Hot Rock of Hot Springs

Hot Rock of Hot Springs
Monday, Aug. 07, 1950
Time Magazine

"It's not a question of who will win," said Sid McMath with a jaunty grin. "Instead, it's a matter of adding to our majority." Handsome, breezy Sidney Sanders McMath, a hot rock from Hot Springs, was out to win his second term as governor of Arkansas.

He hustled around the state in a chartered plane, reciting his achievements and promising more of the same. At every stop he also took a couple of lusty licks at Benjamin Travis Laney, the wealthy, 53-year-old former governor and Dixiecrat leader who had come out of political retirement to seek a third term and save Arkansas from Sid McMath and those Fair Deal radicals in Washington. Everywhere McMath went, he wore the same old blue suit, red tie and dilapidated Panama. He pumped the hands of the menfolk and introduced himself with a hearty "I'm Sid McMath." For the women, it was always a silken "I'm Sid McMath, honey."

To each of the state's 488,000 qualified Democratic voters, McMath mailed a gaudy, eight-page comic book relating the saga of 38-year-old Sid McMath. There was McMath the poor boy, born in a dogtrot cabin on an Arkansas farm; McMath the amateur boxer, and honor student at the state university; Major McMath the Marine Corps hero, with the Silver Star for bravery on Bougainville; McMath the racket-busting prosecutor who cleaned up gambling in Hot Springs; McMath the family loving governor.*

McMath made mu:h of what he was going to do for Arkansas in the way of schools, roads and public works. It was good campaign talk in a state that runs 47th in many measurements of standards of living. Arkansawyers have a wry joke about it: "Thank God for Mississippi."

When Dixiecrat Laney tried to picture Sid McMath as a traitor to the South, supple Sid declared against such pet Truman projects as FEPC and compulsory health insurance, but still capitalized on his closeness to Harry Truman. Ben plaintively confessed that he had never learned "this glamour-boy, superman style of politicking," and even before primary day admitted: "He has had only 18 months in which to make political enemies. I had four full years."

Last week Arkansas voters went to the polls, by a two to one majority gave Glamour-Boy McMath his second term in office, and a feeling that the best of his career was still ahead of him.

* Not shown in the happy family strip: the shotgun killing of McMath's father by Sid's wife Anne. It happened in 1947, while McMath was prosecutor. His father, drinking heavily, had threatened Anne; a grand jury called it justifiable homicide.