Background
Dale Bumpers was born on August 12, 1925, in Charleston, Arkansas. He was one of four children of William Rufus, a hardware store owner, and Lattie Bumpers. Bumpers spent his childhood in Charleston in the lean years of the Depression.
1977
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, D.C. 20500, United States
Dale Bumpers with First Lady Rosalynn Carter at the White House
1999
Dale Bumpers and Betty Lou Bumpers
1999
Dale Bumpers (far right) with his wife Betty Lou Bumpers and President Bill Clinton
Dale Bumpers
Dale Bumpers
Dale Bumpers
Dale Bumpers
Dale Bumpers
(In The Best Lawyer in a One-Lawyer Town, Bumpers tells th...)
In The Best Lawyer in a One-Lawyer Town, Bumpers tells the story of his remarkable journey from poverty to political legend, and the result is a great American memoir that is already attracting wide acclaim for its clever Southern charm.
https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Dale-Bumpers/dp/0375505210/ref=sr_1_1?__mk_es_US=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%95%C3%91&dchild=1&keywords=The+Best+Lawyer+in+a+One-Lawyer+Town&qid=1601642129&s=books&sr=1-1
2003
Businessman attorney politician writer
Dale Bumpers was born on August 12, 1925, in Charleston, Arkansas. He was one of four children of William Rufus, a hardware store owner, and Lattie Bumpers. Bumpers spent his childhood in Charleston in the lean years of the Depression.
After graduating from Charleston High School in 1943, Bumpers briefly attended the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County) and joined the United States Marines later that year. When World War II ended, he was on a ship heading to the Pacific theater. After he was discharged in July 1946, he returned to UA and graduated two years later with a Bachelor of Arts in political science. He received a law degree in 1951 from Northwestern University at Evanston, Illinois.
During World War II, Dale Bumpers served with the United States Marines. Upon returning to Arkansas, he completed his education and became a lawyer. Bumpers and his wife returned to Charleston, where he started to manage his father's business (Charleston Hardware and Furniture Company) after his parents tragically died in an automobile accident. He sold that business and began operating a 350-acre Angus cattle ranch in 1966-1979.
Dale Bumpers got into the Bar of the State of Arkansas in 1952. In his years of practicing law in 1952-1970, he lost only three cases. As the title of his memoir indicated, he was, indeed, "the best lawyer in a one-lawyer town." Also, Bumpers was the co-author of the essay of Religion and Politics. The contributors explore the relationship between the two both, a historical and a constitutional context.
Despite his prominence as a Franklin County lawyer and businessman, Dale Bumpers' first attempt at the elected office failed. In 1962, he ran for the House seat that his father once held. Although he won more than ninety percent of the vote in Charleston, he lost the election. The loss did not deter Bumpers from seeking office again. He considered running for governor in 1968 but decided to wait. When he ran in 1970, he faced seven candidates in the Democratic primary. The front-runners were former Governor Orval Faubus, who had served six terms from 1954 to 1966, Attorney General Joe Edward Purcell, and Speaker of the House Hayes McClerkin. An early poll showed Bumpers with about one percent of the vote.
Dale Bumpers overcame his early lack of name recognition and support. His charismatic personality was showcased through strong television ads, and his personality and progressive positions attracted enthusiastic support, especially in western Arkansas. He finished second in the primary with twenty percent of the vote; Faubus received thirty-six percent. Bumpers easily defeated Faubus in the runoff and received sixty-two percent of the vote in the general election, defeating the Republican governor, multimillionaire Winthrop Rockefeller, who was seeking a third term. Bumpers won reelection in 1972.
As governor, Dale Bumpers had significant successes. He gained legislative approval of several major reforms that Rockefeller had championed but had been unable to convince the Democrat-controlled state legislature to enact. For example, in his first term, Bumpers proposed a plan similar to one that had been advocated by the Rockefeller administration to reorganize state government to reduce drastically the number of agencies reporting to the governor. Also, he proposed raising income taxes to provide funds to increase teachers' salaries. This proposal to increase income taxes and make the tax rates more progressive required, under the state constitution, the votes of three-fourths of the members of both houses of the state legislature. He successfully guided both controversial reforms through the legislature.
In 1974, as Dale Bumpers was completing his fourth year as governor, he challenged the incumbent United States senator, James William Fulbright, in the Democratic senatorial primary. The decision to run against Fulbright was a difficult one. Bumpers had long been an admirer and supporter of Fulbright. He considered him a friend and a great senator. Nevertheless, he had polls showing not only that he could easily defeat Fulbright, but that Fulbright was vulnerable to other possible opponents. So, Bumpers defeated Fulbright decisively, receiving sixty-five percent of the vote. He also won the general election by a wide margin and took his seat as a senator in 1975.
In Dale Bumpers' twenty-four-year career in the Senate, he was chairman and senior minority member of the Committee on Small Business. He also served on the Senate Appropriations Committee and the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
As a senator, During Bumpers consistently supported environmental legislation and efforts to expand and fund the National Park System. For example, he won approval from Congress to designate 91,000 acres in Arkansas as wilderness areas. As a result of his efforts to preserve parklands and wilderness areas, the Wilderness Society awarded him the Ansel Adams Award in 1998.
After Dale Bumpers left the Senate in 1999, President Bill Clinton asked him to return to the Senate floor to make the closing argument on his behalf at Clinton’s impeachment trial. The House had approved two articles of impeachment against Clinton, and as provided by the Constitution, the Senate's responsibility was to conduct a judicial process and vote either to convict the president and remove him from office or to dismiss the charges. Bumpers addressed the Senate trial to make the final summation of why the Senate should dismiss the impeachment charges against Clinton. Two weeks after his speech, the Senate acquitted Clinton of the impeachment charges, allowing Clinton to remain in office.
After leaving the Senate, Dale Bumpers became director of a Washington think tank, the Center for Defense Information, which is concerned with defense and defense expenditure issues. In 2000, he joined the law firm Arent Fox in Washington. He retired at the end of 2008 and moved to Little Rock.
(In The Best Lawyer in a One-Lawyer Town, Bumpers tells th...)
2003Dale Bumpers didn't seek a fifth term as a governor. He was frustrated in his attempts to reform laws governing grazing and mining on federal lands, essentially taxpayer-owned territories from which, in the case of mining, billions of dollars in minerals extracted and no royalties paid. Another favorite cause was the preservation of the wilderness through the expansion of the National Park system.
Bumpers also was an early supporter of efforts to reduce the national debt and was often a critic of military spending. He opposed expenditures on such projects as the space station and the Strategic Defense Initiative and led the successful fight to stop the construction of a superconducting supercollider. Besides, he tried to reform mining and other laws regulating the use of natural resources on public lands to prevent private companies from taking resources without paying fair royalties to the United States treasury. Additionally, Bumpers consistently opposed efforts to amend the United States Constitution. He voted against thirty proposed amendments, including one to allow prayer in public schools. Also, he described his vote on the Panama Canal treaties as the most politically difficult for him. Bumpers voted for the treaties, which returned ownership of the canal to Panama in the late 1970s. His vote was politically unpopular in Arkansas and cost him support in future elections.
After Dale Bumpers left the United States Senate, in the one interview, he expressed his disgust with the state of politics in the United States. He hoped that people are going to say, "look, with the amount of money that we spend in this country and the amount of ignorance, environmental degradation, and problems with our health-care system we have, there's something wrong about our spending priorities." Bumpers considered that "if the people in this country ever wake up and realize that they can have it all for the taxes they're paying, they'll figure out how misguided our priorities are and will demand a different caliber of leadership."
Dale Bumpers also considered running for president in 1976, 1984, and 1988, but each time he decided against it. He explained that he was deterred by the extreme partisanship in presidential politics, the need to raise massive amounts of money, and the negative impact of a race on his family.
Quotations: "I have defended the Constitution at every chance. I voted against thirty-seven constitutional amendments since I've been in the Senate and for one, and that one was a mistake. I wish I hadn't cast it. But people around here trivialize the Constitution. It's the document that's made this country great it's made us free, the longest living organic law in the world, and yet, people around here treat it as though it's just a rough draft. So, as I look back, as I say, I cast courageous votes, I stood up for what I believed."
Dale Bumpers married Betty Lou Bumpers on September 4, 1949. They had three children, Dale Brent, William Mark, and Margaret Brooke Bumpers.