There are so many elements of Frank D. Scott Jr. and his candidacy for mayor of Little Rock that it's hard to know where to start.
As good a place as any is the 30 Crossing project to replace the Interstate 30 bridge and widen the interstate highway through Little Rock.
Scott is black, born on Little Rock's south side of Interstate 630. He still resides in that sector. His mother grew up on the Wolfe Street end of Ninth Street, the famous black district essentially destroyed by the Interstate 630 east-wide commuter project.
Then, in 2013, as an aide to Gov. Mike Beebe, Scott got appointed to the state Highway Commission, inheriting the already approved Interstate 30 project. He insisted that the project displace no resident. He insisted on public accountability and attended hundreds of public meetings. As a banker at First Security, he saw economic development opportunities from the project.
In other words, if I might paraphrase: Don't tell Frank Scott about local division, mostly racial but also otherwise, getting exacerbated by a freeway. His mom lived it directly. He lives its legacy. But racial division in Little Rock existed long before I-630 cemented it. Little Rock's problems of division won't be worsened by widening I-30, nor would they be solved if we blockaded it and never let another car pass.
The Interstate 30 project is different from 630, Scott insists. It is not a new divide. It pierces nothing new. Those who equate the projects in terms of division "spread misinformation shamefully," he told me in a visit Tuesday at his campaign headquarters.
I stand accused of equivocation on 30 Crossing. I agree with Scott that the next mayor's job will be to meld a cancerously divided city and that the challenge will be the same regardless of the width of Interstate 30 through downtown. I agree with Warwick Sabin that the project represents backward policy in transportation, on environment and for future lifestyles. I agree with Baker Kurrus that the policy decision has been made and Little Rock city government has long acceded to it; that something surely must be done, and that the city might find a new policy advocacy opening only if a lawsuit should change the situation.
I've called Scott the "fusion" candidate in the all-star field, mainly, as I see it, in competition with Sabin and Kurrus.
He advances his candidacy as that of a native son of southwest Little Rock who rises each day from his home still in that troubled southwest quadrant and drives to Ranch Drive in affluent west Little Rock to stroll the executive offices of First Security Bank.
Scott believes it is not contradictory, but potentially unifying, to live south of I-630 and work on the western reaches of Arkansas 10.
Scott, also a Southern Baptist pastor, used a personal anecdote to describe Little Rock's history of division: He, at 22, was a recent Memphis University graduate returned to his hometown and working on the staff of Gov. Mike Beebe. One day governor's staff members decided to meet after work at what was then Ferneau's on Kavanaugh Boulevard. Scott--a native son, a college graduate, a governor's aide--had never been north of Park Plaza. The governor's assistant policy director from Little Rock didn't know where Kavanaugh Boulevard was.
I told Scott of my conversation with a wire service reporter who was interested in this new-era Little Rock mayor's race and thought the best national hook might be the possibility that the city, famous in history for a racial conflict, might popularly elect its first black mayor. (Two black mayors, Charles Bussey and Lottie Shackelford, were city board members elected by the boards mostly ceremoniously.)
I asked Scott if he could describe what it would mean if Little Rock popularly elected a black mayor. He looked at me as if to ask whether I'd been listening to a word he'd said.
Did I not just hear him say he was running to unite the city, from east to west, from Mabelvale to the River Market?
"I'm from Little Rock," he said. "I'm running to be mayor of Little Rock. I'm not running to be the black mayor of Little Rock."
He's saying he will apply his heritage not in exclusive service to it, but to bring it more vibrantly into the broader community a mayor must serve.
I told Scott of a veteran political watcher who had told me he thought Kurrus would dominate west Little Rock, Sabin the central section of Capitol View, Stifft's Station, Hillcrest and the Heights, and Scott the eastern and southern sections, but with "marbling" throughout by which each candidate would find support in the other sectors.
Scott said the marbling was the most important part, indeed the essential objective--for his campaign and his city.
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John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at [email protected]. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 08/23/2018