Side Exhibits at Clinton Library Open

[Rose Siding]

LITTLE ROCK -- The founder of Wal-Mart was willing to support Bill Clinton's run for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination -- but not his effort to unseat Republican President George H. Bush -- according to a letter never before released to the public.

The letter from Sam Walton, founder and chairman of Bentonville-based Wal-Mart Stores Inc., who died in 1995, is included in an exhibit dedicated to the famous "Friends of Bill" -- or "FOBs" -- as the city prepares for the Nov. 18 opening of the Clinton Presidential Library.

"My personal position, as Bill knows, is that I will support him every way possible in his campaign to become the Democratic nominee for President of the U.S., but I would vote for George Bush and the Republican Party if it were a runoff between those two," Walton wrote Nov. 4, 1991.
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The FOB treasures are on display at historic Curran Hall. Skip Rutherford, president of Clinton's nonprofit foundation, provided the Walton letter. In it, Walton says Clinton, Arkansas governor at the time, had been "instrumental in helping us initiate our very effective Buy American campaign."

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