Editor’s Note

Staff

Vol. 3, No. 2, 1981, pp. 4-5

Four states—and only Arkansas in the South—elect governors for merely a two-year term. More than most other high ranking officials these four governors must face the electorate only after a relatively brief time in office and may suffer the benefits or tragedies of the changing winds of public sentiment.

Unlike members of the U.S. House of Representatives who also serve only for two years, the two-year governors must set a tone—cast a vision for their administrations. From the day they take office, when custom requires a formal public address to the people of the state, governors cannot easily swing both ways nor satisfy opposing concerns by voting differently on different votes on the same issues.

In Arkansas in January, 1979, the state’s youngest governor, Bill Clinton,

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gave an inaugural address that soon led people to discussing his national future as a Democrat. Two years later, Frank White, a middle-aged Republican offered the state quite a different view of government as Clinton listened to the man who defeated his re-election.

These two contrasting views of government in Arkansas do not explain entirely why Bill Clinton lost the governor’s chair. They do represent a remarkable portrait of common notions, differing styles, and opposing philosophies that represent the change in elected government in 1981 at both the stateand national levels.

One final note: Governor White’s address received no prompting from President Reagan’s inaugural speech. White presented his remarks on an January l3, 1981—seven days before the changing of the guard in Washington.

An Era of “Pride and Hope” 1979

By Bill Clinton

Vol. 3, No. 2, 1981, pp. 4, 18

As we celebrate this new beginning, I want to explain as clearly as my command of the language will allow what kind of governor I will try to be.

Like anyone else, I will tend to make decisions that reflect the values and principles I have come to cherish over the years of living and strugg ling to grasp what understanding I can of the human condition.

For as long as I can remember, I have believed passionately in the cause of equal opportunity, and I will do what I can to advance it.

For as long as I can remember I have deplored the arbitrary and abusive exercise of power by those in authority, and I will do what I can to prevent it.

For as long as I can remember, I have rued the waste, and lack of order and discipline that are too often in evidence in governmental affairs, and I will do what I can to diminish them.

For as long as I can remember, I have loved the land, air, and water of Arkansas, and I will do what I can to protect them.

For as long as I can remember, I have wished to ease the burdens of life for those who, through no fault of their own, are old or weak or needy, and I will try to help them.

For as long as I can remember, I have been saddened by the sight of so many of our independent, industrious people working too hard for too little because of inadequate economic opportunities, and I will do what I can to enhance them.

Today, we begin anew the people’s business in a time that is confusing, uncertain, and sometimes difficult to understand. In the recent past, we have learned again the hard lesson that there are limits to what government can do—indeed, limits to what people can do. We live in a world in which limited resources, limited knowledge, and limited wisdom must grapple with problems of staggering complexity and confront strong sources of power, wealth, conflict, and even destruction, over which we have no control and little influence.

Let us not learn too much of this lesson, however, lest caught in the thrall of what we cannot do, we forget what we can and should do. We are a people of pride and hope, of vision and skill, of vast capacities for work. We have the prospect, for which we have waited so long, of economic growth which does not require us to ravage our land and so to reject our heritage. We have the immeasurable benefit of living in a state in which the population is sufficiently small and widely dispersed for people of all kinds still to know and trust each other, still to believe in and work together for the elusive common good.

We have an opportunity together to forge a future that is more remarkable, more rich, and more fulfilling to all Arkansas than our proud past, and we must not squander it.

There is much to be done.

In education, we have lingered too long on or near the bottom of the heap in spending per student and in teaching salaries. We must try to reverse that. However, we must be mindful that higher quality education will not come from money alone. The money must be but part of a plan which includes better accountability and assessment for students and teachers, a fairer distribution of aid, more efficient organization of school districts, and recognition of work still to be done in programs for kindergarten, special education, and gifted and talented children.

In energy, we have been too undisciplined and tardy in our efforts to

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provide for future energy supply that we need for sustenance and growth at prices the people can afford. The Energy Department I have proposed will attempt to marshall and intensify our efforts to promote conservation, develop alternative energy sources, and develop more effective and fairer utility regulatory policies.

In human services and health care, we have a great deal to do, especially for those at the far ends of life’s spectrum—our senior citizens and children. The proposals of this administration will provide to senior citizens tax relief, a uniform probate code, greatly expanded and improved home health care, and advances in nursing care. For children, we will seek to complete an effective care network for those who are emotionally disturbed and to create a system of perinatal care that will be a model for the nation.

In economic development, we must move quickly to intensify advances all across our state and to make more efforts for more development in the areas of our state that need it the most. The Economic Development Department I have proposed will lead this effort with its new emphasis on marketing our products abroad, expanding existing enterprises at home, and more vigorous attempts to help local communities help themselves.

Last evening, after our gala, a friend of mine from Washington who travels this country and speaks to many groups in many places, said that he felt in that crowd two emotions which are not found in other places today: Pride and Hope. Pride and Hope. With those two qualities, we can go a long way. We can bring on a new era of achievement and excellence—we can fashion a life here that will be the envy of our nation. The future lies brightly before us. With pride and hope, and the grace of God to take our hands and lead us on, we shall not fail! Thank you, and God bless you all.

“The Era of Unchecked Government…Is Over” 1981

By Frank White

Vol. 3, No. 2, 1981, pp. 5, 18

My election endorsed a new type of leadership for Arkansas. The challenge for the 80s is very clear: “The era of unchecked government fiscal expansion is over. Government is not, never was, and cannot be all things to all people.”

We submit to you an austere, no frills, no nonsense budget. We cannot outspend inflation in Arkansas—we shouldn’t try.

We have seen the frustration and difficulties created by our failure to practice fiscal integrity in state government. Our current budget is $80 million more than our anticipated revenues. In the spring of 1980 we failed to heed the clear warning being sent by the national economic indicators and our own reduced tax collections. The “windfall tax” program of 1980 created for the first time in Arkansas history, deficit spending. Last year we accelerated tax collections instead of cutting spending. This maneuver gave the people of Arkansas a false sense of security that ignored economic reality.

It is time for us to “draw the line.” Learn from our past mistakes. It is imperative at this time that we use common sense and maintain the financial integrity of the state. In my effort to use sound business practices, I ask for your understanding and cooperation. It will not be easy. We must live within our means.

I believe the purpose of government is to do for the people only what the people cannot do for themselves. Abraham Lincoln said, “You cannot help man permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.”

My administration is firmly committed to an aggressive industrial development effort. The dignity of the individual can best be served by a meaningful job opportunity. I propose to recreate the Arkansas Industrial Commission (AIDC) and abolish the Department of Economic Development. The AIDC and her industrial training division enjoyed national respect and recognition that spanned 25 years starting with the late Governor Winthrop Rockefeller. During that 25 years we have seen over $4 billion in investments—300,000 new and expanded jobs and 3,900 new and expanded plants.

Much has been said about the failure of our vo-tech progrqm. I know everyone in this room shared my concern when we learned we lost a $150,000,000 high technology industry in 1980 because of our inability to provide the technical training through our vo-tech program.

I have proposed a new direction and administrative control for our votech program. Business and labor will be encouraged to help us develop a new program–better funded—more responsive to the needs of industry.

Let me reaffirm my commitment to cut back the growth of government. My executive recommendations will cut the governor’s staff 25 percent and save the taxpayers over $400,000. Effective today, the Washington office (of the state of Arkansas) is closed, allowing $187,000 saved in the last six months of this biennium. I will support the abolishment of the Department of Public Safety and I have an open mind on a reduction in the Department of Local Services and the Department of Higher Education.

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I propose to take the Department of Energy and put it under the Arkansas Industrial Development Commission. Within the AIDC I will look for its planning division and the energy division to work on the development of a broad energy program.

An energy program which will insure:

• That the state of Arkansas has adequate energy supplies to encourage and support our economic and industrial growth in the future.
• That we support and encourage conservation and the dissemination of information to our people on government supported programs.
• Continued support for industrial and residential energy audits to inform people how to cut energy costs.
• That we analyze energy supplies and distribution and help the state deal with resource shortages.
• That the state participates in programs to develop alternate energy sources.

I have recommended 16 new positions for the Public Service Commission and $1.4 million increase above continuing level funding for the biennium. This will strengthen the PSC’s ability to handle their increased workload and encourage reasonable and timely rate decisions.

I have allocated over 45 percent of my budget to public education, the highest percentage ever allocated by a governor. For those who argue that that is not enough, I remind them that local school districts do have the ability to go to their voters for additional revenues. We have tried to address the health care needs of our state with compassion and understanding. During periods of revenue expansion, I will look to improve the budgets of education and health care.

As I accept this great responsibility I ask that you pray for me that I will have the strength and the wisdom to pursue those things which serve the needs of all our people. I seek your support and your guidance in these difficult times ahead, knowing that together, we can build a new future for Arkansas—a future that encourages a better quality of life for all.

Election Results ’80

By Steve Suitts

Vol. 3, No. 2, 1981, pp. 6-9

The Rise of Southern Suburban Politics

Ronald Reagan’s victory in 10 Southern states, leaving the President only his native state, showed in fact a divided south—with Black voters overwhelmingly supporting Carter and an enormous number of Whites voting for Reagan.

Although their candidate lost, Southern Blacks’ clear choice was Jimmy Carter. In 78 targeted predominantly Black precincts in nine southern states (excluding Arkansas and Texas) Carter received more than 86 percent of the vote. Both urban and rural Black support for the Democratic presidential ticket was strong throughout the region. In fact, more than two out of three of all the Black boxes surveyed showed Carter with better than 90 percent of the vote.

On this basis of precincts’ patterns, nine out of 10 Black southern voters cast their ballot for Carter. This degree of support exceeded national projections of 80 percent Black support for Carter.

Selected county returns confirm the depth and breadth of Carter’s support among Southern Blacks. Of five Deep Southern states surveyed (North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia) Carter lost only three majority Black populated counties among the more than 70—and those three were all in Mississippi. Within the same states, only nine of more than 130 counties with at least 40 percent Black population failed to give a majority of their votes to Carter.

The overall White voting patterns show the opposite trend: Southern Whites voted in large numbers to defeat Carter. In the 23 predominantly White—largely urban precincts in nine states surveyed in the South, election returns show Reagan with almost 70 percent of the vote. In fact, Carter failed to carry a single box within the targeted precincts.

Southern White voters were not for Reagan as uniformly as Blacks were for Carter. The Democratic presidential ticket carried, for example, 20 of the 50 mostly rural counties in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi which have more than 90 percent White population.

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Final Count: Black/White Choices for President

In November, Jimmy Carter lost the South in the suburbs. Unlike 1976, the 1980 Presidential election shows Carter’s failures and Reagan’s strengths in the Southern metropolitan areas, especially outside the central city.

This Democratic slippage in the South’s presidential politics is nothing brand new. As far back as 1968, when George Wallace campaigned as a third party candidate, the Democratic party’s candidate has been unable to deliver a majority vote in the South nor more than one Southern state’s majority except in 1976 (Chart 1).

In most Southern states Reagan carried the balance of the suburban counties. In Alabama, Mobile and suburban Baldwin counties voted Republican as did the three other expanding suburban areas—Dothan (Houston and Dale counties), Birmingham (Tuscaloosa, Shelby, Jefferson, St. Clair, Blount, and Walker counties) and Montgomery (Montgomery, Autauga, and Elmore counties).

A close analysis of Louisiana, South Carolina, and Texas illustrate how Reagan won (Chart 2). In a breakdown of the voting returns by counties in the metropolitan areas (as defined by the 1970 U.S. Census Bureau) of these states, the voters in all suburban counties except one, gave Reagan a majority. Only in the metro counties where a central city is located did Reagan fail to pick up overall voter approval.

In the New Orleans area, for example, the three suburban parishes surrounding the city delivered more than 60 percent of the vote for Reagan while only 40 percent of the New Orleans’ parish voted for him. In South Carolina, the central city vote did not even reduce markedly Reagan’s strength. All metro counties supported the Republican president.

In Texas the only suburban county to vote for Carter was San Patricio outside of Corpus Christi. Because it is small, rural and has a significant Hispanic population, San Patricio is hardly a typical suburban county and, hence does not really defy the pattern of suburban support for Reagan.

Republican strength in these counties made the difference often in the final state returns (Chart 3). The ten metro parishes in Louisiana gave the new president more than half his total state’s support. The seven South Carolina counties—among the state’s forty-six—delivered almost half the Republican president’s votes and in Texas the metropolitan counties’ Reagan votes constituted three-fourths of the state’s total.

The Southern pattern of Reagan’s voting strength is convincing. Although the margins of victory for the Republican party in each Southern state were not overwhelming, Republicans have captured the support of those Southerners living outside of central cities and in suburban areas—where the South’s population is steadily growing. It is what professionals in the business of vote getting call “a growth pattern” and the basis for the Republican hopes for 1984 in the South.

More than two out of three of all the Black boxes surveyed showed Carter with better that 90 percent of the vote.

ELECTION RESULTS’80

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Chart 1
Presidential Elections in the South, 1968-1980
State Choices in 11 Southern States

R-Republican
I-Independent
D-Democrat
State	1968	1972	1976	1980
Alabama	Wallace(I)	Nixon (R)	Carter (D)	Reagan (R)
Arkansas	Wallace(I)	Nixon (R)	Carter (D)	Reagan (R)
Florida	Nixon (R)	Nixon (R)	Carter (D)	Reagan (R)
Georgia	Wallace(I)	Nixon (R)	Carter (D)	Carter (D)
Louisiana	Wallace(I)	Nixon (R)	Carter (D)	Reagan (R)
Mississippi	Wallace(I)	Nixon (R)	Carter (D)	Reagan (R)
North Carolina	Nixon (R)	Nixon (R)	Carter (D)	Reagan (R)
South Carolina	Nixon (R)	Nixon (R)	Carter (D)	Reagan (R)
Tennessee	Nixon (R)	Nixon (R)	Carter (D)	Reagan (R)
Texas	Humphrey (D)	Nixon (R)	Carter (D)	Reagan (R)
Virginia	Nixon (R)	Nixon (R)	Carter (D)	Reagan (R)

Chart 3
Reagan Votes in Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas (SMSA)As Percentage of Reagan’s Total States Vote

State	% of Reagan’s Total Vote
Louisiana SMSA’s	53.7%
South Carolina SMSA’s	47.7%
Texas	75.5%

Chart 2
Reagan Votes in Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas of 3 Southern States
Urban and Suburban Voting Patterns in 1980 Election

	Louisiana
SMSA/Counties	% of Total Votes for Reagan	No. of Reagan Voters
Baton Rouge
*East Baton Rouge	52.9%	60,032
Lafayette
Lafayette	58.7%	30,812
Lake Charles
*Calcasieu	42.5%	27,360
Monroe
*Quachita	63.5%	29,701
New Orleans
Jefferson	64.2%	99,915
*Orleans	39.8%	73,712
St. Bernard	61.3%	19,410
St. Tammany	64.0%	27,214
Shreveport
*Bossier	62.8%	16,515
Caddo	55.7%	43,085
TOTAL FOR SMSA’s	53.7%	427,760
	South Carolina
Charleston
Berkeley	55.2%	12,510
*Charleston	61.1%	60,894
Columbia
Aiken	57.7%	18,528
Lexington	68.4%	28,271
*Richland	50.5%	36,351
Greenville
*Greenville	57.8%	46,198
*Pickens	53.8.%	9,517
TOTAL FOR SMSA’s	58.1%	212,269
	Texas
Abelene
*Jones	47.2%	2,777
Taylor	62.0%	22,943
Amarillo
*Potter	60.9%	16,327
Randall	73.7%	23,136
Austin
*Travis	49.4%	73,151
Beaumont
*Jefferson	43.4%	36,763
Liberty	51.3%	7,470
Brownsville-Harlingten-San Benito
*Cameron	47.6%	22,041
Bryan-College Station
*Brazos	60.3%	17,798
Corpus Christi
*Nueces	45.6%	37,276
San Patricio	46.6%	7,662
Dallas-Fort Worth
Collin	67.9%	36,559
*Dallas	65.8%	359,518
Denton	59.9%	29,908
Ellis	51.3	10,050
Grayson	53.7%	16,811
Johnson	51.7%	11,411
*Kaufman	46.8%	5,081
Rockwall	65.3%	4,036
*Tarrant	56.9%	173,466
El Paso
*El Paso	53.5%	53,276
Houston
Brazoria	58.1%	27,614
Chambers	54.1%	3,140
Fort Bend	65.9%	24,914
*Harris	58.0%	416,965
Montgomery	65.6%	26,237
Laredo
*Webb	30.8	5,421
Lubbock
*Lubbock	68.8%	46,711
McAllen-Pharr-Edinburg
*Hidalgo	41.8%	25,499
Midland
Ector	72.4%	25,846
*Midland	76.6%	25,027
San Angelo
Tom Green	60.1%	15,840
San Antonio
*Bexar	49.9%	148,126
Guadalupe	64.2%	9,901
Texarkana
*Bowie	54.8%	7,804
Waco
*McLennan	53.1%	30,026
Wichita Falls
Archer	54.8%	7,804
*Wichita	55.0%	22,884
TOTAL FOR SMSA’s	57.3%	1,837,357
* Central City Counties

North Carolina Reapportionment: 1981 Version

By Susan M. Presti

Vol. 3, No. 2, 1981, pp. 10-11, 19

Reapportionment—the redrawing of electoral district lines based on the results of each decennial census—looms as one of the most important tasks facing the 1981 North Carolina General Assembly. National population shifts and those within the state during the past decade could result in significant changes for the state. When the final results of the 1980 census are released, the power balance between the coastal, piedmont, and mountain districts may be upset. “(Reapportionment) will be, in my opinion, the key issue of this General Assembly,” says Alex K. Brock, director of the State Board of Elections.

Historically, the power to reapportion has been wielded in a highly political fashion. The majority party in a state legislature has traditionally sought to limit the minority party’s influence by drawing grossly misshapen districts. In 1812, Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry approved a reapportionment plan in which one district was so distorted it resembled a salamander. Such legislative legerdemain has thereafter been referred to as “gerrymandering.”

Throughout the 1920s, as more of the country’s rural population migrated to cities and as political machinations continued to dominate reapportionment decisions, electoral districts within individual states grew to increasingly disparate sizes. In 1946, for example, Cook County, Illinois, contained 914,000 citizens while a downstate district had only 112,000.

In Baker v. Carr (1962), the U.S. Supreme Court established judicial jurisdiction over questions of reapportionment. A series of landmark decisions followed, known as the “one person, one vote” rulings, in which the Supreme Court began to redress electoral district imbalance stemming from many types of discrimination—political, racial sexual, ethnic, rural-urban, etc. These rulings, combined with regulations included in federal and state policies, have created a complex set of criteria for reapportioning.

Because the profusion of new regulations has complicated the reapportionment process, many states have turned to computers and independent commissions as the most practical means of redrawing electoral districts. For the 1981 reapportionment, several states are relying extensively on computers. The New York Legislative Task Force on Reapportionment has spent almost $1 million on a computer package. California, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Illinois, New Mexico, Indiana, Texas, Michigan, and many other states are expected to use computers for sophisticated mathematical analyses of proposed districts.

Seventeen states have utilized independent commissions rather than depending exclusively on their legislatures. Eleven states use independent commissions for actual apportionment; six use them in an advisory capacity or as a fall-back unit in case the state legislature cannot develop a suitable plan. Legislation now before Congress would vest all responsibility for congressional reapportionment in independent commissions that would be established in each state.

The North Carolina Experience

Factors unique to North Carolina also complicate the reapportionment process. As the Piedmont counties grow, for example, they are becoming so large that they cannot be grouped easily with contiguous neighbors to form electoral districts.

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Their combined populations are too large. (Electoral districts must be composed of counties with contiguous borders.) The North Carolina Constitution prohibits the division of counties into smaller units for the purpose of redistricting state electoral zones. This restriction may create problems for redistricting the Piedmont, problems that will carry over to congressional reapportionment. There is no federal law preventing a smaller unit—for example, a township—from being used as the primary building block of congressional districts, but North Carolina has a long history of refusing to break county boundaries for representational purposes.

In addition to the demands of equal population, any redistricting plan in North Carolina must meet the demands of equal representation. Republican, minority, rural, and liberal voters—usually concentrated in specific parts of the state—should be districted so that their votes can have a fair expression, not gerrymandered in such a way as to undermine their strength.

One further complication for North Carolina is the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Because of past evidence of voting discrimination in 39 counties, the Act requires that any reapportionment affecting these counties must be approved by the U.S. Attorney General. He must determine that “the plan in question does not have the purpose or intent of abridging the right to vote on account of race or color,” says David Hunter of the Justice Department’s Voting Rights Section. If the Attorney General rejects a North Carolina reapportionment proposal, a new plan has to be developed.

Court decisions in the 1960s forced the General Assembly to develop new plans for North Carolina. In both 1965 and 1966, a U.S. District Court rejected the state’s reapportionment. Finally in 1967, the courts accepted the legislature’s plan. In 1971, the Justice Department successfully challenged portions of the redistricting that affected the 39 counties cited in the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The redistricting of the unaffected 61 counties was allowed to stand.

Despite the complexities of the task, the North Carolina General Assembly has not yet appointed any legislative committees to prepare for the pending reapportionment. Some preliminary work has been done in the state but has not been coordinated by the legislature. The General Assembly’s Division of General Research is preparing a reapportionment briefing book for legislators which will summarize pertinent court decisions, federal and state restrictions, and logistical questions on reapportionment. The state Office of Data Services has performed some computer runs on the preliminary census data. If requested by the legislature, the Office could provide computer services to aid in reapportioning the state. In 1971, no computers were used “at all,” according to Clyde Ball, then Legislative Services Officer.

The process the General Assembly will use to reapportion North Carolina in 1981 will not become clear until the General Assembly convenes. Rep. Liston Ramsey (D-Madison), in all likelihood the next speaker of the House, says that the process probably will be similar to that of 1971: a House committee will be established to redistrict the House, a Senate committee will be established to redistrict the Senate, and a joint committee will be established to reapportion
Continued on page 19

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congressional districts. Each committee will consider plans submitted by any legislator, and Rep. Ramsey already has invited North Carolina’a eleven congressmen to submit reapportionment plans to the General Assembly. Each committee will propose its final plan as a piece of legislation that must be ratified by both houses. (In 1971, the Senate accepted the proposed plan of the House and the House accepted the Senate’s plan.)

According to Ramsey, the use of computers in the 1981 reapportionment “will be up to the chairmen of the various committees.” And like 1971, apparently no serious consideration will be given to the idea of an independent reapportionment commission. Ramsey rejects the concept of an independent commission for North Carolina. “I expect the legislature to do it (reapportionment) because the Constitution says we shall do it,” he says.

Citing the Constitution serves to disguise the fact that reapportionment still is perceived by many legislators and others as being the sole domain of state legislatures. Nationwide, politicians from both parties tend to see reapportionment as legitimate political booty. Larry Mead, a member of the Republican National Committee research staff, has said, “We want reapportionment to be fair, but the state legislatures are sovereign. Our job isn’t to save ourselves but to build the party from the bottom up.” Consequently, “the national drive by Republicans to control more statehouses by electing more Republican legislators in November is keyed to the upcoming reapportionment,” writes Dan Pilcher.

Rapid changes in reapportionment law over the last twenty years have increased the complexity of redistricting; rapid changes in reapportionment technology have increased the number of ways to develop redistricting plans. Despite these changes, North Carolina in 1981 will reapportion itself in much the same way it has in the past. “Reapportionment is a political process.. . and that’s the way it should be,” says Brock.

Susan M. Presti is a staff member of the North Carolina Center for Public Policy Research, an independent research group. This article is reprinted from N.C. Insight, the quarterly magazine of the Center.

The Good Ole Boys Club Prevails: Mississippi Legislature

By D.O. Bell

Vol. 3, No. 2, 1981, pp. 12-13

0nce questioned about the odd language used by lawyers in drafting legal documents, a law professor at Oxford, Mississippi, listened to a law student contending that legal pleadings use archaic terms and the style should be modernized. The professor tongue-in-cheek replied, “What we need are not more modern pleadings; what we need are more archaic law students.”

This theory of “legal reform” did apply for many years to the Mississippi legislature where pleas for more progressive legislation were met by the addition of more reactionary legislators. However, a growing number of persons with bright minds and a view to Mississippi’s future, not its past, now occupy seats in both the Senate and House of Representatives. There are seventeen Black lawmakers, fifteen more than in 1979, primarily due to court-ordered reapportionment. In addition to long-time Black leaders Aaron Henry and Henry Kirksey, the Black caucus boasts well-groomed newcomers such as Hillman Frazier, a George Washington University Law School graduate and former legislative draftsman, as well as Jackson attorney Fred Banks. A new wave of White legislators, including Ivy League educated Gerald Blessey, Jackson’s Ed Ellington, and Dennis Dollar of the Gulf Coast, is striving to move Mississippi forward.

The Mississippi legislature, nevertheless, remains in the clutches of “the ole boys club.” Black gains still leave minority representation at about ten percent in a state which is thirty-eight percent Black. Of the entire legislature’s one hundred and seventy-four members, there is but one woman.

Despite new blood, the Mississippi legislature is still not the place to go for fast action. Very little legislation of any signigicance gets as far as the floor. As one lobbyist put it, “It’s easier to block bad legislation than it is to get good legislation passed.”

The 1981 Mississippi legislature looks to be carrying on that standard. Early in the session, which began January 6th and will close March 31st, the Speaker of the House, C.B. “Buddie” Newman, requested members to read and consider the legislation assigned to their committees. He then added that “sometimes we help people more by what we don’t do,” but that he did think that the bills should be read.

Speaker Newman, a Delta farmer, holds immense power by having control over committee assignments. A telling, if inconsequential example, of his dominance, drew laughter from the gallery and took place a few minutes before a joint session in January. The senators were late getting into the House chamber. A motion was made to delay the session until they had time to get in. “All in favor say ‘aye,'” the Speaker said. No one bothered. “All opposed say ‘no.’ “A chorus of goodnatured “No!” rang out. “The ‘ayes’ have it,” the Speaker concluded and retired to wait for the senators.

Gathered into what was once Jackson’s Central High School, which has been remodeled to accommodate the legislature while the $18 million renovation of the capitol takes place a block away, this year’s legislature has heard and heard again that the state is in financial straits, that there is little money for new or expanded programs. In spite of this warning, the medicaid bill, which had been given much attention by the press, has already passed. Had this appropriations bill not been enacted, the Medicaid Commission would have had to cut services to patients due to a budget deficit.

Governor William Winter, whom many view as the most able chief executive in the state’s history, has placed education at the top of his priority list. His bill to provide for the establishment and funding of public kindergartens, something Mississippi has never had, is still alive and given a good chance of survival. The compulsory school attendance bill, repealed in the 1950s, will not be reinstated this session as the governor had wanted. Governor Winter has also stressed the development of forestry products and methods of handling industrial wastes.

Mississippi remains one of only six states that does not have either court decision or statute requiring landlords to comply with minimum housing standards. This legal protection for tenants will not be granted again this year. The bill was not voted out of committee by February 5th, the deadline for committees to send legislation to the full House. The Fair Pulpwood Sealing and Practices Act, designed to attack some of the problems of the state’s estimated 10,000 pulpwood cutters and haulers, bled to death after being gutted by the Ways and Means committee. Some progressive

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measures dealing with jail conditions, domestic abuse, and accountability of state schools for the deaf and blind remain under consideration. A bill calling for open business and meetings of state boards has a good chance of passage.

But no other real reform measures seem likely to be pushed through this session. Those who look to the Mississippi legislature for modern reform may look back in the spring and conclude, in the words of Leonard PenthDarnel, television’s “Saturday Night Live” and former host of Bad Opera, “There, that wasn’t so good, now was it.”

D.O. Bell is a staff member of the Southern Regional Council’s Southern Project for Fair, Open Government.

Big Profits and Little Pay in South’s Backwoods: Woodcutters Organize (Part II)

By Wayne Greenhaw

Vol. 3, No. 2, 1981, pp. 14-17

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Woodcutters have generally been considered the bottom of the barrel when you are talking about agriculture in the South,” stated a forestry professor at Alabama’s Auburn University.

“The industry has been a profitable one for the huge companies, but the workers in the woods, cutting the timber and hauling it to the woodyards have been submissive to the demands of the companies,” explained Dr. Herman Aiken, who has worked with half-dozen top companies as a consultant to their new timber crops.

“Today we can plant a hybrid pine tree in the South and harvest it in less than fifteen years. The Sun Belt may even lend itself to faster harvesting in the near future. When you have an annual rainfall of between forty-five and sixty inches with a preponderance of sunshine during most of the year—even in the winter, you have an ideal situation for the modern fast-producing forest. In the Pacific Northwest, Washington, Oregon, and parts of California and Idaho, it takes nearly sixty-five years for a tree to mature,” Dr. Aiken added.

“The time factor is one reason for the tremendous growth in the pulpwood industry in the South during the past decade,” the professor said. “Another reason is the cheap labor. There is no doubt about that. The company looks at the overall picture in every agricultural area before it decides to move in that direction,” he said.

This movement was emphasized recently by the decision of Georgia-Pacific, a leader in the pulpwood industry, to come South. A company spokesperson explained the move of corporate headquarters from Portland to Atlanta by saying, “We are not going to abandon the Northwest, but we have shifted our interests to the South, where we have more than two-million acres.” In 1979, Southwest Forest Industries, headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, registered what the president, W.A. Franke, termed “a milestone” in its purchase of a Panama City, Florida, pulp and linerboard mill, a railroad line and 425,000 acres of timberland in Florida, Georgia and Alabama from International Paper Company. “We looked at Panama City on an opportunistic basis. It was clear that the longterm economics for owning the timber were good. This was our initial objective. After studying the project, we concluded there were also opportunities for added profitability at the paper mill. So our thinking moved from a timberlands-oriented acquisition to the concept of an integrated profit center that would be a long-term contributor to the company’s earnings,” Franke remarked.

In its move into the South, Southwest Forest Industries purchased 245,000 acres in pine and 157,000 in hardwoods. A company representative said, “We have the wood to supply a large portion of the Panama City mill’s needs. We bought lands that have been managed intensively for high productivity and we have the resource base to diversify into lumber and plywood production. Most important, we are now in the South in a meaningful way, where the fast timber growth cycles point to more rapid expansion in our industry than in other parts of the country. We made a good buy here.”

The Panama City mill uses about eight-hundred-thousand cords of pulpwood and woodchips every year, and company-owned timberlands furnish about twelve and one-half percent of the mill’s needs. “Many, many woodcutters depend on our operation to keep them in work, and we want to continue to work with them,” a mill representative said. However, it was added, by 1985, the company’s pine plantations should be supplying about twenty-five percent of the mill’s needs.

0ne of the people who have been attempting to organize woodcutters throughout the region, Ben Alexander of Atlanta, Georgia, greets these moves, “We want to welcome the new companies. All the woodcutters want to see more and more companies coming into the area. It’s good to see, it revitalizes the business of pulpwooding. But we want to educate them from the beginning. We don’t want them to think they are coming into a backward area where the labor force will lay down, roll over, and play dead.”

Alexander pointed out that the wage structure in Southern states has been a great incentive to companies to move from other sections of the United States into the South. “That sort of green is irresistible,” said Jim Drake, coordinating officer in Mississippi of the Southern Woodcutters Assistance Project (SWAP). “Trade unions in paper mills report that similar jobs in Oregon pay three times the wage in Mississippi. Furthermore, the old standard that ‘Prices are cheaper down there’ does not hold. In Mississippi, March 1980 gasoline prices were the highest of all fifty states,” Drake continued.

“In Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, Texas, Arkansas and Florida there are more than fifty to sixty thousand aging pulpwood trucks hidden in

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deep woods,” Drake stated. “Each truck requires a crew of three persons. Thus, tucked away in hollows and hamlets are over one-hundred-and-fifty-thousand families dependent on pulpwood for a living.”

“No congressional subcommittee has ever delved into the misery of these people,” Drake continued. “They are the invisible workers and their families. They go unseen, unheard. They live in the poorest counties of America, and Black or White, they suffer malnutrition, poor healthcare, inadequate education and substandard housing.

“And yet, on their strong backs and out of their sweat, International Paper, Georgia-Pacific, St. Regis, Masonite, Weyerhauser, and Scott Paper, to mention only the giants, have built their vast empires,” the United Church of Christ minister said.

With the accelerated growth of the paper industry in the South during the past ten years came the emergence of people like Jim Drake who were interested in organizing the pulpwood workers. Drake, for instance, was sent into the backwoods by the Board for Homeland Ministries of the United Church of Christ to work with SWAP in Mississippi. Several years earlier a young Massachusetts attorney named Grant Oldfield had been in Mississippi to register voters during the summers of 1964 and 1965, “and while we were there we found that not only were Black people discriminated against but the White as well as Black pulpwood worker was being pushed to the back of the bus. The woodcutter was the second-class citizen of the agricultural South. After I finished Boston University Law School I came back to Hattiesburg and set up an office to start working with the woodcutters. We got a little money from Catholic Charities and the Southern Voter Education Project, and we worked to put some sting into the political makeup of Mississippi.”

But three years later, having met with dozens of local political defeats and numerous stumbling blocks, Oldfield went back to his native state to fight for other causes. He was more or less replaced by other young lawyers and organizers in Hattiesburg who began working in the late 1960s with the Gulfcoast Pulpwood Association (GPA), which by 1973 had organized some three thousand woodcutters in southwest Alabama, southern Mississippi and northwest Florida.

Oldfield and his associates filed a lawsuit in the early 1970s against two companies. The paper companies countered with their own lawsuit against the cutters. For nearly a year in the mid 1970s, GPA was ordered to discontinue its organizing efforts while the case was before the courts. However, in 1975, after limited victories for the woodcutters in federal courts, Scott and International Paper companies agreed to an across-the-board raise in prices of pulpwood paid to the cutters and haulers. The companies also agreed to pay GPA attorneys $25,000 in fees.

The cutters were given an overall five-dollar-per-cord increase in payment, and owners of standing timber, which is cut to become pulpwood and sold to the woodyards, were given a one-dollar-and-fifty-cent raise per cord. Scott and International also agreed at the time not to take their fight against GPA’s organizing efforts to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“It was a significant step forward at the time,” commented a GPA leader. “Unfortunately, however, that was the last we heard from the companies. We got the increase. They could not deny us that. But the negotiations stopped there. That was the last raise we received. Now, it appears, we have to go back into court to seek further relief.

“GPA is continuing its organizing efforts. We have moved in several directions. We are looking now for a more substantial increase with a more permanent basis of cost-of-living raises. It costs the pulpwood cutter more and more to live every year, just like it costs the paper companies more and more to produce pulpwood. They are making more and more profits, but those profits are not shared with the man who is working hard to produce the pulpwood. We feel that it is time that we made something for our sweat and blood.”

Many woodcutters participating in

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organizing their fellow workers believe that the various labor associations need to ban together in a southwide effort. In northern Mississippi and Louisiana, SWAP spokesmen say that they do not wish to compete with GPA, “but we would like to join hands with all woodcutters to make sure our efforts do not go to waste.”

Wayne Greenhaw is a freelance journalist in Montgomery, Alabama and author of several Southern books. His final installment on the woodcutters will appear in the next issue.

Update: Alabama Legislature

By SLRC Staff

Vol. 3, No. 2, 1981, pp. 18-19

The Alabama legislature returned to Montgomery on February 3rd to face critical budget problems which have been plaguing the state for years. Tax revenues earmarked for many functions of state government, especially the education system, are failing to keep pace with inflation and Alabama’s bare bones approach to government services is leading to drastic proposals to cutback public assistance and social welfare programs.

Many Alabama agencies are facing proration, or across the board percentage reductions, as revenue falls short of expectations. Ironically, under present funding systems, Alabama Education Association must defend the earmarked sales tax revenues on which the education budget depends against proposals to exempt food and drug items from the sales tax. Meanwhile, the state’s income and property taxes remain very low compared to other states.

With social programs already struggling to survive, Governor James has announced a goal of identifying $45 million of “excess and waste” in the current year’s budget in order to transfer monies to the State Department of Corrections’ expansion program. James hopes that program will convince the federal court to return the prison system to state control. such a transfer plan will be highly controversial, requiring legislative authorization.

Last year, the legislature agreed the state needed $407 million from the general fund, yet could promise only 75 percent of that total, making $109 million of “conditional” appropriations. Recurring proration and increasing “conditional” appropriations—only rarely granted—point to a need for substantial reform in the taxation and finance system in Alabama.

In his “state of the state” address to the legislature, however, James said no

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new tax proposals were needed and that “the ship of state” was leaky with misused funds and earmarked monies. The governor is asking the legislature to unfreeze funds designated for specific purposes by legislation and to establish an election on a constitutional amendment to release monies earmarked in the state constitution.

If successful, James would unfreeze funds from the state income tax, license taxes, some sales taxes, and fines from state game and fish laws violations.

Amended Act Passes…

By Steve Suitts

Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 2-8

In a final vote showing overwhelming support from members of Congress in the South and elsewhere, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Voting Rights Act virtually as amended earlier by the House Judiciary Committee. By a margin of 389 to 24, the House now sends to the Senate a bill with amendments that will permit some Southern local governments to bail out from Section 5, the provision of the Act that requires them to get the approval of the U.S. Justice Department before an act or practice affecting voting is implemented.

The bill also makes lawsuits on voting discrimination easier to prove and contains an unexpected change which will bar voters from receiving assistance in the ballot booth unless they are blind or disabled.

The debate on the bill began Friday, October 2, when Rep. Don Edwards of California, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights, introduced H.R. 3112. Presenting the first arguments for the passage of the Act, Rep. Dan Glickman, a Kansas Democrat and co-sponsor of the bill, assured his colleagues that the Edwards subcommittee had “found overwhelming evidence that the Act is still needed…. I want to emphasize that this bill is important not only to those vitally affected citizens,” Glickman said, “but also because it reinforces to the rest of the world our fundamental democratic principles.”

The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Peter Rodino, a Democrat of New Jersey, called the moment a “historic day” and explained that the proposed bill had amendments “because fairness dictated that an avenue to escape the preclearance requirements should be afforded those jurisdictions that have had a history of complying with the law.”

The first vote on the bill came Monday, October 5, when Rep. Henry Hyde, Republican of Illinois, proposed a “technical” amendment to change the bailout provisions. Hyde proposed to exclude consent decrees reached by litigants in federal court on voting cases as a standard showing a local or state government was not protecting voting rights and could not bail out of the preclearance requirements. Hyde contended that consent decrees were not admissions of wrongdoing even though they are orders of the court to which all parties agree that changes will be made in practices which plaintiffs had claimed were discriminatory. The Illinois Republican said that the present bill would discourage settlements.

Republican Rep. James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin quickly took issue with Hyde, declaring that “approximately half of the voting rights cases are resolved as consent decrees, settlements, or agreements” and while they rarely contain admissions of guilt “the agreements are signed because litigation is highly likely to result in a judgment that the jurisdiction’s voting practices or methods of election are discriminatory.” Another Republican, Rep. Hamilton Fish of New York, echoed Sensenbrenner’s objection to the change saying “these consent decrees have been largely entered into late in the proceedings and … proves the point that the jurisdiction could see that it was about to lose.”

The roll call vote showed strong support for the bailout provisions prepared by the Edwards subcommittee. The margin, 92 to 284, also showed

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that Southern representatives would not maintain a “solid South” in opposition to the passage of H.R. 3112. Almost four out of ten of the Southern delegation voted in support of the stronger subcommittee bill.

During the first day of debate, the split in the Southern delegation was evident. While Texas Democrats Martin Frost and Sam Hall voiced support for the subcommittee’s bill, Republican Rep. James Collins of Texas joined Caldwell Butler and Thomas Bliley of Virginia and Carroll Campbell of South Carolina—all Southern Republicans—in expressing opposition.

Mickey Leland, a Houston Democrat and one of only two of the South’s black members of Congress, spoke early reminding his colleagues that “historical accidents called racism and other kinds of obstacles placed in our paths have indeed disallowed Hispanics and blacks to participate in the process of democracy equally. It takes longer than twenty or thirty years to correct those historical accidents,” Leland said.

Congressmen Butler of Virginia and Campbell of South Carolina joined Henry Hyde as the most vocal opponents of H.R. 3112 and as the sponsors of most floor amendments. Saying that it was “sheer demagoguery to suggest that all amendments to the committee bill represent a back door attempt to kill this legislation,” Campbell described his amendments as “sensible and constructive proposals that will give the Voting Rights Act the kind of broad, bipartisan consensus it deserves … and to work for its acceptance here and in South Carolina.”

The closest vote on changes in the bailout provisions came on the question of whether local Southern federal courts should replace the federal court in the District of Columbia, as the law now provides, as the forum where local jurisdictions try to bail out from preclearance. Caldwell Butler, the sponsor of the amendment, argued that “it is more reasonable to hear these cases where they arise instead of Washington, D.C. The substance of local judicial prejudice does not in my view exist. . . . ”

Rep. Rodino, one of the sponsors of the original 1965 Act, replied, “that time and experience have shown us quite clearly that the D.C. court was the proper court to implement protection for the Fifteenth Amendment. Congress originally placed jurisdiction in the District Court for the District of Columbia to assure uniform interpretation and enforcement of the Act,” he said.

Illinois Democrat Harold Washington, a member of the Congressional Black caucus, noted that “there have been any number of cases in Southern district courts which illustrated the difficulty in obtaining relief in voting rights litigation even when the facts and the law were clear, very clear.” The amendment failed by a vote of 132 in support and 277 in opposition. About 3/5 of the South’s members voted for the Butler amendment.

Before the debate had concluded late in the evening of October 5, ten more amendments would be proposed to alter the House bill and all were rejected. Until the final vote, most Southern members did support the weakening amendments. (See, for example, Chart # 1). In some instances, the words and votes of Southern representatives did not always match.

On the first day of debate Congressman Sam Hall of Texas made brief remarks concluding “I am strongly supportive of H.R 3112.” In subsequent votes, however, Rep. Hall voted to amend H.R. 3112 with the Butler amendment and a later amendment proposed by Rep. Campbell to permit states to bail out of preclearance if two-thirds of the local governments in the state had a good record.

One of the few Southern Congressmen who voted for the House bill in every vote was Democrat Bo Ginn of south Georgia. A faithful conservative, Ginn told reporters the

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reasons: “It means little to whites. It means a whole lot to blacks.” Rep. Ginn’s district is more than 1/3 black and he is also an announced candidate for governor in Georgia where he will be courting a large number of black votes in Atlanta and other cities in the state.

Before the voting on October 5, Rep. Campbell had proposed several of his amendments to the sponsors of the bill and to civil rights groups as a way for them to assure enough votes for the Act’s passage. Administrative assistants and legislative counsels for other Congressional opponents of the Edwards subcommittee’s bill also spent time on the telephone in late September predicting that the “hardliners” among civil rights groups, who would not agree to further compromises, would be responsible for crippling the Act when drastic floor amendments were proposed.

Further compromises were apparently unnecessary. On all recorded votes proponents of floor amendments never received as many as one third of the total votes cast.

Strong opposition had been expected to extending the Act’s bilingual provisions that guarantee ballots and election materials are printed in both English and the language of a substantial minority population where it exists. Robert McClory, Republican of Illinois, proposed to delete the extension of the bilingual provisions, arguing that the provision was unnecessary and costly. Describing the bilingual ballot as “a luxury that is known to no other country in the world,” he argued that the federal government had no right to place this financial burden on state and local governments.

Other representatives quickly replied to McClory’s amendment. New York’s Hamilton Fish disagreed with McClory’s estimates of cost, as did other representatives whose districts have bilingual ballots.

In the middle of the debate, Rep. Leland began speaking in Spanish. Saying to his colleagues that “if you cannot understand me, nor can you understand 21 percent of the adult citizens of El Paso, Texas…” The majority leader of the House, Jim Wright of Texas, also spoke in opposition to the amendment. McClory’s amendment failed, 128 to 284.

Filling more than one hundred pages of small print in the Congressional Record, the debate on the Act was often predictable, seldom rancorous, and usually filled with facts and figures. There were, however, a few humorous moments. New York Rep. Robert Garcia told of a conversation with former HEW Secretary Califano as the two discussed the rich ethnic heritage of America. In an apparent game of one-upmanship, Califano boasted that it was an Italian, Christopher Columbus, who discovered America. “But I reminded the Secretary, that it may have been an Italian who discovered America, but it was a Hispanic woman who gave him the money to get here,” remarked Garcia, referring obviously to the Queen of Spain who financed Columbus’ voyage.

At another moment, in the debate on the bilingual provisions, Rep. Wright was attempting to find the right term to describe the “pluralistic American culture” which was not a “single stream of sameness like ores poured into a melting pot.” Apparently finding no other analogy, the Texan suggested that the American culture did not blend together but was “more like a fruitcake.”

The only amendment added to the subcommittee’s bill was introduced by Republican Rep. Millicent Fenwick of New Jersey. The change prohibits any person from receiving assistance in the polling booth unless the voter is blind or physically incapacitated.

The debate on the amendment was brief, and the need for it was never fully explained. Fenwick mentioned the importance of the “secret ballot” and said that the addition “would seek to keep the bosses out of the ballot booth. The voter should not be accompanied unless blind or physically incapacitated, unable to vote on their own. All the instruction and assistance can be given in the hall.”

Although Fenwick supported the subcommittee bill in all other respects, the only other person to speak in favor of her change was Rep. Hyde. “I plead … let us have a voice vote on this one. Let us prevail,” Hyde remarked to Edwards. “Let us say that the gentleman was not so foolishly consistent as to reject what is unquestionably an improvement to this great bill.”

Edwards did speak against the amendment, saying that his “subcommittee which heard over 100 witnesses did not receive any testimony on this issue … and that the responsibility for assisting persons at the voting booth is governed by state law and “is not properly a federal responsibility.” With less than 10 minutes of debate, the amendment was passed by voice vote.

The Fenwick amendment may present substantial problems for voters with little education and in some areas where bilingual ballots are not available to Spanish-speaking minorities. In Sumter County, Alabama, for example, white officials who remain hostile to blacks continue to control election procedures. The average level of education for blacks in the county is about 8 years. In the next several months the county is expected to change from paper ballots to voting machines for the first time. Without assistance from anyone of their choosing at the polls, as provided by state law, and with the elections run by hostile whites, elderly black voters may not be able to cast their vote within the few minutes which Alaba-

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ma law permits a person to remain in the booth.

In Atlanta census figures show that more than 100,000 Hispanic residents now live in the area. Because Atlanta doesn’t provide bilingual ballots, (and the Voting Rights Act does not require it in such places), Spanish speaking voters may not be able to function at the polling booth without assistance.

“It is a terrible disappointment,” says Raymond Brown who monitors events surrounding the Voting Rights Act for the Southern Regional Council. “It could be very harmful if it stays in the Act,” observed Barbara Phillips, co-director of the Voting Rights Project of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in Washington.

The amended act now faces in the United States Senate an uncertain future. Republican Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina says that the upper chamber will begin considering the Act in early 1982. Thurmond opposes the extension of the preclearance requirements of Section 5 and has said that any Voting Rights Act should apply nationwide. As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will be assigned to study HR 3112, Thurmond is in a position to put some clout behind his views.

Orin Hatch, Republican of Utah, is the chairman of the Judiciary’s subcommittee on the Constitution—the legislative unit that has held hearings in the Senate on the Act during past renewals. Hatch’s position on Section 5 is unclear; however, he does oppose the House bill’s amendments that overturn the Supreme Court’s 1980 decision in the Bolden case which held that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act required successful litigants to prove a racially discriminatory effect and purpose of any voting practice. The House bill permits lawsuits to prevail if the court finds a voting change or practice as a racially discriminatory “result.”

Laughlin McDonald, the director of the Southern Office of the American Civil Liberties Union which has litigated numerous voting cases, says that a showing of intent to discriminate is difficult if not impossible to prove. “It can’t be done if intent to discriminate requires a confession of guilt. ”

The Utah senator was a powerful opponent on the same issue in Congress last year when a new, stronger fair housing bill was proposed. The bill died in the Senate because supporters of the act could not convince Hatch to permit litigants to prove only the effects of racial discrimination in such cases.

Three Southerners other than Thurmond sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee: Republican John P. East of North Carolina and Republican Jeremiah Denton and Democrat Howell Heflin of Alabama. Both East and Denton have also expressed opposition to several sections of the current Act.

With strong Senate opposition to critical parts of the House Bill, time favors the opponents of the act. The preclearance requirements of Section 5 expire August 6 of next year if Congress does not renew the act before then. Hence, the speed with which the Judiciary Committee and its subcommittee proceeds to hold hearings and report a bill to the full Senate is important to the supporters of the Act.

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Also, the historical tool of Southern opposition to civil rights legislation in the Senate, the filibuster, will be available to delay passage or to press for substantial changes. Although Senate rules on filibustering have changed since the early 1960s, a two thirds vote of all senators is still required in most instances to halt a filibuster.

The act does have bipartisan sponsorship in the Senate. Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts is joined by Democratic Senators Patrick Moynahan of New York, Alan Cranston of California, Howard Metzenbaurn of Wisconsin, and Joseph Biden of Delaware. Republican co-sponsors include Lowell Weicker of Connecticut and Charles Mathias of Maryland.

Also, in an unprompted announcement in June while hearings were being held in the house, Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona released a statement supporting the Act’s renewal. Aides for the Senate sponsors also say that they have picked up additional Republican and Democratic support in recent weeks.

Despite added support, some key officials have kept mostly silent about the Act. Senate majority leader Howard Baker of Tennessee and Democratic minority leader Robert Byrd of Virginia℄both influential in vote-getting and setting procedural rules℄have not made their positions on the act clear. The only Southern Senator with a good record on the Act, (Chart Number 2), Baker supported extension of the Act in 1970 before becoming head of the Senate Republicans. Byrd opposed the extension without some amendments six years ago, saying, “I just think that the South is entitled to some consideration for the efforts it has made over the past ten years to comply with this law.”

In mid-October, however, Byrd did head off the possibility that Thurmond could kill the House bill by never reporting it from committee. When the bill was received by the Senate, Byrd used a parliamentary rule to place H.R. 3112 on a special

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calendar which permits the full Senate to call up the bill for debate even if the committee has not reported it. The technique of burying legislation in committee was used often in the late 50s and early 60s by the Senate’s Southern chairmen hostile to civil rights legislation.

Baker’s position and that of other Republicans may be influenced strongly by the White House’s views. In June President Reagan requested Attorney General William French Smith to determine if the Voting Rights Act was the “most appropriate means of guaranteeing” the right to vote. Reagan asked for the report by October 1.

The report apparently arrived at the White House on October 2, although its release was delayed. According to sources who saw the document early, the report presents the President with five options. “All of them could spell disaster for a strong act,” remarks one civil rights lawyer who had read the report.

Although the President mentioned early this year his own interest in nationwide coverage for the Act, the Attorney General concludes that “there has not yet been developed a record sufficient to demonstrate such a pervasive disregard for minority voting rights in ‘non-covered’ jurisdiction to support a nationwide extension of the Act’s special provisions.” At the same time, the report supports removing some local and state governments from the required preclearance of voting changes.

The three options which the Attorney General stresses would weaken HR 3112 by permitting easier “bailout” of local jurisdictions and requiring a “good” record for only five to seven years. The House bill requires a “clean” record for a period of ten years before the jurisdiction can bailout.

One of the alternatives the Attorney General appears to recommend strongly is a five-year extension with provisions that automatically permit bailout for jurisdictions with low minority populations or high minority registration.

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While the President’s views on the Act carry weight with many senators, the strong support for the Act in the House probably will not. The voting records of Southern representatives on the Act show that while only 19 of 108 in eleven Southern States voted against final passage of HR 3112, a majority did support most weakening amendments. If Southern senators follow that pattern, the House bill will be out of danger only if weakening amendments fail. Moreover, it is possible that proponents of the Act in the Senate will have to propose floor amendments in order to restore provisions in the House bill which Thurmond’s committee may remove.

Many Southern political observers also discount the notion that the region’s senators will follow prevailing votes of their state’s House delegations. For example, while a majority of North Carolina’s congressmen voted in favor of a stronger act on all roll call votes, no one in the state believes that the Republicans Jesse Helms and John East will take their instructions from those votes. Both North Carolina senators are on record opposing major provisions of the Act.

Perhaps South Carolina’s Rep. Carroll Campbell foretold the fate of the Act for the next few months on October 5. After attempting to amend HR 3112, Campbell voted for final passage but rose immediately afterwards to explain: “I consider this bill deficient in some respects and I expect the Senate to consider the merits of the arguments raised against certain provisions.”

Voting Record of Southern Members
Of U.S. House of Representatives on
Key Issues of the Voting Rights Act

G = A vote for the Voting Rights Act or opposing changes to original bill.

B A vote against the Voting Rights Act or supporting changes to original bill.

– = Not a member of Congress or not voting. = Vote is unknown.

* = A vote that was ‘paired” with another member of Congress.

** = Amendment to change “bailout’ provision so states could be exempted if 60% minority voters cast ballots, and if states remained free of Voting Rts. Act violations for at least five years.

*** = Amendment to change original bill to permit “bailout” from Section 5 to be decided by local federal district courts instead of the district court in the District of Columbia.

SOURCE: Congressional Quarterly; compiled by the Southern Regional Council, 75 Marietta Street, Atlanta, Ga. 30303.

	Members	1975	1981
	House of Representatives	Butler Amendment	Butler Amendment
	1981	Exempting Some States	Changing Bailout
	Alabama
	Jack Edwards (R)	B	B
	William Dickenson (R)	B	B
	Bill Nichols (D)	B	B
	Tom Bevill (D)	B	B
	Ronnie B. Flippo (D)	–	B
	Albert Smith (R)	–	B
	Richard Shelby (D)	–	B
	Arkansas
	Bill Alexander (D)	?	G
	Ed Bethune (R)	–	G
	John Hammerschmidt (R)	?	G
	Beryl Anthony (D)	–	G
	Florida
	Earl Hutto (D)	–	G
	Don Fuqua (D)	G	G
	Charles Bennett (D)	G	G
	Bill Chappell (D)	B	B
	Bill McCollum (R)	–	B
	C.W. Young (R)	B	B
	Sam Gibbons (D)	B	G
	Andy Ireland (D)	–	G
	Bill Nelson (D)	–	G
	L.A. BaFalis (R)	B	B
	Dan Mica (D)	–	G
	Clay Shaw (R)	–	B
	William Lehman (D)	G	G
	Claude Pepper (D)	G	–
	Dante Fascell (D)	G	G
	Georgia
	Bo Ginn(D)	B	G
	Charles Hatcher (D)	–	B
	Jack Brinkley (D)	B	B
	Elliot Levitas (D)	G	B
	Wyche Fowler (D)	–	G
	Newt Gingrich (R)	–	B
	Larry McDonald (D)	B	B
	Billy Evans (D)	–	B
	Ed Jenkins (D)	–	B
	Doug Barnard (D)	–	B
	Louisiana
	Robert Livingston (R)	–	B
	Lindy Boggs (D)	B*	G
	W.J. Tauzin (D)	–	B
	Buddy Roemer (D)	–	B
	Jerry Huckaby (D)	–	B
	W. Henson Moore (R)	B	B
	John B. Breaux (D)	B	B
	Gillis W. Long (D)	B	G
	Mississippi
	Jamie Whitten (D)	B	B
	David Bowen (D)	B*	B
	G.V. Sonny Montgomery (D)	B	B
	William Dowdy (D)	–	G
	Trent Lott (R)	B	B
	North Carolina
	Walter Jones (D)	?	–
	L.H. Fountain (D)	B	G
	Charles Whitley (D)	–	G
	Ike Andrews (D)	G	G
	Stephen Neal (D)	G	G
	Eugene Johnston (R)	–	B
	Charles Rose (D)	G	G
	W.G. Hefner (D)	B	G
	James Martin (R)	B	B
	James Broyhill (R)	B	B
	William Hendon (R)	–	G
	South Carolina
	Thomas Hartnett (R)	–	B
	Floyd Spence (R)	B	B
	Butler Dernck (D)	B	?
	Carroll Campbell (R)	–	B
	Ken Holland (D)	B	G
	John Napier (R)	–	B
	Tennessee
	James Quillen (R)	B	B
	John Duncan (R)	B	G
	Marilyn Bouquard (D)	G	G
	Albert Gore (D)	–	G
	William Boner (D)	–	G
	Robin Beard (R)	?	–
	Ed Jones (D)	G*	G
	Harold Ford (D)	G	G
	Texas
	Sam Hall (D)	–	B
	Charles Wilson (D)	?	G
	James Collins (R)	B	B
	Ralph Hall (D)	–	B
	Jim Mattox (D)	–	G
	Phil Gramm (D)	–	B
	Bill Archer (R)	B	B
	Jack Fields (R)	–	B
	Jack Brooks (D)	B	–
	J.J. Pickle (D)	B	G
	Marvin Leath (D)	–	B
	Jim Wright (D)	B	G
	Jack Hightower (D)	B	G
	William Patman (D)	–	B
	E. dela Garza (D)	G	G
	Richard White (D)	B	G
	Charles Stenholm (D)	–	B
	Mickey Leland (D)	–	G
	Kent Hance (D)	–	G
	Henry Gonzalez (D)	G	G
	Tom Loeffler (R)	–	B
	Ronald Paul (R)	–	–
	Abraham Kazen (D)	G	G
	Martin Frost (D)	–	G
	Virginia
	Paul Trible (R)	–	B
	G.W. Whitehurst (R)	B	B
	Thomas Bliley (R)	–	B
	Robert Daniel (R)	B	B
	Dan Daniel (D)	B	B
	M. Caldwell Butler (R)	B	B
	J. Kenneth Robinson (R)	B	B
	Stanford Parris (R)	–	–
	William Wampler (R)	B	B
	Frank Wolf (R)	–	B

VOTING RECORD
Of Southern Members of
U.S. Senate on Key Issues of
Voting Rights Act 1965-1975

G = A vote for passage of the Voting Rights Act or a vote opposing changes to original bill.

B = A vote against passage of the Voting Rights Act or a vote supporting changes to original bill.

– = Not a member of Congress or not voting.

* = A vote that was “paired” with another member of Congress.

** = Tunney motion was a vote to table the Stone amendment to only apply the Act’s pre-clearance examiner remedies in any state or subdivision where the Attorney General has filed suit under the Act alleging discrimination.

(R) = member of the Republican Party

(D) = member of the Democratic Party

(I) = independent of the two major parties

		1965	1970	1975**
	Senators (1980)	Passage of the Voting Rights Act	Voting Rights Act Extension	Tunney Amendment to Table Stone Amendment on Pre-clearance
	Alabama
	Howell Heflin (D)	–	–	–
	Jeremiah Denton (R)	–	–	–
	Arkansas
	David Pryor (D)	–	–	–
	Dale Bumpers (D)	–	–	B
	Florida
	Lawton Chiles (D)	–	–	B
	Paula Hawkins (R)	–	–	–
	Georgia
	Sam Nunn (D)	–	–	B
	Mack Mattingly (R)	–	–	–
	Louisiana
	J. Johnson (D)	–	–	B
	Russell Long (D)	B	B*	B
	Mississippi
	John Stennis (D)	B	–	B
	Thad Cochran (R)	–	–	–
	North Carolina
	Jesse Helms (R)	–	–	B
	John East (R)	–	–	–
	South Carolina
	Strom Thurmond (R)	B	B	B
	Ernest Hollings (D)	–	B	B
	Tennessee
	James Sasser (D)	–	–	–
	Howard Baker (R)	–	G	B
	Texas
	Lloyd Bentson (D)	–	–	B
	John Tower (R)	B	B*	B
	Virginia
	Harry Byrd (I)	B*	B	B
	John Warner (R)	–	–	–

What Does H.R. 3112 Provide?

By Staff

Vol. 4, No. 1, 1981, p. 9

The House bill HR 3112, passed on October 5, extends continuously the special provisions of the Voting Rights Act and changes two others. In essence, the bill amends Section 4 to permit jurisdictions to meet a new standard of exemption from the obligations of preclearing voting changes under Section 5; amends the standard of proof in Section 2 voting discrimination court cases; and extends the bilingual language assistance provisions until 1992.

Preclearance

Currently Section Five requires all local jurisdictions in seven Southern states and parts of others across the country to submit all their voting and election changes to the U.S. Department of Justice or to the federal district court in Washington, D.C. These changes may include annexations, changes in polling places, reapportionment plans, or other election schemes. If a change is found to be racially discriminatory, an objection is issued and the change cannot be executed. H.R. 3112 continues this section.

Bailout

The Voting Rights Act presently provides for a “bailout” which allows jurisdictions to end the requirements of preclearance under Section 5 if they can show in a lawsuit in federal district court in Washington that they have not used a discriminatory test or device during the last several years.

HR 3112 provides a new bailout procedure in Section 4 which is less stringent than the current bailout. The new standard would not go into effect until August 6, 1984. Thereafter, a jurisdiction would have to show for itself and for all governmental units within its territory that for the preceding ten years it has a record of no voting discrimination and has taken steps to increase minority political participation and to remove obstacles to fair representation for minorities.

Some of the standards set up to determine if the jurisdiction has a clean record on voting discrimination include existence of a test or device used for the purpose or effect of racial discrimination, a court judgment of voting discrimination, the assignment of federal examiners for the area, compliance with Section 5, and the absence of objections rendered by the Attorney General under Section 5.

The standards set up to determine if a jurisdiction has eliminated voting practices and barriers to minority voters include a showing that voting procedures and methods are nondiscriminatory, the absence of intimidation and harrassment of voters, and local efforts to expand registration through the appointment of deputy registrars, offering evening or weekend registration, or providing postcard registration. The appointment of minorities as registrars, poll workers and others involved in running elections would also be a sign of an affirmative effort to expand minority citizens’ voting rights.

Under current law if an entire state is covered by Section 4 and 5 its counties and cities may not bailout independently. The new bailout permits counties within fully covered states an opportunity to bailout if they can meet the new standards of Section 4. The House bill continues current law requiring bailout suits to be brought in the federal district court of the District of Columbia. The bill also permits any person to participate in the lawsuit if their voting rights might be endangered if the state or county bailed out.

Bilingual Ballots

The provisions for the bilingual assistance in voting do not expire until 1985. However, the bill extends for an additional seven years the life of this section.

Discriminatory Results

The House bill amends Section 2 of the Act to prohibit any voting qualification, standard or practice carried out “in a manner which results in a denial or abridgement” of the right to vote of minorities. Section 2 also adds the following sentence: “The fact that members of a minority group have not been elected in numbers equal to the group’s proportion of the population shall not, in and of itself, constitute a violation of this section.”

No Assistance to Voters in Booth

The only amendment adopted in the floor debate was proposed by Rep. Millicent Fenwick of New Jersey. The amendment adds the following section to the Act: “Nothing in this Act shall be construed in such a way as to permit voting assistance to be given within the voting booth, unless the voter is blind or physically incapacitated.”

Summary of Changes

While the effects of the Fenwick amendment remain foreboding but unclear for minority voters, the changes in Section 4 will probably permit approximately 25 percent of the counties in the Deep South to ball out from Section 5. Staff members of the House Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional rights predict that most of these counties will be in rural areas of Southern states where few blacks reside. The changes in Section 2 are aimed at permitting courts to hold unlawful practices and electoral schemes that result in discrimination. Under the Supreme Court decision handed down in the Bolden case, the courts presently interpret Section 2 to require a showing of both discriminatory purpose and effect.