Arkansas Watch Growing up can be good for us all

— I lived in El Dorado from 1992 to 2001. While living there, I once brashly challenged a living legend in Arkansas politics named Jody Mahony. I ran against Senator Mahony when he ran for re-election to the State Senate in 1998. This past week I heard about his death from cancer at age 70.

This is not the time to discuss the policy differences that led me to challenge him in that race. He beat me soundly in that election, as you might expect. Though I never accepted his premises of government, I came to respect him on the primal level that one man respects another who has bested him at something important.

To show you how much I have changed, one of the non-policy issues that led me to run against him was that then Governor Mike Huckabee came to town and I felt Mahony had slighted him during the visit. After I started campaigning, I began to see the other side of Mike Huckabee, and got a lot more sympathy for where Mahony was coming from. I soon discovered that Huckabee was afraid of offending Mahony and wanted nothing to do with me!

I remember one time when Huckabee came back to town and shook Mahony’s hand warmly. Every time I, the Republican candidate running against Mahony, tried to get anywhere near the governor, he darted away from my approaches with an agility that was surprising for a man of his heft. I was also impressed with how expertly he used the small groups of people clustered in the room to screen me off.

I finally left the room without ever shaking the governor’s hand, concluding that the only way I could get a hold of Huckabee was literally to tackle him at a dead sprint, so eager was he to avoid contact with the impudent young fellow running against Senator Mahony.

Obviously, I have grown up a lot since that time (I was in my mid-30s). Time mellows us all. I do remember one time when Senator Mahony told me that I needed to “grow up.” While I was running against him, we were talking and I asked him about his salvation.

He replied that he was a member of such-and-such a church. I said, “But do you admit you are a sinner in need of God’s forgiveness through the blood of Jesus Christ?” That’s when he said that I should “grow up,” and turned and walked away. He was right in the larger sense. I was in my 30s, but I still had a lot ofgrowing up to do.

Though he was farther along in life than I was at the time, it is my fervent hope that he grew up in the interval, too. God was always good to him in life, and it is easy for me to believe that Jody Mahony was one of those people who God determined to bless whether what they did was good or bad. My belief is that if Jody Mahony were asked this past year the same question that I asked him near the steps of the Union County Court House 11 years ago then he would give a very different answer. My hope is that his answer would be the same as mine - that is, yes.

No matter what office or standing we have in this life, it is nothing but a blink in comparison to eternity.

All of us, both great and small, will one day stand before the true King of All the Living. On that day, our growing up will be complete.

Opinion, Pages 4 on 12/16/2009