Orval Faubus - Faubus-style Politics

Faubus-style Politics

Faubus was elected governor to six two-year terms and hence served for twelve years. He maintained a defiant, populist image, while he shifted toward a less confrontational stance with the federal government, particularly during the administrations of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, with each of whom he remained cordial, and both of whom carried Arkansas.

In the 1956 general election, Faubus, having already eliminated Jim Johnson, overwhelmed GOP candidate Roy Mitchell, later the GOP state chairman from Hot Springs, 321,797 (80.7%) to 77,215 (19.4%). In 1958, he defeated Republican George W. Johnson of Greenwood in Sebastian County by drawing 82.5% of the votes.

In 1960, Faubus defeated Attorney General Bruce Bennett in the Democratic gubernatorial primary for and then crushed the Republican choice, Henry M. Britt, an attorney from Hot Springs, to secure reelection. Faubus polled 292,064 votes (69.2%) to Britt's 129,921 (30.8%). In the presidential election contest, however, Democrat John F. Kennedy won Arkansas over the Republican Richard M. Nixon by less than expected. Britt was later a circuit judge in Garland County from 1967 to 1983.

In 1962, Faubus broke with the White Citizens' Councils and other rightist groups, who preferred, but did not officially endorse, U.S. Representative Dale Alford in that year's gubernatorial primary. Faubus cast himself as a moderate, he completely ignored the race issue during the 1962 election campaign, and barely secured a majority over Alford, McMath, and three other candidates. He then handily defeated the Republican Willis Ricketts, a then 37-year-old pharmacist from Fayetteville in the general election.

While he was still an outcast from black leaders, Faubus nevertheless won a large percent of the black vote. In 1964, when he defeated the Republican Winthrop Rockefeller by a 57-43 percent margin, Faubus secured 81 percent of the black vote. He even collected a share of the base Republican vote from the conservative party members who had sided with former Republican state chairman William L. Spicer of Fort Smith, an intraparty rival of Rockefeller.

Faubus chose not to run for re-election to a seventh term in what would likely have been a difficult race in 1966. Former gubernatorial candidate James D. Johnson, by then an elected Arkansas Supreme Court Justice, narrowly won the Democratic nomination over another justice, the moderate Frank Holt. Johnson was then defeated in the general election by Rockefeller, who became the state's first GOP governor since Reconstruction. Ironically, years later, Johnson himself became a Republican and supported Governor Frank D. White, later a benefactor of Faubus.

In 1968, Faubus was among five people considered for the vice-presidential slot of third-party presidential candidate George Wallace. However, in light of the public perception of both as segregationists, Wallace ended up selecting retired General Curtis LeMay.

During the 1969 season, Faubus was hired by new owner Jess Odom to be general manager of his Li'l Abner theme park in the Ozark Mountains, Dogpatch USA. According to newspaper articles, Faubus was said to have commented that managing the park was similar to running state government because some of the same tricks applied to both.

Faubus sought the governorship again in 1970, 1974, and 1986 but was defeated in the Democratic primaries by Dale Bumpers, David Pryor, and Bill Clinton, respectively, each of whom went on to defeat Republican opponents. In the 1970 race, two other Democratic candidates in the running, Joe Purcell and Hayes McClerkin, failed to make the runoff, and Bumpers barely edged Purcell for the chance to face Faubus directly. In his last race, 1986, Faubus polled 174,402 votes (33.5 percent) to Clinton's 315,397 (60.6 percent).

Faubus' decline occurred when the Democrats reformed their own party in response to public acceptance of the progressive polices followed by Rockefeller. Thus, a new generation of popular Democratic candidates easily contrasted themselves favorably in voters' minds with Faubus' old-style politics and a more conservative Republican Party which followed Rockefeller's tenure in the state.

In 1976, a report surfaced that Arkansas Republican leaders had approached Faubus about running for governor that year against Pryor, but both Faubus and the GOP denied the claim. The GOP instead ran the 40-year-old Pine Bluff plumber Leon Griffith as its sacrificial lamb candidate against Pryor, who won the second of his two gubernatorial terms with more than 80 percent of the ballots.