but it also galvanized a lot of

Brown returned the favor by saying that, if nominated, he would name Jesse as his running mate. I thought Browns announcement would help him among New Yorks black voters, but it also galvanized a lot of new support for me in the Jewish community. Jackson was believed to be too close to Black Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan, who was known for anti-Semitic remarks. Still, Jesses support was a net plus for Brown in New York. Then there was the media. The big papers had been camping out in Arkansas for weeks, looking for whatever they could find on my record and my personal life. The New York Times had started the ball rolling in early March with the first of its Whitewater stories. In 1978, Hillary and I, along with Jim and Susan McDougal, took out bank loans of more than $200,000 to invest in land along the White River in northwest Arkansas. Jim was a land developer whom I had met when he ran Senator Fulbrights office in Little Rock. We hoped to subdivide the property and sell it at a profit to retirees who had begun moving to the Ozarks in large numbers in the sixties and seventies. McDougal had been successful in all his previous land ventures, including one in which I had invested a few thousand dollars and earned a modest profit. Unfortunately, in the late seventies, interest rates went through the roof, the economy slowed, land sales dropped, and we lost money on the venture. By the time I became governor again in 1983, McDougal had bought a small savings-and-loan and named it Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan. A few years later, he retained the Rose Law Firm to represent it. When the savings-and-loan crisis hit America, Madison was facing insolvency and sought to inject new cash into the operation by selling preferred stock and forming a subsidiary to provide brokerage services. To do this, McDougal had to get permission from the state securities commissioner, Beverly Bassett Schaffer, whom I had appointed. Beverly was a first-class lawyer, the sister of my friend Woody Bassett, and the wife of Archie Schaffer, Senator Dale Bumpers nephew. The Times article was one of a series of articles on Whitewater. The reporter questioned whether there was a conflict in Hillarys representing an entity regulated by the state. She had personally signed one letter to Commissioner Schaffer explaining the preferred stock proposal. The reporter also implied that Madison had received special treatment in getting its novel financing proposals approved and that Schaffer had not exercised appropriate oversight over the institution when it was failing.