolce & gabbana handbags problem