Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [32]
McDougal used “creative financing” to grow the business of the S&L. One smashing success was the Maple Creek Farms development twelve miles south of Little Rock, a twelve-hundred-acre parcel that he began selling in five-acre parcels for fifteen thousand dollars a pop as an alternative to crowded city life. As McDougal liked to put it, it was “like a snow-cone franchise on a summer day.” Susan took charge of the advertising and public relations. In a television commercial that soon became famous among locals, Susan was filmed riding a white stallion through the woods, wearing extra-short cutoffs and boots, extolling the virtues of Maple Creek: “Just a twelve-minute drive from downtown Little Rock,” she purred in a sultry Southern voice. Susan McDougal became an instant celebrity and a local sex goddess. Sales boomed.
Maple Creek emboldened Jim to take a daring plunge into a land investment thousands of miles away. He purchased twelve hundred acres on Campobello Island off the coast of Maine, where Franklin Roosevelt had spent his childhood summers. McDougal persuaded Jim Guy Tucker, who now did legal work for Madison Guaranty, to join in the $1.6 million deal. He also solicited seed money from Sheffield Nelson, a prominent businessman and leader of the state Republican Party. McDougal later bragged: “We were selling lots with fifty feet of ocean frontage like hotcakes.”
In a move that would complicate life unalterably for the Clintons, Hillary Clinton and the Rose Law Firm were retained to handle legal work for Madison. Jim McDougal would later insist that Governor Clinton one day jogged by the Madison offices, several blocks from the governor’s mansion, plopped down in McDougal’s new leather chair, and urged him to throw some business Hillary’s way. Although Bill Clinton would neither affirm nor deny the conversation, pleading “no recollection” of the visit, McDougal claimed he distinctly remembered Clinton’s leaving a big sweat stain on his new leather chair. Documents confirmed that McDougal thereafter paid a two-thousand-dollar-a-month retainer to the Rose Law Firm for work that Hillary and her fellow lawyers undertook on various Madison-related deals.
Jim was now hiring employees by the dozens at the S&L, many of them with no banking experience. A former armed guard was promoted to loan officer. Individuals going through the Alcoholics Anonymous program were given well-paying jobs, because Jim wanted to do his part for sobriety. Three of Susan’s brothers, along with other relatives, began earning royal commissions at Madison. Bonuses were doled out like lollipops. Jaguars and Bentleys were lined up like a sparkling fleet in the employee parking lot. Arkansas magazine listed Madison as one of the “fastest-growing financial institutions in the South.”
Jim McDougal was even beginning to look the part of a cutting-edge business guru, wearing contact lenses, Gap jeans, and a toupee. Everyone seemed to want a piece of the action. But Susan was concerned. She told Jim, “I don’t like [these] people; they’re really worrying me. I think we’re going too fast.” She wanted to sell Madison Guaranty and “move back to the country.” Susan reminded Jim that they had started out living in a goat shed; those had been happy days. She reminded him of an inside joke they had shared as newlyweds, telling him, “We’ll move to the country, and we’ll just pull our blue jeans up.” The S&L could be sold. They could start over.
But Jim moved forward at a breakneck pace, using Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan and its subsidiaries to fuel a dozen real estate ventures. Senator Fulbright sent a letter to the Madison offices in Little Rock, a touch of worry in the note:
Dear Jim:
You do move fast. What is the Madison Financial Corporation?