Dale Bumpers: My father believed in politics. He thought politics was a noble profession and that good, sincere, dedicated men should become involved, and that if they did not, our society would not long remain free. I believed it then, and I believe it now. That's the reason I'm running.
Kyle Kellams: Randy Dixon with the David and Barbara Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History. Welcome. What do we hear?
Randy Dixon: Thank you, Kyle. That was our 38th governor, Dale Bumpers. So we continue our series of the modern-day governors of our great state.
Kellams: Right. And again, we are defining modern day as when videotape and audiotape became abundant.
Dixon: Yes, more like film. Film even before TV, because we started in the 1940s and now we're working our way up to the 1970s, 1970, as a matter of fact. You know, we did a two-part series on Rockefeller.
Kellams: Because he was so different.
Dixon: Well, that. And you needed kind of a setup, right? How he got here. Right. Well, I felt like we kind of needed to do this with Dale Bumpers. Let's go. How did he get here as governor? Because he really did come out of nowhere and represented something new in politics in Arkansas.
No one had heard of him. The year's 1970. He decides to run for governor. And where did he come from? Well, I thought it'd be good to ask a longtime political aide and blood relative, Bumpers' nephew, Archie Schaffer. And I talked to him the other day, and he told me about Dale Bumpers' humble beginnings.
Archie Schaffer: Until 1970, Dale Bumpers was a lawyer in Charleston, Arkansas. And the only elective office he had held until he got elected governor was the school board in Charleston. He served on the school board in Charleston for a number of years.
But in 1962, he decided to run for the state legislature. And at that time, the state legislative districts were drawn along county lines. And Franklin County, which is divided by the Arkansas River, was the legislative district. And Bumpers ran from Charleston and a guy named Mike Womack ran from Ozark.
And Bumpers got about 90 or 95% of the votes on the south side of the river, the Charleston part of Franklin County. And Mike Womack, who was from the north side of the river, from Ozark, got about 85 or 90% of the votes in Ozark. And Womack beat him about 3 to 1, just because of the demographics of the legislative district.
And so he went back to practicing law in Charleston and didn't run for governor until eight years later when he decided to run for governor and entered the Democratic primary for governor. At that time, the Democratic primary was in August. And so he didn't actually announce and run file until June or July of that summer.
And he was one of eight people in the Democratic primary. Orval Faubus was running for reelection. He was making his first comeback attempt. And everybody knew that the game was to get in the runoff against Faubus and whichever one of the other seven people got in the runoff with Faubus was probably going to get elected. And fortunately, that was Bumpers.
Kellams: Right. So that 1970 race, you have Winthrop Rockefeller seeking a third term. He's a Republican in Arkansas. He's rubbed some people the wrong way with reforms. And it was even called sort of a fluke at the time that a Republican won. So you have a lot of Democrats who think this is the time.
Dixon: This is the time. And a bunch of them came out. But, you know, the big names, of course, were Faubus.
Kellams: All right.
Dixon: Purcell.
Kellams: All right.
Dixon: And Hayes McClerkin.
Kellams: Hayes McClerkin.
Dixon: Yeah. So those were really the three big names or the four big names. Well, three because Bumpers, right, was unheard of at the time. So yeah, he was going to have to make it through this gauntlet of Democrats before he could even get to the big show. You know, the general election, but he needed money to run.
His brother and sister had done well in life and were well off financially. And so Bumpers had been advised that he probably needed about $50,000. I don't know where that term came from, but he got that advice he needed about that much to start the campaign. So he called a family meeting with his brother and his sister to talk about them helping him finance this campaign.
We talked to Dale Bumpers in 2010. We meaning the Pryor Center. And this is what he said in an interview with Ernie Dumas.
Bumpers: Well, we met in Chicago, and I laid it out for him in about an hour. What the chances were, what the geographics were. Everything. The politics of it.
And my sister. My sister said, "Now I want to make sure I understand this. You're telling me that there are eight people in the race counting you?" And I said yes. One is the attorney general and one was the House speaker. The others have held public office or they wouldn't be in the legislature. I said yes, she named one or two others.
And she says, "And if you win, if you win the Democratic primary that you also have in order to win it, you also have to beat Orval Faubus." I said, "Yes, that's true too." "And then if you defeat Orval Faubus, you've got to run against the governor, Winthrop Rockefeller, and the Republican runoff and the Republican election. General election." I said, "Yes, that's right."
And she was not above foul language. And I'll skip the foul language. She said, "I ain't getting involved in this mess. This is the craziest thing I've ever heard of."
Ernie Dumas: Ego trip.
Bumpers: Ego trip. Yeah. She said she used a profanity, you know, this so-and-so ego trip. And so we stayed two more hours. And my brother was making my case for me all during that two hours. And I left there with $50,000 in my pocket. And so that's what we started with.
Kellams: Here's the part that blows me away. When you think about politics now, he makes his announcement that he's running for the nomination. When?
Dixon: Oh, just over two months before the election.
Kellams: That's crazy.
Dixon: I know. And there were already all these other guys in the field. And so yeah, he announces. I mean, last minute it would seem. And so here he is from the archives in 1970, the summer, mid-June, announcing for governor.
Bumpers: I have concluded that the people of Arkansas yearn for a leader who really cares. If democracy is to work, every man who cares not only has the right, but the responsibility of accepting the challenge and making it work. I accept the challenge and I will seek the office of governor of this state.
Dixon: Bumpers was many things. He was a great orator. He was incredibly smart. He was incredibly passionate. He was progressive. He was also politically savvy.
Kellams: He really was.
Dixon: And he knew that the person to beat was Orval Faubus. And the key was to get in the runoff with Faubus. So here is another clip from the archives. He's speaking, and this is before the Democratic primary. So he has his eyes set on Faubus without mentioning him by name. And he's kind of looking ahead to the general election because he makes reference to Rockefeller.
Bumpers: The issues in this campaign are difficult to define, but the problems are many. The important question in the minds of the people is who can they believe will do what he says and who will be an honest governor?
There's a crisis of confidence in this state. It's justified because of the impasse that's been obvious between the legislature and the governor's office. The former governor contributed to the impasse by the establishment of a political machine, and the present governor has been totally ineffectual in resolving this problem.
Confidence can be restored when the people elect a governor who will speak honestly and openly on all issues, and whose word is his bond and his word people believe.
Dixon: Even though Faubus led in the primary by a pretty good margin, Bumpers ended up winning the runoff 59% to 41%. Here's some live election coverage of KATV in August of 1970.
Bumpers: First of all, I want to say that… This is a very humbling experience. I can't express my true feelings. We started out saying things that we thought were right for the people of this state, and that were right for the state. I have never deviated from the high principles that we started out with. The people identified with it.
I can never in a thousand years thank all of the people of this state who believed what I was saying, who identified with me. We had so long a hard row to hoe.
Reporter: Will you change any type of your campaign strategy?
Bumpers: Whenever you go in against Rockefeller, our basic positions will not change. I think, as I say, it wouldn't be my nature to change. The one thing I have done during this campaign is stick with what felt best to me.
The campaign will not change appreciably. The issues may vary slightly because of the different candidates, but so far as, there will be no basic change in anything we've been saying or doing, and certainly we're very optimistic that we can win. This is one of the reasons I have tried to unify our people this summer, not only because I felt that it was right what the people wanted, but then I wanted to unify them. Also, of course, for the November election.
Kellams: He survives the primary. He defeats the six-time former governor Orval Faubus, who has name recognition. Now he's going up against one of the wealthiest men in the country.
Dixon: One battle to another. So, yeah, you've got the Rockefeller name. You've got the Rockefeller money. But, you know, you also have the Republican Party, which has never been that strong in the state. Plus, you had Rockefeller in office for two terms, four years with a Democratic legislature. So he really had an uphill battle and didn't get a lot of his agenda passed.
But there was that money in the campaign. In this clip, Bumpers is questioning the fact that the Republican Party hasn't released its campaign spending.
Bumpers: Well, I think the reason the Republicans have refused to release that is painfully apparent to everybody because it's the amount they spend. This is the reason I've talked a great deal about limiting campaign expenditures. It is not just because of the amount of money that's being spent with my opponent in this campaign.
People have sort of gotten where they expected of him. This is his fourth campaign, and the expenditures in all four campaigns have been lavish. It's been unbelievable the amount of money that was spent.
Kellams: When we talked about Winthrop Rockefeller defeating Orval Faubus in the general election, part of it was people were tired of the Faubus machine. They wanted reform, and Rockefeller represented that.
Dixon: Right. And there were a lot of what they called Democrats for Winrock.
Kellams: Right.
Dixon: And he needed to win those back. And, you know, that's what he did. Bumpers. Yes. And he sort of quashed that idea that Rockefeller was progressive in the reformer, because Bumpers had him beat on that.
Kellams: Plus, Bumpers is this young, good looking, charming country lawyer.
Dixon: He's almost like the new hope for the Democratic Party. So he, you know, at this point, Bumpers had kind of neutralized Rockefeller's appeal to the Democrats. And so it was a big win for Bumpers against Rockefeller. And here's a clip from the archives of Bumpers the next day after the election, reflecting on his win.
Bumpers: There were times when I. There were many, many times. As a matter of fact, up until a week before the first primary, I just didn't think we were going to be able to do it. And the money was in extremely short supply, and not until the last three days before the first primary did I think we might have a chance of getting in, but it was through the efforts of so many of these people.
And after I went on television, we certainly gathered a lot of additional momentum with that. And many hundreds and hundreds of people went to work for us that I have had never met, still have never met. And I don't want to sound trite or political, but I think it really was a people's victory.
Kellams: All right. Randy Dixon, you've allowed us to get Dale Bumpers into the governor's mansion.
Dixon: That's right. So I guess that's it. See you next week. No, next week we will talk about his time in office.
Kellams: And, you know, when you really think about it. Four years in office and not quite four years total.
Dixon: That's right. He did come out early, which we will talk about because he went on to the Senate. So let's close on a campaign speech. Just a little clip from the archives. This is from 1970 as he's running for governor. And we'll just close out with some words from Dale Bumpers.
Kellams: And you'll be back next week with Governor Dale Bumpers.
Dixon: That's correct. I'll see you next week.
Kellams: All right. Randy Dixon is with the Pryor Center. Here's Dale Bumpers.
Bumpers: I don't care whether you're rich or poor. I don't care whether you're old or young, whether you're a laborer or whether you're a businessman, whether you're black or white. I care about you. And that's the reason I'm running for governor of Arkansas. I have been trying to talk common sense and good judgment, an ingredient which has been seriously lacking in the state of Arkansas for the last 16 years.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
