Should I Stay in Politics? - Page 1

Personal recollection of Hays' campaign defeats of 1928, 1930 and 1933 and career in government administration positions“SHOULD I STAY IN POLITICS?” by Brooks Hays It was a hot afternoon in late July, 1928, and I had paused to wipe the sweat from my face during a political speech at Big Flat, Arkansas, in the heart of the Ozarks, when a listener suddenly spoke up, “That talk about taxation is all right, I reckon, but what we ‘uns here want to know is, ‘How do you stand on this here evolution bill?’” I was telling the voters of that village why I should be elected governor of Arkansas. It was my first race for a public office and I was thirty years old. Running for governor is exciting. For weeks before the speaking engagements there were interesting conferences on strategy and the preliminary campaigning (shaking hands with everyone in the towns and hailing the farmers in the fields) - a lot of fun if you enjoy that sort of thing, and I do. The campaign was hard. I made five to nine full length speeches a day with no loud speaker and chalked up a record of 303 speeches for the season. We take our politics seriously in Arkansas. In Boone County one youngster said, “Mr. Hays, you gotta win. I’ve named my calf for you and he’s in the calf show in a week after the election. If you loose I’m afraid he’ll lose, too.” Poor boy! He didn’t know how often I was destined to lose. I spoke in school houses, in brush arbors, in blacksmith shops and in the open. I slept sitting upright in the car between appointments. I ate sandwiches between speeches and once I changed clothes in the back of the car while being driven from one town to the next. While speaking in a brush arbor in south Arkansas one day I suddenly found m