Arkansas Reporter
THE
BRIAN CHILSON
IN S IDE R
CHENEY
The Huckabees: Like father, like daughter Former Gov. Mike Huckabee’s daughter, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, followed him into political work years ago, with work in Washington, for her father’s 2008 presidential campaign and as campaign manager for Sen. John Boozman. She now consults from a home in Little Rock. That work takes her to faraway places, but, despite her youth, she is not far away from pop on the leading civil rights issue of the day — gay rights. Sarah Huckabee turned up last week as the spokesman for a conservative super PAC, the American Principles Fund. Financed by a hedge fund executive, it bought advertising in Wyoming to trash U.S. Senate candidate Liz Cheney as being insufficiently anti-gay. Cheney, the former vice president’s daughter, has said she opposes gay marriage, but thinks the matter should be left to the states. She’s held back from full-throated homophobia at least in part because her sister Mary is lesbian. Family values would include loving your sister, wouldn’t they? Not to Huckabee Sanders. She said in a statement: “The unilateral truce on social issues within the GOP is bad for our party and wrong for our country — our core values are under attack, and we will stand for those who stand for what’s right.” (What’s right used to be a CONTINUED ON PAGE 13 12
OCTOBER 10, 2013
ARKANSAS TIMES
NO BUYERS: Except Exxon.
Location, location The dismal economic realities of the Northwoods subdivision after the Exxon spill. BY SAM EIFLING
T
he world knows Mayflower’s Northwoods subdivision as the sleepy, comfortable neighborhood that ExxonMobil’s Pegasus pipeline blighted in a March 29 spill that blacked yards and streets with an estimated 210,000 gallons of heavy crude. The occupants of 22 homes were forcibly evacuated, while families in many of the other 40 homes in the subdivision fled the toxic fumes that erupted from a bus-length gash in the pipe. News crews, workers and gawkers flooded the streets right behind the oil. But life goes on, even if many residents have moved out or are aiming to. Once again, it’s a quiet neighborhood. It’s still just a 20-minute commute from the downtowns of Little Rock and Conway. Lake Conway and the Arkansas River are still right around the corner, when you want to wet a line. Anyone wanting to move in would certainly have her pick of homes these days.
Immediately SPECIAL after the spill, REPORT Exxon offered to buy the 22 homes that families were required to leave, at pre-spill prices. According to county records and the company, Exxon has closed on five Northwoods homes. At last count, another dozen owners in the subdivision had put their homes on the market. In all, counting the homes Exxon has offered to buy, about half the subdivision is for sale. After everything the neighborhood has been through, it may yet be a decent place to park your truck, cut your grass and let kids bike in the streets — all nor-
mal stuff, all still happening in Northwoods. But though the benzene fumes have dissipated, there’s a cloud hanging over the place. “We’re in an ambiguous situation that’s never happened before,” said Glen Rega, a Crye-Leike real estate agent in Conway who’s representing the sellers of two Northwoods homes. “I’m sure once the first buyer goes in there and doesn’t have any issues, then more will see the value that’s there. We’re putting our best foot forward. I think it’s going to rise above itself.” But for now, nobody but Exxon is buying in Northwoods. In fact, no one’s buying much of anything anywhere in Mayflower (though that’s not unusual for a small town where people tend not to move, according to the Faulkner County assessor’s office). In the six months since the Good Friday spill, 10 homes have sold in the town of 2,200 people, and half of those were the homes Exxon bought, each for between $151,000 and $177,000. There are still reasons to recommend Northwoods, and Mayflower. The homes are pleasant — brick facades, big garages, high ceilings, fenced-in backyards, built in the past 10 years — and tend to be more house than you could get for the same price in a suburb closer to Little Rock, real estate agents and home owners said. CONTINUED ON PAGE 20