“No one — including Bill Clinton — has ever dominated the media in Arkansas like Tommy Robinson did in the 1980s,” Rex Nelson, former newsman and longtime right-hand man to the state’s former Republican Gov. Mike Huckabee, told Newsmax.
Robinson, the former Democrat-turned-Republican member of the House of Representatives died July 10.
“Think of it — had Tommy gotten out of the Republican gubernatorial primary in 1990, I’m convinced he would have defeated [Bill] Clinton. That was because he was a folk hero in rural Arkansas. Rural Arkansans didn’t vote in Republican primaries in those days, but they would have voted for him in the fall. That was [then-Republican National Chair] Lee Atwater’s plan, but a brain tumor took Lee out of the equation prior to the primary that year.”
Nelson concluded that “a Robinson win over Clinton that fall obviously would have changed the course of world history.”
That was just one of the post-mortems on the highly unconventional lawman-politician that everyone in the Razorback State seemed to call just “Tommy.”
Although Robinson had been out of elective office for more than 30 years when he died at age 82, Robinson was in no way, shape, or form, forgotten.
A native of Little Rock and a U.S. Navy veteran, Robinson was a North Little Rock patrolman, state trooper, head of the campus police at the University of Arkansas, and police chief of suburban Jacksonville. While walking a beat and executing the other duties of a lawman, Robinson got his degree at nights from the University of Arkansas and, with wife Carolyn, raised six children.
He was a Democrat when then-Gov. Bill Clinton named him director of Public Safety in 1979. A year later, as Clinton was losing re-election to Republican Frank White, Robinson defeated Pulaski County (Little Rock) Sheriff Ken Best in the Democratic primary.
“I heard a lot of ‘Tommy Robinson stories’ about your time as sheriff,” Newsmax told then-Rep. Robinson during an interview in his office in 1985. He shot back: “Of course you did. There’s lots of ’em!”
As late-night robberies at convenience stores skyrocketed, Sheriff Robinson took to TV and, brandishing a shotgun, announced that he had placed armed deputies covertly in every such store in the county, ominously warning: “If you’re thinking of robbing a convenience store, don’t!”
Robberies at such stores dropped 96% while he was sheriff (although it was never established whether the armed deputies were actually placed at all the stores).
Decrying that prisons were overcrowded in Pulaski County, Robinson marched a group of prisoners to the state prison at Pine Bluff. When the warden refused to accept them, Robinson had the prisoners chained to the front gate of the prison and left them there.
He actually spent time in jail in 1983 after refusing to allow a federally-appointed jail master to enter the jail. Robinson later denounced U.S. District Judge George Howard Jr., who had ordered his incarceration for contempt of court, as a “token judge.” Howard was Black.
When comedian Bob Hope made an appearance in Little Rock in 1981, Sheriff Robinson arrived in his official car with sirens blaring, to arrest Hope on a warrant sworn out by Jack Benny on grounds of “impersonating a comedian.”
He then announced he could arrange for the charges to be dismissed, leading Hope to quip: “You must have connections in high places.” Benny had died seven years before.
When Republican Rep. Ed Bethune decided to run for the Senate in 1984, the smart money in Little Rock was on State Rep. Judy Petty, a known conservative who had been Ronald Reagan’s Arkansas campaign chair in 1976 and in ’80. But the smart money did not contend with Robinson, who won the Democratic primary over four opponents.
The sheriff ran as an unabashed conservative and differed with Petty on few issues.
During the Republican National Convention that year, Petty delivered an address in which she declared “there are things worse than war” and cited living under tyranny and slavery as examples. Robinson came back with a TV spot showing a little boy playing with toy soldiers at the grave of his father, who (the narrator said) lost his father in combat. Recalling his own time in uniform, the Democrat then solemnly vowed on the spot to do all he could to avoid war.
While President Reagan swept the 2nd District, Robinson defeated Petty 46% to 41%, with the remainder going to a liberal Democrat who ran as an independent. With a lifetime rating of 52% from the American Conservative Union, Robinson was a true “Boll Weevil” Democrat who broke with his party’s House leadership on issues from abortion to support for the anti-Communist contras in Nicaragua. In 1989, flanked by President George H.W. Bush at the White House, he announced he was becoming a Republican.
A year later, Robinson made the bid for governor that Atwater and other Republicans felt was so key to stopping the rise of Clinton. But he lost in the primary to businessman and Republican National Committeeman Sheffield Nelson, who went on to lose to Clinton 57% to 43%. The rest, as they say, is history.
Without any office, engaging in varied enterprises from lobbying to running a liquor store, Robinson remained a recognizable fixture throughout Arkansas. As Lieutenant Governor Leslie Rutledge recalled to Newsmax, “Tommy would come to the state Capitol still chain-smoking, even though there were ‘No Smoking’ signs everywhere. But, hey, he was older than [fitness guru] Richard Simmons [who died three days after Robinson at age 76].”
Perhaps the best characterization of Tommy Robinson was that of Huey Long about himself. When asked how he would describe himself, the legendary Louisiana governor and U.S. Senator said “Oh, hell, say I’m sui generis and let it go at that.”
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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