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Bill McCuen (1943–2000)
William J. (Bill) McCuen started a career as a teacher and principal in the public schools but soon ascended the ladder of local and state politics, reaching two statewide offices before another ambition—money—sent him to prison. Among other deeds, he faked the purchase of state and national flags for the Secretary of State’s Office and planned to keep proceeds of the phony purchase. Suffering from colon cancer, he was paroled from prison and died in 2000 at the age of fifty-seven.
Bill McCuen was born on August 19, 1943, at Fort Smith (Sebastian County) to Garland Granville McCuen and Sarah Emma Early McCuen. He graduated from Fort Smith Northside High School in 1961, received a bachelor’s degree in education from the University of the Ozarks in Clarksville (Johnson County) and a master’s degree from what is now Henderson State University in Arkadelphia (Clark County), and did postgraduate study at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County). He taught school in Hot Springs (Garland County) and became an elementary school principal.
He married Jacqueline Featherstone in 1965, and they divorced nearly two years later.
It was displeasure with government inaction that got him into politics, McCuen said. He complained to his alderman in Hot Springs about potholes in his street, and when he got no results, he ran for the office and won. He served two terms on the city council and then, in 1976, was elected county judge of Garland County. Four years later, he ran for state land commissioner. Sam Jones had held the office for twenty-four years and retired for health reasons, and his wife, an employee, ran to succeed him. McCuen defeated her in a runoff. Four years later, he ran for secretary of state and defeated longtime state auditor Jimmie “Red” Jones, who had served thirteen terms in office, as both state land commissioner and state auditor, from 1955 through 1978.
McCuen set out to turn the Arkansas State Capitol building into a showplace and tourist attraction, opening it on weekends for working-class visitors and erecting commercial vending facilities in the rotunda. Spectacular displays, including cascading lights around the capitol dome, became a regular feature during the winter holidays. His Hollywood phase followed, which left him toying with the idea of movie promotion as a career. Two adventure films—Under Siege (1986) and Stone Cold (1991)—featured scenes filmed at the capitol, including a purported rocket attack that, in fact, left part of the dome blackened. (The eastern façade of the capitol, including the front steps and columns, also was smudged in September 1986 when it was substituted for the U.S. Capitol in scenes about an attack on the American seat of government for the TV miniseries Amerika, starring Kris Kristofferson.)
McCuen took two young women on his elections division staff on a cross-country drive to Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon. One of them, Rhonda Dee Langster, later became his wife.
McCuen’s political ambitions peaked in his last term as secretary of state. Running in the Democratic Party primary for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, he defeated U.S. Representative Beryl Anthony Jr. in a runoff in 1992 after the news that Anthony was among scores of congressional members (including all four from Arkansas) who had overdrawn their accounts with the House’s internal bank. But his battles within his own party, including his upset of Anthony, and his publicized foibles—notably the western sojourn with two young female employes—haunted him all fall. Anthony’s supporters throughout the district crossed the line heavily and voted for the Republican, Jay Dickey. McCuen’s racy attacks on Dickey as a supporter of incest and his charge that Dickey had tried to cheat twenty-five teenagers at his ice-cream parlors out of a decent wage seemed to backfire. He lost by 11,000 votes.
When McCuen ran for reelection as the secretary of state in 1994, he was beaten in the Democratic primary by Sharon Priest, a former Little Rock (Pulaski County) city director and mayor, who defeated Republican Julia Hughes Jones in the general election.
McCuen’s legal troubles—multiple criminal investigations—were already percolating, including his alleged purchase of flags, which the Secretary of State’s Office traditionally sold or distributed. McCuen’s nonexistent flags were bought from a fictitious Florida company, and the check to the company was endorsed to Darrell Glascock, McCuen’s friend and the Republican candidate for state auditor. The check was never cashed. Governor Jim Guy Tucker ordered an investigation when the planned purchase was revealed in a news article.
McCuen eventually was tried and convicted in 1996 on two counts of accepting bribes and another of accepting a kickback—a total of seventeen years in prison and $30,000 in fines. He also was convicted of evading state taxes and trading in public office. The total of seventeen years was purportedly the stiffest penalty ever given, at that point, to an Arkansas state official.
He was paroled from prison in 1999 while he was being treated for colon cancer and went to his wife’s home in Heber Springs (Cleburne County). He died there September 9, 2000, as a result of a stroke during treatment. He is buried in Gracelawn Cemetery at Van Buren (Crawford County).
After his death, which came right after he had been summoned to a court hearing on why he had not paid his fines and taxes, the media—notably the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, in a sympathetic and even admiring editorial by Paul Greenberg—recounted and celebrated his roguish deeds and lifestyle. In his last days as secretary of state, McCuen had ridden around the capitol and the country on his Harley-Davidson motorcycle and lived in a state-owned historic building adjacent to the capitol grounds—the Julian Bunn Davidson House—that became known as the “Sugar Shack” owing to McCuen’s purportedly wild parties there.
For additional information:
Brummett, John. “McCuen Survives; But So Do Charges.” Arkansas Times, June 18, 1992, pp. 1, 20–21.
Haman, John. “Bill McCuen’s Obsession.” Arkansas Times, February 3, 1994, p. 13.
———. “McCuen Undergoes an Audit.” Arkansas Times, March 3, 1995, p. 15.
Oman, Noel E., and Chuck Plunkett. “McCuen Dies after Bout with Cancer.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, September 12, 2000, pp. 1A, 5A.
“On Man and God at the State Capitol.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, September 22, 2007, p. 22.
Ernest Dumas
Little Rock, Arkansas
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