LITTLE ROCK — If his aging parents hadn’t become ill, John Gray said he’d still be in Mexico, enjoying the good life.
The Green Party nominee for U.S. Senate said that in 1997, after becoming frustrated working for corporations, he moved to Saltillo, in the mountainous northern region of the country, where he had made friends.
“I ate good food, drank good things, ran, and sat in the park and read books,” Gray said. “I’ve always been a runner. Where I lived in a middle-class Mexican neighborhood there was a sports park and a half-mile trail around a lake. I’d go out and run and then have a nice breakfast and wallow around.It was wonderful.”
Gray said he dabbled in Internet stock trading until he realized he should invest his money in other things. In 1999, he made several trips to Greenland, a town of about 1,000 just south of Fayetteville, to construct an apartment building near where his son lived.
“Then I went back to Mexico because I liked it,” he said.
But he soon returned to Arkansas for good to take care of his parents in North Little Rock. His father later died. Afterward, he moved his mother to Greenland where she lives a few blocks away from her son.
He says he ran for mayor of Greenland in 2006 because a developer wanted to build a subdivision uphill from his apartment building and his mother’s house. He said he feared that would lead to sewage leaking from septic tanks down toward his property.
He says he won election as an outsider, defeating three other candidates, whom he described as established political types in the town.
“I got [the developer] to agree to go with a conventional sewer, so I accomplished what I set out to do,” Gray said.
Therefore, he said, he had no interest in seeking re-election this year.
While mayor, he said, he prevented a national company from building a truck stop off Interstate 540.
Gray said his goal was to protect a locally owned truck stop from competition that might put it out of business.
His stance against the national company received attention among local Green Party activists, who asked if he would run against Democratic incumbent U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln.
“If things aren’t turned around soon, it’s going to bea bleak future for our kids and grandkids,” Gray said. “I didn’t want to think I had the opportunity but didn’t do anything with it. I was a Democrat for many years. I concluded that the Green Party today is what Democrats used to be until they moved so far to the right.”
Initially, Gray said he didn’t think he had a chance to win but he said he now thinks more optimistically because of support from union members and from chatter he’s read on the Internet.
“I’m the best hope the working man has got,” he said. “I was brought up as a Republican union-hating son-of-a-gun, but the work in Mexico flipped me.”
He said he was working for a company in a role that helped send American jobs to Mexico. He said he quit in frustration after the company wanted to move jobs toChina.
“I can’t speak for all companies, but the companies I was in management with were not what I would call overly burdened with ethical weight,” Gray said.
If he wins the Senate race, he said, his main focus will be getting the United States out of the World Trade Organization and the North American Free Trade Agreement.
His goals are twofold: helping American workers and Mexican workers.
“The United States needs to be a force for good,” Gray said. “We can’t help Mexico by becoming poor ourselves. We can’t help Mexico by forcing Fort Smith to compete head-to-head with Mexico for jobs that pay 50 cents an hour. Those are subsistencelevel jobs. We need to make it so you can’t sell your crap in this country - excuse my language - unless you treat your people well.”John Gray
Age:
68
Birthplace:
Morrilton
Current town of residence:
Greenland
Family:
Divorced, two children
Current occupation:
Mayor of Greenland since 2007, apartment building owner
Business/Political experience:
Engineer, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, Kansas City, Mo., 1967 to 1977; engineer, Fixtures Furniture and Manufacturing Co., Kansas City, Mo., 1977 to 1981; manager, Whitaker Cable, Kansas City, Mo., 1981 to 1986;
consultant, Ford Motor Co., Dearborn, Mich., 1986 to 1988;
plant manager, Unistrut Corp., Kansas City, Mo., 1988 to 1990;
house builder, Little Rock, 1991 to 1992; manager, Precision Interconnect Inc., 1992 to 1997
Education:
North Little Rock High School; bachelor’s degree, University of Arkansas at Little Rock; master’s degree, University of Arkansas at Fayetteville
Political affiliation:
Green Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Front Section, Pages 12 on 10/24/2010