Stronger party Gwatney's legacy

LITTLE ROCK (AP) If Arkansas' Democratic Party can be described as the big tent in the state's political circus, Bill Gwatney was the perfect ringmaster for it.

Before he was fatally shot in his office last week, Gwatney was the type of leader the party needed as it returned to an energy that it hadn't seen since Bill Clinton's days as governor. Blunt and sometimes brash, he helped manage a state party whose dominance sometimes made its identity unrecognizable.

"If there was ever a disparity of ideas, it's in the Democratic Party," said Highway Commissioner Cliff Hoofman, a Democrat who served in the Senate with Gwatney. "He was able to make the party far more cohesive than it was in several years."

Gwatney died Wednesday after a gunman burst into the state headquarters in Little Rock and shot him. The suspect, Timothy Dale Johnson of Searcy, was fatally wounded when he confronted police after a 30-mile chase.

A veteran lawmaker tapped by Gov. Mike Beebe last year to lead the state party, Gwatney had just begun to see the fruits of his labor over a short period. A car dealer turned legislator who kept one foot in the political realm and another in the business realm, Gwatney was able to pull together the disparate parts of the Democratic Party together.

"He gave a tremendous amount of credibility to Democrats in Arkansas," said Sen. Percy Malone, D-Arkadelphia. "He brought the business community and working people together."

That unity, however, came with a share of headaches. Gwatney earned the ire of some Democratic legislators earlier this year when he admonished them for hosting fundraisers for their Republican colleagues.

"Friendships are good. Friendships should be cultivated. But friendships for legislative purposes should be left at the door of the Capitol," Gwatney wrote.

Lawmakers also credit him for taking the lead in opposing former state Rep. Dwayne Dobbins' return to the seat he left to avoid a felony sexual assault conviction.

At one point threatening to bang on Dobbins' door until the former lawmaker would talk to him, Gwatney was the most vocal opponent of Dobbins' attempt to return to the Legislature as a Democrat.

"That wasn't an easy deal...It would have been easy for somebody to turn their head and not do anything, either," House Speaker Benny Petrus said. "(Gwatney) never backed away from doing the right thing."

Nationally, Democrats paid attention to Gwatney's work and said he helped strengthen the finances of the party that he helped build. One of his first goals as chairman was to buy the downtown Little Rock building that the party had long rented for its offices.

National Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean cited that move as an accomplishment that the party will reap the benefits from in the long run.

"Buying the building, that's a really big deal. That's a very important way to stabilize the party's finances in good times and in difficult times," Dean said. "As long as the party never mortgages it and holds on to it as long as they can, they'll be a stable party."

At the time of his death, the party was in the midst of expanding its reach into even solidly conservative portions of the state. In an Aug. 5 e-mail newsletter, Gwatney wrote that the party planned to add headquarters in Sebastian, Pope, Washington and Benton counties.

The party also planned to open a headquarters in White County the home of Gwatney's killer the day after Gwatney's death.

Former Sen. Morril Harriman, who sat next to Gwatney in the state Senate chamber, said Gwatney's energy and bluntness as a legislator translated well in leading the party. Harriman said that, the day before his death, Gwatney had talked about the excitement he had seen at a party event in Fort Smith, a city in the Republican stronghold of northwest Arkansas.

"Since I have been around here, I don't think I have seen Democrats around the state as energized and as excited," said Harriman, now Beebe's chief of staff. "The times we went to local Democratic events with Bill, the numbers were bigger and you just felt it. I hadn't seen that in a number of years."

Beebe, who used to play golf with Gwatney and called him a loyal friend, said Gwatney wouldn't like the idea of his friends sitting around and mourning his death. Instead, Beebe said, Gwatney would want them to get back to the people's work.

Former Rep. Joyce Elliott, a Little Rock Democrat set to join the Senate next year, offered a lesson that she and others are likely to follow after Gwatney's passing.

"I hope as elected officials what we'll take from this is the courage that Bill Gwatney showed, to do what he knew was right, without having the whole world behind him before he decided to do what was right," Elliott said as she mourned his death with more than 250 others on the state Capitol steps Thursday. "If we are elected leaders like Bill Gwatney, we lead. We don't just represent."

DeMillo covers Arkansas government and politics for The Associated Press.