Former Sen. Dale Bumpers dies at 90

[LiberalArkie]

By Max Brantley on Sat, Jan 2, 2016 at 11:27 AM

A giant of Arkansas politics, former U.S. Sen. Dale Bumpers, died last night at his Little Rock home. He was 90 and had been in failing health.

The family sent this message:

It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of our father and husband, Senator Dale Bumpers. He passed away Friday night, January 1, in his home surrounded by our family. We want to thank his many friends and colleagues who have supported him and us over the years. While most people knew him as a great governor, senator and public servant, we remember him best as a loving father and husband who gave us unconditional love and support and whose life provided wonderful guidance on how to be a compassionate and productive person. Arrangements for his memorial service are being handled by Roller Funeral Homes.

I turn to Ernest Dumas, who covered Bumpers from his rise to the governorship in 1970 through his senatorial days and remained close, for his obituary. Coming later are outtakes of Bumpers' stories from an 11-hour interview he did with Dumas for the oral history project at the Univerisity of Arkansas.

By ERNEST DUMAS

Dale Bumpers, whom a poll of historians and political scientists in 1998 ranked as Arkansas’s only great governor of the 20th century and who served for nearly a quarter of a century in the U.S. Senate, died Friday night at his home at Little Rock.

Snip

http://www.arktimes.com/ArkansasBlog/archives/2016/01/02/former-sen-dale-bumpers-dies-at-90

[LiberalArkie]

1. I thought I would also add this in from the article.

The victory established Bumpers as a political giant killer. In the course of his 28-year career, he defeated four men who had served or would serve as governor—Faubus, Rockefeller, Mike Huckabee (in a 1992 Senate race) and Asa Hutchinson (in a 1986 Senate race), all by large margins, in addition to one of the state's most distinguished and longest-serving senators, J. William Fulbright.

Two rare characteristics marked the Bumpers political phenomenon. He didn't criticize his political opponents or run negative ads about them because his father thought such conduct was unseemly, and he followed his own, usually liberal, instincts as both governor and senator, disregarding polls or conventional wisdom about what politicians could do in a deeply conservative electorate. Votes for taxes, civil rights, unrestrained free speech and even returning the Panama Canal to Panama barely diminished his popularity.

[cloudbase]

2. His speech at Clinton's impeachment trial

was one of the best I've ever heard.

[LiberalArkie]

3. We have had quite a few Statesman that have come from Arkansas. Very few people of that

caliber come along any more.

[sinkingfeeling]

5. Ditto

[shenmue]

4. ...

[47of74]

6. RIP Sen. Bumpers