Arkansas: Opportunity Regained

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Caution. His attitude is shared by most Arkansans. While in terms of job opportunities, political advancement, housing and other important sectors the state's Negroes are obviously behind those in the North, they are still better off than those in most other Southern states. This was true even before the Little Rock eruption in 1957. The intense racial animosities of the Deep South are notably absent in Arkansas, where Negroes had little difficulty voting even before the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In Little Rock, where schools were rigidly segregated ten years ago, some 1,400 Negroes now go to classes with whites. With a 25% Negro population statewide, Arkansas' school integration pace is ahead of the Deep South's—and with less pressure from Washington. Rather than risk another Little Rock, most white Arkansans today accept a gradualistic approach to civil rights issues.

Rockefeller also promises caution in tackling the state's many other problems. He plans ultimately to seek wide-ranging reforms—among them, a constitutional convention, a comprehensive merit system for state employees, continuing audits of state agencies and improvements in both academic and vocational education—but says that he will keep his campaign pledge not to raise taxes during his first term. He insists that he will force the resignations of some Faubus appointees who have fixed terms, but has praised several able incumbents. It was, after all, Democratic votes that elected him, and he will still need Democratic votes when he runs in 1968 for a second two-year term—which he says will be his last.

High Hopes. On paper, his chances for accomplishment seem slim. The Democrats will hold all 35 state senate seats and all but three in the 100-man house. But the Democratic Party, shaken first by Faubus' retirement, then by the defeat of a Faubus candidate in the party primary, and finally by Rockefeller's victory over Jim Johnson, is in a state of unaccustomed disarray. Moreover, the new Governor will give the Republicans control of each of the county election commissions, and that will tend to inhibit construction of a new statewide Democratic machine. Many of the 50 freshman Democrats elected to the legislature have no ties with the party establishment, and may be amenable to cooperating with a new and popular Governor.

Any successor to a twelve-year incumbent has to live up to great expectations. And Winthrop, as a Republican, a reformer, and above all a Rockefeller, has raised hopes high. Indeed, his party's future in the state will depend heavily on his performance in office. However, as North Little Rock's Democratic Mayor Laman points out: "He has a really deep desire to help this state, to leave his mark on it. Arkansas can't give him one thing he hasn't already got."

It can, in fact. It can offer Winthrop Rockefeller the personal triumph of transforming a Land of Opportunity into a state of achievement.