It seemed almost a campaign conducted on a whim. A previously little known 31-year-old state employee walked into the Capitol on the last day of candidate filing in 1956 and became a candidate for governor, then put absolutely no serious effort into his run. In fact, everything about his campaign was unserious, from outlandish campaign promises to his slogans, like “Get in the Pot with Stew.” While over 1,600 voters did so, “Stew” Prosser’s almost manic effort belied another side of the candidate: he was a highly competent, business-savvy public administrator who became one of the state’s most effective lobbyists.  

Stewart Keeling Prosser was born in San Francisco on September 20, 1925, the son of an Army officer and doctor who was moved to several duty stations in his son’s early life, including San Francisco, Honolulu, and Hot Springs. His mother, a Philadelphia native, died when he was seven, and had two children other than Stewart: Bill and Betsy.[1]  His earliest Arkansas connection was his stepmother, who was from Huntsville. When Prosser was 17, he enlisted in the Marines and served at the Battle of Iwo Jima, where he was wounded, and did occupation duty in Japan until his discharge in 1946.[2] Settling in Arkansas, he initially enrolled at Hendrix College in Conway, and planned to pledge a fraternity. However, one of the hazings was wearing a beanie, and his daughter Angela remembered Prosser saying of that time, “I’m a Marine and no one’s gonna make me wear a beanie!”[3] He left Hendrix soon afterward and ultimately earned a degree in Political Science from Arkansas State Teachers College (now the University of Central Arkansas).

After graduation in 1950,[4] Prosser went to work for the Arkansas Public Service Commission until 1956.[5] In 1954, he served as a driver for State Senator Guy H. “Mutt” Jones of Conway when he ran for governor but supported Orval Faubus in the runoff when his friend was eliminated in the first primary. On May 2, 1956, just twenty minutes before the filing deadline, “Stew” Prosser filed as the fifth candidate in the Democratic Gubernatorial Primary. His initial statement indicated that he would advance a more conventional platform, such as an increase in the minimum wage for women from 35 to 50 cents an hour, an increase in the oil and gas severance tax to be equally split between welfare and education and considered himself a moderate on integration. But the conventional “Stew” did not last long, and “Get in the Pot with Stew” was about to acquire an entirely new meaning.

Prosser did little campaign travel, relying on impromptu press conferences and print ads in the state newspapers to advance his messages.[6] He pledged to voters that he would “outpromise any other candidate for governor, and after election give you what I want you to have.”[7] He led off with a promise to reroute the Panama Canal through Arkansas.[8] Then a bachelor, he promised 51 female voters the job of hostess at the Governor’s Mansion, while later admitting that he meant to make that promise only 40 times.[9] He also pledged to provide “elephant dipping vats on a statewide basis, regardless of what my opponents may have told you.”[10] He claimed the “endorsements” of the Buggy Whip Manufacturers of Faulkner County, the Society to Promote Dipping Vats for Elephants, and the administrative staff of Toad Suck Ferry.[11] In his print ads, Prosser proclaimed himself as “against sin,” and pledged to voters, “I will love you the same in January as I love you in July.”[12] While Faubus noted that Prosser made no effort to take votes away from him, Angela Prosser emphasized that it was in fact Faubus that persuaded Prosser to enter the race, ostensibly to take votes and attention from his principal opponents, two former state senators: Jim Johnson, who headed the state’s White Citizens’ Council, and Jim Snoddy, former Executive Secretary to Governor Francis Cherry, and avoid a runoff. However, that effort was likely not necessary for that purpose, as Faubus was renominated with 58 percent of the vote. Prosser ran fourth in the five-man race, but with just 1,653 votes. He never sought public office again, although he hinted on another run in 1960, that time with a pledge to annex Texas to Arkansas and announced the formation of the “Committee to Restore the Deflated Ego of the Great State of Texas.”[13] Prosser, in the end, passed on the race.

He returned to state government after the primary, taking a job with the Arkansas Commerce Commission along with becoming a partner in a Little Rock nightclub and purchasing a racehorse. The nightclub, known as the Gung Ho Club, was owned along with World War II Congressional Medal of Honor winner John Yancey.[14] He also served as an informal adviser to Faubus, who appointed him in 1962 as director of the state’s Office of Civil Defense (now the Division of Emergency Management). Under Prosser, the office was located in an underground facility on Donaghey Avenue in Conway known as Civil Defense Hill. In 1958, Prosser married Pearl Dodds, better known as “PP,” a Riverside, California, native who was a social worker for the state Welfare Department, and later a case worker for the Department of Health.[15] They had four children: Angela, Lila, Yancey, and Stewart. Stew Prosser named his namesake Stewart William Orval Prosser in Faubus’s honor. Prosser was active in all Faubus’s remaining campaigns through the 1970s. His term at the Civil Defense agency was marked by preparations related to the Cuban Missile Crisis, the establishment of fallout shelters in the years of the Cold War, and relief efforts from a number of natural disasters, most notably the great tornado of 1965 that struck Conway, doing extensive damage to the city and the newly opened Arkansas Children’s Colony (now Conway Human Development Center). Winning accolades for his management of the agency after initial doubts, he was still not retained after Winthrop Rockefeller succeeded Faubus in 1967. Angela Prosser, recalling a humorous reaction in the best spirit of her father that came from her younger sister, Lila. When she was told that her father “had been fired” by Rockefeller, she wanted to call the fire department, saying, “Rockefeller burnt my daddy up. He burned my daddy.”[16] He sought the position of Executive Secretary (now Executive Director) of the Arkansas Democratic Party in 1967 with Faubus’s backing, but the job went to a candidate supported by the faction led by Jim Johnson, the 1966 gubernatorial nominee and rival of Faubus.[17] 

Off the state payroll for the first time in sixteen years, Prosser relied on the contacts he had made in the years he worked in the Faubus Administration for his next move. The key contact for that purpose was Guy Campbell, a close friend and Board Chairman of the Arkansas Bus and Truck Association. With that backing, Prosser was hired in the summer of 1967 as General Manager of the association, the group’s chief lobbyist. Prosser was an active and effective advocate for the industry before the General Assembly and State and Federal regulators, helped by his gregarious personality and longstanding relationships in state government. He became a fixture at Little Rock’s most popular meeting places, particularly the Coachman’s Inn and the Camelot Hotel, and was active at events where lobbyists sought after policymakers most. He became known for his love of three martini lunches, cheesecake, and Lucky Strikes. Prosser was involved in a serious auto accident in 1974 that left him in a wheelchair and before long his injuries and associated weight gain caused him increasing heart problems. The day before his death, Angela Prosser recalled a conversation between her father and Guy Campbell in which Prosser told his friend, “If anything happens to me, I just want a graveside service and I want taps played. That’s all I want; I don’t want a lot of fanfare.”[18] The next day, May 20, 1976, during the association’s annual convention at the Camelot Hotel in Little Rock, he complained of indigestion and went to his room, where he suddenly died of a massive heart attack. In accordance with his wishes, he had a graveside service where he was buried with honors at Little Rock’s National Cemetery. One of the attendees at the service was Bill Clinton, who was running for Attorney General, and while there, handed out cards to attendees. While that irritated Prosser’s widow, both Angela and Yancey Prosser were of the opinion that their father would have approved, given his personality.

“Stew” Prosser would have never been close to being described as a front-running politician. His impact was in other areas: first, as a loveable and rememberable figure in Arkansas’s political lore due to his colorful personality, and more importantly, as a member of the lobbying community as a bridge from his Faubus-era beginnings to an effective influence broker in the post-Faubus years. He adapted to the new era without forgetting the influence of the man who brought him there.

Author: Revis Edmonds
Editors: Rae Ann Fields, Mandy Shoptaw, Jimmy Bryant 
Sources: If you enjoyed this article, you may enjoy some of Revis' favorite sources including... Orval Eugene Faubus, Down From the Hills, Two (Little Rock: Democrat Printing and Lithographing Company, 1985); Jon Kennedy: Look Back and Laugh: 38 Years of Arkansas Political Cartoons (Little Rock: The Pioneer, 1979)