Pryor more than just a nice guy

Steve Brawner Arkansas Commentary

Can nice guys finish first in politics? Yes, but they should be more than just nice, and Sen.

David Pryor was.

As you probably know, Pryor died Saturday at age 89 after a long career in public service that included, but was not limited to, three decades of elective office.

Pryor was one of Arkansas’ three most powerful Democrats at a time when the party dominated state politics, the others being former President Bill Clinton and the late Sen. Dale Bumpers. Pryor’s death brings that chapter of Arkansas history nearer to closing.

Politics was in Pryor’s blood. In an appearance in Little Rock in 2016, he said his grandfather and father were Ouachita County sheriffs. His mother was the first Arkansas woman to seek elective office after women could vote and eventually served on the school board. He won his first race in the third grade, when he was elected class president in his hometown of Camden. He served as class president every year until his senior year, when he became student body president.

He first went to the U.S. Capitol as a Senate page in 1951. After his job ended that summer, he went downstairs to the basement, climbed up into a crevasse, and stuck a dime in the corner. He told the dime he would return to get it someday when he was a congressman.

After college, he owned a newspaper and then became a state legislator. He then was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1966.

When he returned to the Capitol, he looked to

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see if the dime was still there. It was, and that’s where he left it.

As a member of Congress, he volunteered in nursing homes and found conditions where up to 15 beds were in one room and where one attendant was caring for 80 patients. He saw three wheelchair-bound men sitting in their own feces, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported. When he couldn’t get House leaders to act, he held hearings in a trailer near the Capitol. Eventually, the Nixon White House announced plans for more inspectors and enforcement agents.

His path next brought him back home to serve as governor, where he kept a sign on his desk saying, “Arkansas comes first.” He appointed the Arkansas Supreme Court’s first female justice, Elsijane Trimble Roy, and its first African American justice, George Howard.

He was elected to the Senate in 1978 and served three terms. There, he helped pass the Taxpayer Bill of Rights that, among other provisions, required the IRS to inform taxpayers of their rights prior to conducting an audit. Eventually, he become the Senate’s third ranking Democrat.

As reported by the Democrat-Gazette, early in his first term, an aide in President Carter’s White House wrote of him in a memo, “He is totally unassuming and, if it could be said, has the least ego of any other U.S. Senator I know.”

The tributes that followed his death more than four decades later echoed that description.

The fact that he achieved his position showed that a nice guy can finish first, but he should be more than nice.

“Nice” is not necessarily a desirable trait. It can hide things, and it can describe a person too willing to concede in order to keep peace and gain approval.

A man needs character. So does a statesman.

Among his endeavors after leaving office was serving as a University of Arkansas System trustee. He was one of only two who voted in 2016 against a $160 million expansion of Donald W. Reynolds Razorback Stadium that included 3,200 new high-dollar premium seats. He argued that the university had higher priorities and that it wasn’t the right time to expand the football stadium. A big concern was the expansion being financed largely by a $120 million bond issue.

“A bond issue is a debt of the University of Arkansas,” he said back then. “It is a debt of the people of Arkansas, and ultimately if something goes wrong, who’s responsible?

And that’s the people.”

Pryor came from a time when all politics was local. You got elected by shaking hands, not by generating clicks.

In Pryor’s day, a nice guy could finish first. One still can. But then as now, a statesman should be more than that. Pryor was.

Steve Brawner is a syndicated columnist published in 16 outlets in Arkansas. Email him at brawnersteve@ mac. com. Follow him on Twitter at @ steve-brawner.