Clinton Arkansas Backers Break Ranks, Turn to Dole : Politics: Head of Tyson Foods and a top Little Rock banker cite disappointment with President’s record.

In a stunning vote of no confidence, the two most important Arkansas financial sponsors of President Clinton’s political career--Don Tyson of Tyson Foods Inc. and the powerful Stephens banking family of Little Rock--have turned their backs on the Clinton reelection effort and are supporting Sen. Bob Dole’s candidacy.

Tyson’s political action committee has already contributed $3,000 to Dole’s campaign, while the Stephens Inc. committee has donated $6,000 to Dole, according to campaign finance reports filed this week.

Tyson and his son, John, each gave $1,000 of personal funds to the Dole campaign; Stephens family patriarch Jackson T. Stephens has contributed $250 to Dole so far this year.

“Bill Clinton’s election as President is the worst thing that ever happened to Tyson Foods and the state of Arkansas,” said Tyson spokesman Archie R. Schaffer III. “It’s brought us nothing but headaches and misery.”

Schaffer added, “Not that we think Bill Clinton is a bad person. He’s doing the best job he can.”

In 1992, both the Tyson and Stephens companies and dozens of their senior executives heavily supported Clinton, raising well over $150,000 for his successful run for President and, in Stephens’ case, supplying badly needed loans at key points in the campaign.

This year, only one executive from either company, Tyson General Counsel James B. Blair, a longtime personal friend of Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, showed up for a major Clinton fund-raising event in Little Rock in late June.

In addition, the leaders of the Rose Law Firm, where Mrs. Clinton and three former top Administration officials worked, have concluded that the reelection of Clinton is not “in our best interest,” according to managing partner Ronald M. Clark.

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The defections are dramatic evidence of the pain Clinton’s tenure in the White House has brought many prominent Arkansans, from the suicide of former Rose partner Vincent Foster to the independent counsel investigation of Tyson Foods’ business practices. The continuing Whitewater probe has also cast the state in unflattering light, raising searching questions about the probity of its political and financial elite.

White House officials would not discuss the matter on the record.

But a close Clinton associate, trying to put a positive note on what is clearly a disconcerting development, said that the defections of Tyson, Stephens and the Rose Law Firm principals strongly suggest that the alleged coziness of Clinton with the state’s business powers is a myth.

He added that the desertion of some Arkansas contributors is not surprising, considering the plagues and bad publicity visited upon the state during the Clinton presidency.

The Clinton friend, who asked not to be identified said, “Some of this is inevitable. The state and the people who do business there feel under attack. They may feel that if they had never participated in the state’s political structure that none of this would have happened.”

Tyson’s unhappiness was reflected in his and his top executives’ conspicuous absence from the big Clinton fund-raiser at Little Rock’s Excelsior Hotel on June 24.

By contrast, 24 Tyson executives and family members contributed $18,500 to the nascent Clinton presidential campaign in a six-week period immediately after his announcement in the fall of 1991 that he would seek the presidency.

“I doubt that five senior executives of this company will vote for Clinton [in 1996], let alone contribute to his campaign,” a Tyson Foods official said.

The case of Stephens Inc.--one of the nation’s largest brokerage houses off Wall Street--is even more striking.

In the weeks following Clinton’s 1991 announcement, 30 Stephens family members and executives donated $19,550 to Clinton and rounded up thousands of dollars more from clients, friends and spouses.

Warren Stephens, Jackson Stephens’ son and now chief executive of the family firm, said in mid-1992 that he had raised more than $100,000 for the Clinton campaign.

But so far this year, not one member of the Stephens family or one employee of the firm who contributed three years ago has sent the Clinton reelection campaign a check and none showed up at the June 24 event.

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In fact, the Stephenses’ disillusionment with Clinton came quickly, according to campaign finance records. Between 1992 and 1994, four Stephens family members contributed a total of $20,000 to Campaign America, the political action committee Dole formed to support his off-year activities. Warren Stephens--Clinton’s top banker in 1992--gave Dole $5,000.

“The company doesn’t have any policy of directing political contributions by employees,” said Stephens Inc. legal counsel David A. Knight. “We have employees who support various candidates.”

Knight, who gave Clinton $450 during the 1992 primary, has contributed nothing to Clinton so far this year and said he hasn’t decided whether he will.

The current dissatisfaction with Clinton has its roots in a longstanding ambivalence that Arkansas business leaders have had about their state’s ambitious young politician.

Don Tyson, for example, supported Clinton’s initial run for the Arkansas governorship in 1978, but backed his challenger in 1980 after Clinton refused to raise the weight limit for Tyson’s poultry trucks on state highways.

Tyson rejoined the fold later, but often found himself at odds with Clinton on political and regulatory matters, a company official said.

Tyson has had a long and friendly relationship with Dole because of their mutual interest in agriculture, Tyson’s spokesman said. He said that the company political action committee has contributed to Dole in his earlier campaigns for the Senate.

“Bob Dole has been a friend of the company in the past,” Schaffer said.

Jackson Stephens also has had a long relationship with Dole and a history of supporting Republican causes. One source sympathetic to Clinton who knows the Stephenses said that the family’s support for Clinton in 1992 was something of an aberration based more on Arkansas pride than on political fealty.

At the Rose Law Firm, managing director Clark said that only about “three or four attorneys” from the 51-lawyer firm went to the June Clinton fund-raiser. Clark wasn’t one of them.

He said that the lack of enthusiasm for the President reflected the troubles that his tenure in office has brought the firm. Four senior Rose lawyers--Mrs. Clinton, Foster, Webster L. Hubbell and William H. Kennedy III--went to Washington in 1992 to serve in the Administration with high hopes that were disastrously shattered.

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Former Associate Atty. Gen. Hubbell is a convicted felon headed for prison, having pleaded guilty to bilking the Rose firm out of nearly $500,000; and Kennedy is back in Little Rock, having suffered through a painful divorce and public humiliation for his role in the White House travel office scandal. On top of that is Foster’s death.

The firm itself is under scrutiny by Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr for its possible role in the Arkansas banking and real estate affair and has spent tens of thousands of dollars and countless hours responding to subpoenas and producing documents.

Clark said he understands why Tyson and his company, who have suffered similar problems since Arkansas’ former governor went to Washington, have soured on Clinton.

“I imagine Tyson has some of the same sentiments that we have,” Clark said. “It’s hard to believe that [Clinton’s reelection] is in our best interest.”

Dole’s campaign spokesman had difficulty concealing his glee at Clinton’s troubles.

“It looks like friends don’t let friends reelect Bill Clinton,” Nelson Warfield said. “It’s a stunning measure of how disillusioned and disappointed people have become with Bill Clinton in the White House.”