FAYETTEVILLE -- Arkansas' economy and culture are thriving, but the state's politics are a mess, speaker Rex Nelson told the Political Animals Club of Northwest Arkansas on Friday.
"We have a largely incompetent state Legislature paired with a dysfunctional governor's office," Nelson told the crowd of at least 150 attending the lunch meeting in Fayetteville. Nelson, a newspaper columnist and author, was director of policy and communications for then-Gov. Mike Huckabee -- the father of current Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Sanders' office had no comment when contacted.
The state's history is rife with disasters and setbacks both natural and self-inflicted, Nelson said, from the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811 through 1812 before Arkansas was a state to the self-inflicted anti-integration crisis of 1957. Now Arkansas is poised to overcome all those, Nelson said, unless the state's governing bodies derail progress.
"Thinking people have stepped to the political sidelines," Nelson said. "They aren't stepping up. People from the fringes have filled that void."
For example, school board races draw candidates "who want to ban books rather than add them," he said.
The Legislature and the governor's office are filled with careerists, he said.
"Legislators used to come to sessions for 60 days every two years and then go back to their communities," he said. "Now how many hearings do they have in Little Rock? They have too many. They need the per diem" to make a living, he said.
"We need people who love our state more than their own political careers," Nelson said, drawing applause.
In contrast, Northwest Arkansas continues to boom economically and culturally, Nelson said. Fort Smith has a major international training program for air force pilots coming in. South Arkansas has the prospect of a lithium extraction boom possibly rivaling the region's oil boom of the 1920s, he said. Northeast Arkansas has grown into the major steel-producing region in the United States. Central Arkansas has booming businesses in distribution centers for Amazon and others.
"Now I fear again we're going to mess it up and quit being serious," Nelson said. "I love you, Arkansas. Please prove me wrong."
The crowd gave Nelson a standing ovation.
Tom King of Fayetteville said Nelson gave a very good talk. Don Nelms of Jasper, a businessman and former staff member for then-Gov. Mike Beebe, said he saw the beginnings of the careerism and focus on national partisan issues rather than state interest back then. Beebe left office in January 2015.