Morril Hilton Harriman Jr.

Morril Harriman is Gov. Mike Beebe’s chief of staff - and best friend. A behind-the-scenes brainy type, Harriman also is considered by many to be the state’s most powerful chief of staff ever.

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/STEPHEN B. THORNTON --1-10-12--
Morril Harriman, Gov. Beebe's Chief Of Staff for a High Profile cover story.
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/STEPHEN B. THORNTON --1-10-12-- Morril Harriman, Gov. Beebe's Chief Of Staff for a High Profile cover story.

— Morril Harriman isn’t just Gov. Mike Beebe’s chief of staff. He’s the governor’s “bro,” and vice versa.

The familiar form of address is no exaggeration. More than best friends, each considers the other the brother he never had.

“First and foremost, you’re talking trust,” Beebe says. “We know each other just about as well as two people can. He knows what I’m likely to do before I do it.”

Says Harriman: “He is exactly like a brother to me.”

As the fiscal session of the 88th General Assembly prepares to convene next month, their relationship makes Harriman perhaps the most powerful chief of staff Arkansas has ever seen and seems to have helped Beebe become one of the state’s most popular governors. Of course, politics can change in a hurry.

As for Harriman, “smart” is the first word people use to describe the 61-yearold lawyer and Hamburg native, usually closely followed by “effective.”

From his years as a state senator to his current role, Harriman has immersed himself in the actual details of state government. In an ego-filled business, he has sublimated his own to get things done.

Then there’s his relationship with Beebe, which goes beyond politics. When not running the state, the two might be found hitting the golf links together, taking their wives to dinner or watching the Cotton Bowl from Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones’ private box.

John Brummett, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist and veteran Arkansas political journalist, offers some historical perspective.

“I’ve never seen a governor-chief of staff relationship that was also a bestfriend relationship,” Brummett says. “Betsey Wright and Bill Clinton had a tension-filled, high-maintenance relationship. Mike Huckabee’s [chief of staff] Brenda Turner was a friend of his from church, and they were close, but not like this. Beebe and Harriman are truly like brothers. They have the same brain.

“It makes Harriman something beyond what a normal chief of staff is.”

SLEEPING IN THE COURTHOUSE

Harriman and Beebe may be of one mind, but there are differences. When Beebe sits down to discuss Harriman, he throws his feet up on a coffee table in the governor’s office and talks in an expansive, gesture-filled stream of consciousness. Harriman conducts his own interview from behind a desk, fingertips tented and a thin smile playing at his lips, considering each question the way he might a statement in a courtroom or legislative hearing. He looks young for his age and is compactly built, even more so since he took up bicycling seriously a few years back.

Friends say he has a sharp sense of humor, and it would be inaccurate to paint him as purely a behind-the-scenes operator. He’s good in a crowd and in front of one, able to deliver a speech to a high school graduation class and schmooze business executives at a reception.

Harriman was born and raised in Hamburg, where the interests of his adult life — law and politics — were set early. Harriman’s father, Morril Hilton Harriman, was a state highway patrolman and his mother, Inez Burchfield Harriman, worked as a legal secretary and assistant to the county judge.

“Politics was always just part of the family,” says Harriman, who slept in the Ashley County courthouse while his mother helped with elections. “She would actually make me an old-fashioned pallet to sleep on.”

Harriman earned degrees in political science and law from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, where he worked on the first, unsuccessful campaign of one of his law professors — Bill Clinton.

“He [Harriman] was always one of the smart ones that all the rest of us hated,” jokes Harriett Phillips, who went to UA with him and today works as his executive assistant. “Very, very smart. Very charismatic. I mean, he hasn’t changed in looks or demeanor really at all.”

Harriman married Donna Creekmore during his senior year in college and moved to her hometown, Van Buren, to become the law partner of her father, retired Circuit Judge Carl Creekmore. In 1984, at the age of 33, he ran for the state Senate seat for that district. He won a close primary and general election.

As a legislator, Harriman ran unopposed for his last two terms. Folks in his district credited him with getting the Van Buren Adult Education Center built and Arkansas 59 widened, the latter important for the city’s growth. When term limits forced him out of the Senate after his fourth term, a Republican seeking to replace him said she hoped to represent the district in the same accessible, nonpartisan manner as Harriman.

His youngest son, John Harriman, said he thinks his father took to Van Buren because it was bigger than his hometown, but not too big.

“I think Van Buren was kind of the next level up,” says John, who’s a lawyer with the Mitchell Williams firm in Little Rock. “It still kind of had the same small-town feel — good schools for kids and things like that — but he felt like it was a bigger city, and he could do bigger things.”

Although Harriman’s first marriage ended after 18 years, he remained an attentive, if undemonstrative, father, his son says. “It took me a long time to realize, because he wasn’t always the most affectionate with words,” John says.

John says his father attended every basketball game during his senior year on the team, even when it meant chartering a plane to get there from Little Rock while the Legislature was in session.

Another memory John has of his father is from years earlier, when he was about 10 and the two of them were approaching a cafe in downtown Van Buren.

“A woman walked in about the same time. I was going to walk in before her. Dad grabbed the back of my neck and opened the door for the woman. It was kind of, ‘Son, you don’t go before women, you open the door for them.’ I was so embarrassed, I should have known that.”

GOLFING REFORMERS

It was Harriman’s work in the Senate that would lead to his partnership with Beebe, who had come into the Legislature two years earlier. Before that happened, another state senator noticed Harriman’s talents — Nick Wilson, the powerful lawmaker from Pocahontas who drafted Harriman as an ally. It wasn’t until 1988, when Wilson tried to block major ethics reform legislation, that Harriman decided to join a group of senators — including Beebe. Wilson, who later was convicted of one count of racketeering and went to federal prison, derided them as the “reform-minded young golfers.”

In fact, Harriman and Beebe did, and do, like to play golf. It was one of many things, including law degrees and a centrist, pragmatic political philosophy, they have in common.

Harriman was willing to let Beebe be the public face of the partnership.

Brummett tells of watching Harriman and Beebe sit together during legislative hearings.

“Harriman would be poring over some budget manual or document, and he would see something that interested him,” Brummett says. “He’d poke Beebe, at which time Beebe would punch his microphone and hold forth publicly.

“That’s not to minimize what Beebe did — he was the obvious talent. But Harriman is sort of his equally smart partner but seems happy to be No. 2 to somebody.”

Beebe claims Harriman also occasionally kicked him under the table during those hearings when Beebe was about to say too much.

“He’s always had that calming effect,” Beebe said.

The two didn’t work alone, and Beebe credits Harriman with being a master consensus builder in the Senate. Harriman gained a reputation in the Senate for being a skilled writer and editor of legislation and also as a fair broker as chairman of the Rules Committee.

In 1992, Harriman married Martha Miller, a lobbyist and the daughter of longtime state Rep. John Miller, a union that ended in divorce.

During the last day of the 1999 legislative session, as senators departing because of term limits made farewell speeches, Harriman received the loudest, most emotional ovation of all, one that came from both sides of the aisle.

“Morril was always very respected in the Senate, very fair, very studied,” says Doyle Webb, who served with Harriman and is now the state Republican Party chairman.

EFFECTIVE ON BOTH SIDES

As a senator, Harriman routinely made the lists of most effective legislators assembled by media outlets. In 2000, he joined the lists of most effective lobbyists as chief lobbyist for the powerful Poultry Federation, a job he would hold until Beebe ascended to the governor’s office.

While former legislators who go into lobbying are often criticized, Harriman said it was natural for him to represent an industry so important to Arkansas and also the kind of challenge he likes.

It’s safe to say that the poultry job was lucrative. Beebe has said that Harriman took a six-figure pay cut to become his chief of staff.

“It’s a rare opportunity that a man gets to be the chief of staff to a governor who happens to be your best friend,” Harriman says. “I thought I would really enjoy waking up in the morning and look forward to going to work. There really is more to a job than what your pay is.”

CHIEF OF STAFF

The chief of staff’s job was Harriman’s first job managing a large number of people, and a little intimidating, he says.

After being named the head of Beebe’s transition team in late 2006, Harriman says, “I literally woke up and said, ‘How do you put together a governor’s office?’ That was some of the highest pressure.”

His success at doing so can best be judged by Beebe’s success, and by that measure he looks pretty good.

Beebe got most of his key proposals passed by his first Legislature, in 2007, including cutting the state’s sales tax on groceries from 6 percent to 3 percent, using half of a $1 billion surplus to improve school facilities and earmarking $50 million to attract business to the state.

During a special session the next year, Beebe got lawmakers to raise the state’s severance tax on natural gas for the first time in 50 years, a move that generated about $51 million for highways in fiscal year 2011.

In 2009, Beebe got the Legislature to cut another 1 percent off the grocery tax, while raising tobacco taxes to pay for health programs. Beebe also cut the state budget that year and the next, using more of the state’s surplus to avoid cutting programs and laying off employees.

Beebe trounced his opponent to win re-election in 2010 and, in a statewide poll released last fall, registered a 72 percent approval rating — the highest of any governor in the nation.

Last year, Beebe succeeded in chopping another 0.5 percent off the grocery tax but blamed Republicans for blocking the establishment of a health-insurance exchange under the federal Affordable Care Act.

As lawmakers prepare to convene in Little Rock next month, the state’s overall budget seems to be in good shape, but Beebe’s proposal for dealing with a $4 million shortfall at the state Forestry Commission is expected to prove contentious.

Brummett calls the Forestry Commission issue “notable only because it’s so rare. Of all the governors’ administrations I’ve covered, this one has been in the news less for mistakes, snafus and embarrassments than any other.”

Much credit for that is given to Harriman. Beebe says his chief of staff’s handling of administrative matters frees him for the many public and private demands on a governor’s time.

“There’s a standing joke: If I fire you, you’re not really fired. But if he fires you, you’re really fired.”

Harriman also is a key player in the negotiations between politicians, interest groups and others that lead to legislation.

Beebe claims there are times when he sees lawmakers lined up to talk to Harriman while his own calendar is empty.

GOING SOFT

John Harriman says he has noticed one change in his father over the years.

“I think he’s gotten a little bit softer,” John says, adding with a chuckle, “People around the workplace probably wouldn’t agree with that assessment. But I think he’s opened up a bit and realized how important family and relationships are, and he acknowledges it more verbally.”

Susan Harriman, who married Morril Harriman in August 2010, said she has no way of knowing if that’s true: He’s always been that way around her.

But Harriman says his son “is probably correct. I do think I react to situations much more calmly than I did at one time. I have a better understanding that it’s a rare issue that causes the sky to fall.”

He seems to be having fun, on and off the job. On nice afternoons, he sometimes gets out of the office for a 15-mile bike ride. He gave up smoking a few years back, although he admits to sneaking a smoke now and then.

The couple met when Susan, a Texas native and a Republican, traveled to Arkansas as an education consultant. She spotted him across the room and thought, “Who is that guy?”

They stayed in touch for several years before they began dating. Harriman “felt like I was kind of giving him mixed messages,” she said, but Susan, who had also been married before and has two grown daughters, said she was just being cautious.

Finally, his efforts were victorious and the two married, with Susan moving from Texas to take a job with the Arkansas Department of Education.

Few of Harriman’s friends expect him to enter electoral politics again when his friend’s term as governor expires in 2014, but Harriman doubts whether he’ll be far from the action.

“I can’t see myself just going home.”

SELF PORTRAIT

Morril Harriman

DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH Aug. 6, 1950, Hamburg

THE LAST BOOK I READ WAS The Litigators by John Grisham.

THE PLACE I’D MOST LIKE TO VISIT IS The moon.

THE BEST POLITICAL ADVICE I EVER RECEIVED WAS No matter what you do, somebody is going to be mad so you might as well do what you think is right.

IF I HADN’T BECOME A LAWYER I WOULD HAVE Tried to be a farmer.

NOBODY KNOWS I AM Really pretty introverted.

MY IDEA OF A PERFECT DAY IS Going to a place I’ve never been.

I DRIVE A GMC pickup.

THE GUESTS AT MY FANTASY DINNER PARTY WOULD BE Alexander the Great, Mark Twain, Albert Einstein, Neil Armstrong and Yogi Berra.

MY WIFE THINKS I AM Kind.

I CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT Susan.

MY RESOLUTION FOR 2012 WAS The one resolution I’ve kept is not to do resolutions.

ONE WORD TO SUM ME UP Inquisitive.

High Profile, Pages 35 on 01/15/2012

Upcoming Events