Inside the Arkansas Legislature

About the Book

From October 15, 1978, until January 20, 2004, I worked for the Arkansas General Assembly, a.k.a. the Arkansas legislature. That’s more than a quarter century on the public payroll. The legislature is made up of a hundred representatives in the House and thirty-five senators in the Senate. A big part of my job as Senate chief of staff was public relations—daily attempts to put a positive spin on the men and women who held these very public positions. My duties included speech writing, supervising a large staff, traveling the country, and even driving legislators home after they had stayed too long at local watering holes and honky-tonks. I even had to tell one preacher/legislator not to be hanging out with well-known prostitutes, and that certainly was not a pleasant assignment—for me, I mean, not the preacher. This book is a look-back at those twenty-five-plus years. Some experiences were uproariously funny, while others were devastatingly sad and distressing. I became the Arkansas Senate’s first chief of staff in 1985 and stayed in this post about twenty years. My previous six years were spent in the House, where I held two positions. These pages will reflect some of what I went through in my work and will present stories about the men and women who sat in those big leather chairs in the marbled chambers. Some of them wielded enormous power, and some went away to prison for abusing that power. And the issue of term limits and how their enactment in the mid-’90s changed Arkansas politics will also be a topic of discussion. I had to stand my ground when things got heated, and I always remained truthful even when the various factions pulled and tugged at me. I worked with some enormously talented individuals, including President Bill Clinton. He dropped by the office to tell us good-bye as he left his home state to take over a much bigger job in Washington, DC. It was a day to remember, like so many others there in Arkansas’s most imposing, century-old building. The enactment of term limits dramatically changed Arkansas history and stripped the legislature of much of its power and influence. Before terms were scaled back by angry voters, legislators in Arkansas served decades and controlled the government purse strings. There was little doubt that powerful legislators ruled the roost, and everyone—governors, employees, and lobbyists—had to kowtow to their every need or else pay a huge price. The Democratic Party stayed in power for a very long time until term limits sent veteran legislators packing and set the stage for a Republican Party takeover of the legislature and the state’s constitutional offices. I witnessed the old system up close and personally and was proud and honored to be an integral part of it, and I stayed long enough to see how the new term-limited neophytes took to their publically financed playground. One of the veteran senators became governor—his name, Mike Beebe. He served twenty years in the Senate, and he was the person responsible for my taking the chief of staff job. He later served two four-year terms as governor, and over the years, he encouraged me to put this book together because he said, no one will remember how the Arkansas legislature worked or even existed prior to term limits unless some of the stories and some of the colorful history are preserved by an insider who actually worked at the place where power lived for so long. Some days at my plush office were a breeze, but others made me long for my job back at the newspaper office. Now retired, I look back on my career with great satisfaction, and I’m glad that for a while, at least, I was, what one of my lobbyist pals called, “the straw that stirred the drink.”

About the Author

Bill Lancaster lives in Sheridan, Arkansas. He is the youngest of Joe and Pauline’s seven children, all of whom have enjoyed successful careers in writing and business. Bill spent ten years in the newspaper business as an editor, columnist, and reporter and entered the world of politics in 1977, working for a congressman and later the Arkansas House of Representatives. In 1985, he became the Arkansas Senate’s first chief of staff and, after twenty-five-plus years at the state capitol, returned home to become director of a museum and resume his writing career. His political endeavors included hosting nationally televised meetings, public speaking, and serving as an election night TV analyst. He has two previously published books, Grant County Scoops and a novel entitled Benchwarmer. He is the father of two children, and he has four grandchildren. He and his wife, Scarlet, reside in Sheridan on the Lancaster family property, where Bill was born in 1946.