My life

Believe it or not, tomatoes played a role in the 1978 campaign. Arkansas grows a lot of them in Bradley County, most of them picked by migrant laborers who travel from South Texas through Arkansas up the Mississippi River all the way to Michigan, following the warming weather and ripening crops. As attorney general, I had gone to Hermitage, in the southern part of the county, to a community meeting on the problems the small farmers were having in implementing new federal standards for their workers’

housing. They simply couldn’t afford it. I got them some help from the Carter administration so that they could build the required facilities and stay in business. The people were very grateful, and after I announced for governor they scheduled a Bill Clinton Appreciation Day, which included the high school band leading a parade down the main street. I was excited about it and glad a reporter from the Arkansas Gazette was driving down with me to cover the story. On the way, she asked me a lot of questions about the campaign and the issues. I said something that called into question my support for the death penalty, and that became the day’s story. The whole town of Hermitage turned out, but the event, and the work that gave rise to it, remained a secret to the rest of the state. I complained about it for days until finally my staff decided the only way to shut me up was to make fun of me. They had T-shirts printed up with the words “You Should Have Seen the Crowd at Hermitage!” At least I got about all the votes down there and I learned to be more careful in dealing with reporters.

A few weeks later, I was back in Bradley County to work the tomato vote again at Warren’s annual Pink Tomato Festival, and I entered the tomato-eating contest. Three of the seven or eight competitors were young men much bigger than I was. We each got a paper sack full of tomatoes, which had been carefully weighed. When the bell sounded, we ate as many as we could in the allotted time, which I think was five minutes, a long time for a crowd to watch grown men behave like pigs at the trough. Any part of the tomato that was not consumed had to be put back in the sack, so that the exact weight of tomatoes consumed could be determined. Like a fool, I tried to win. I always did. I finished third or fourth and felt pretty sick for a couple of days. It wasn’t all for nothing, though; I got most of the votes in Warren, too. But I never entered the contest again.

The U.S. Congress had passed the equal-rights amendment to the Constitution and referred it to the states for ratification, but the requisite three-quarters of the state legislatures had not ratified it and never would. Even so, it was still a hot-button issue among Arkansas’ social conservatives, for several reasons. Senator Kaneaster Hodges, whom David Pryor had appointed to finish Senator McClellan’s term, had given an eloquent speech on the Senate floor in support of the ERA. Our friend Diane Kincaid had bested Phyllis Schlafly, the nation’s leading opponent of the amendment, in a highly publicized debate before the Arkansas legislature. And Hillary and I were on record supporting it. The opponents of the ERA predicted an end to civilization as we knew it if the amendment passed: women in combat, unisex bathrooms, broken families where uppity women no longer were subject to their husbands. Because of the ERA, I had a minor run-in with Frank Lady’s supporters at a rally of about five hundred people in Jonesboro, in northeast Arkansas. I was giving my campaign speech outlining my proposals for education and economic development when an older woman in a Lady T-shirt started screaming at me, “Talk about the ERA! Talk about the ERA!” Finally I said, “Okay. I’ll talk about it. I’m for it. You’re against it. But it won’t do as much harm as you think it will or as much good as those of us who support it wish it would. Now let’s get back to schools and jobs.” She wouldn’t let it go. She screamed,

“You’re just promoting homosexuality!” I looked at her, smiled, and said, “Ma’am, in my short life in politics, I’ve been accused of everything under the sun. But you’re the first person who ever accused me of promoting homosexuality.” The crowd roared. Even some of the Lady supporters laughed. And then I got to finish my talk.