Former Arkansas governor Jim Guy Tucker died Thursday at Little Rock in Ark, targeting his predecessor as governor Bill Clinton.
His death in the hospital was caused by complications of ulcerative colitis, his daughter Anna Ashton said.
Whitewater's investigation into fraudulent land transactions in northwestern Arkansas was led by a special Republican prosecutor and consumed much of President Clinton. However, it ended up netting only secondary players at a light fee.
Mr. Tucker was one of them. He was the most promising figure in Arkansas politics and a rival to Clinton, the Democrat of Arkansas. However, he was forced to resign as governor in July 1996.
Two months ago, he had been convicted in federal court in Little Rock. He was charged by an independent lawyer, a team led by Kenneth W. Starr, after receiving fraudulent loans from small business development company Capital Management Services in the mid-1980s.
In August 1996, U.S. District Court Judge George Howard Jr. in Little Rock avoided the escaping prison for testimony about serious health conditions, and gave small businesses $294,000 in compensation. I ordered them to pay. management. By then, Tucker had already left the governor's mansion. He would never take office again.
But his beliefs – like the Whitewater itself, which journalist and commentator Lars Eric Nelson called “the tragedy of scandal investigation, the cargo party version of Watergate” in a 1998 New York book review, later It was questioned.
According to University of Arkansas historian Jeannie M. Whayne, the loan was $150,000 and he would never have gone to Tucker's water and sewerage services company. Other sources say nearly $3 million was loaned to Tucker, who was convicted in May 1996, and his co-defendants James B and Susan McDougal.
Veteran Arkansas journalist Ernie Dumas, who is described as dean of the Arkansas Political Press Corps by the Arkansas Encyclopedia, says that capital management services are “at least half of the owners are somehow “at a disadvantage.” “We were supposed to provide loans to businesses.” In an unpublished manuscript.
However, David Hale, a banker who runs the capital management service and was a key witness to Starr's prosecutor's team, said, “None of his borrowers, if any, were qualified.” Dumas wrote. “Tucker and McDougals learned special designations for the less fortunate people at trial.”
Nevertheless, the Arkansas Governor's belief represents a kind of high-water mark for Clinton's Starr's pursuit. Tucker was the highest ranked official convicted during the investigation, and his beliefs were considered a promising sign of Starr's efforts. It turns out that not that.
Before his conviction, Tucker pursued a mild, conservative agenda that Southern Democrats of that era must follow, as Southern Democrats of that era arrived at the governor's office. It was there. Thirty years later, these states are almost exclusively in the hands of Republicans.
He cut spending at several state agencies, such as the Arkansas Parks and Tourism Authority, and gave public schools savings. In 1994 he pushed forward with bills targeting juvenile offenders. This is a special concern for conservative voters in the state. However, he was unable to convince voters to approve the proposal to build a $3.5 billion highway bond.
Early in his political career, Tucker served as Arkansas Attorney General from 1973 to 1977 for a two-year term. , Wilbur D. Mills was forced to retire due to a scandal that included stripper Van Fox. He served in Congress for the first semester and approached President Jimmy Carter.
James Guy Tucker Jr. was born on June 13, 1943 in Oklahoma City. One of James Guy Tucker Sr.'s three children, Willie Maud (White) Tucker, who runs the local Social Security Bureau. The family returned to Arkansas, where the father was a state auditor when he was a child. He attended a public high school in Little Rock.
He graduated from Harvard University in 1964 with a government degree and joined the Marines. He was immediately discharged for health reasons, but he went to Vietnam anyway – working as a freelance correspondent, mainly for the Arkansas Press.
He received a law degree from the University of Arkansas in 1968, joined the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, and later became involved in the Whitewater investigation as Hillary Clinton's employer.
When Tucker rose to his position in Arkansas politics – he failed for the US Senate for the governor in 1982 after a stint in the House in 1978 – Clinton said he had “he was the main one.” They began to see it as a competition. David Maranis wrote in his 1995 biography of Clinton, “first in class.”
During his tenure, Tucker practiced law, successfully enrolled in the cable television business, expanding from Arkansas to other parts of the United States.
He was elected lieutenant governor in 1990. When Clinton began the presidential election the following year, he was reluctantly forced to transfer power to his old rival. After Clinton was elected in 1992 and resigned as governor, Tucker became his successor. He was elected to a full term in 1994, but resigned two years later.
At the end of 1996 he had a liver transplant. Two years later, Starr chased him again, and Tucker pleaded guilty to tax fraud “to avoid going to prison.”
“The Department of Justice and the IRS ultimately admitted Starr accused him of violating Tucker in a section of federal bankruptcy law that didn't exist even at the time of cable television trading in the 1980s,” Dumas said. I added. “The government ultimately concluded that it might be owing Tucker's money, but how unidentified it was. It sent him and his wife a check of $1.44.
In addition to his daughter Anna, Mr. Tucker was survived by his wife Betty Allen (Alworth) Tucker. another daughter, Sarah Allen Tucker; son-in-law, Lance Alworth Jr.; stepdaughter, Kelly Driscoll; sister, Carol Tucker Foreman; Nine grandchildren. and one great grandson.
Tucker once recalled in an interview that Starr's prosecutors put him in order to reach Clinton.
“What they wanted me to do was to remember the conversation I had between Bill Clinton and David Hale. It wasn't like that. But they got Bill Clinton. I was trying to ensure that it could be done. That was the purpose of those prosecutions and I was of no use to them.
Steve Burns contributed a report from Little Rock.
