Pictured above: Richard Bearden, left (Photo by Lori Sparkman) and Terry Benham, right (Photo provided)
Richard Bearden and Terry Benham receive a visitor, one of the last appointments of the year, in an elegantly understated conference room high above Little Rock’s downtown. Three walls are decorated with mementos of past lobbying battles won, including photos of client dignitaries gathered around governors and other political heavies. On the other wall is a bank of oversized windows that, from up high, provides the sensation of floating on the cold, clear air of the stunning outdoor vista.
The view is one of the perks of the duo being very, very good at what they do and skillfully guiding their firm, Impact Management Group, through 25 years of shifting market and political waters at their choppiest and most perilous. In the aggregate, a quarter century of campaign direction, government-relations work and corporate consulting tickles the imagination with visions of backroom intrigue, political machinations and congressional delegates perennially on speed dial, a daily John Grisham-esque thriller come to life.
The longtime business partners laugh out loud at this Hollywood-manufactured image of their stock and trade. Getting here, they said, was a whole lot more grit than Grisham.
“I do want to tell you one funny thing. My mother has a Hollywood version of what I do,” Bearden said. “‘Did you meet with the governor today? Were you on the phone with the senator?’” No, Mother, I was in the back of the committee room, trying to see the bill get passed. Sen. So-and-So or Rep. So-and-So was in the room so they could make the motion on the floor.
“That’s what most lobbyists do. It’s a communication exercise with the members of the general assembly, trying to get a bill out of committee or a bill passed on the floor. It’s communication with agency directors, trying to get some mundane piece of budget moved around so a client can implement a program, or it’s trying to catch the governor for just a minute or two. It’s a lot of detective work, if you will. It’s not deals over golf and drinks. Those things certainly happen, but Hollywood overly romanticizes that.”
Founding principles
That said, the fact that Bearden’s and Benham’s venture is not only still around all these years later but thriving is one of the great underdog stories to be had in Arkansas. In 1999, the state’s great red revolution of today was in its earliest stages under then-Gov. Mike Huckabee, only the third Republican governor in Arkansas since Reconstruction. Forming a conservative-leaning firm bent on winning elections and shaping public policy in a state so deeply blue from its inception felt akin to selling cold-weather gear in the South — sure, there are snowfalls in Arkansas now and again, but hardly enough to make a living selling shovels.
However, for the two native-born, lifelong conservative Arkansans — Benham from Benton, Bearden from Smackover — being outside the reigning political party was nothing new, and given their long-held political philosophies, representing anything other than conservative candidates lacked credibility at best and felt downright disingenuous at worst.
“I’ve always been a conservative, just my own personal beliefs in smaller government,” Benham said. “I was always pretty well-grounded in my principles and what I believed in, and I was a little bit idealistic, as most 20-year-olds working in politics are.
“The term ‘conservative’ has a much different meaning now than it did 25 years ago, or at least a new meaning is trying to be forged. Most people forget that most [Arkansas] Democrats 25, 30 years ago were conservative Democrats. It wasn’t the hard left and the hard right back then. There was a lot of center. I miss it. I miss the hard center where we would fight like cats and dogs down at the [Arkansas] Capitol, but at 5 o’clock, we’d all go have a beer. Those were a lot easier times to get things done.”
The partners met while working at the Republican Party of Arkansas, where Bearden was executive director and Benham was his political director. Bearden left the party to hang his own shingle, and Benham headed south to head the Republican Party of Louisiana, during which time he also created Impact Management Group. The fledgling company landed a big project, and Benham asked Bearden for help, a working relationship that operated so well that after Benham moved back to Arkansas, the duo merged their firms.
“We went out and bought some secondhand furniture and some secondhand pictures to put on the wall and had a small office space over on Spring Street [in Little Rock],” Bearden said. “We were doing political work, but there weren’t very many Republicans, so we had a very small base, and we had some corporate clients.
“Years later, one of the principals of a Fortune 50 client that had hired us told Terry and I, ‘You know, we thought y’all had literally rented this little office to have a place for us to come to to meet.’ I said, ‘Why did you think that?’ He said, ‘Well, you had a couple phone books on the desk. You had some scattered sheets of paper.’ We had literally cobbled an office together from used furniture and stuff we brought from home — you know, bargain finds.”
Now, as then, IMG operates in an industry that is the ultimate meritocracy, where wins mean more business and losses can sink firms practically overnight. Years of victories have given the company a track record to demonstrate its skill, as well as a solid reputation that has built a lengthy list of clients. In the early days, however, they were just another set of newcomers looking to earn their spurs.
“We started off as political consulting, and then grassroots efforts became kind of a big thing,” Benham said. “We were on the front end of that, on the tactical side of it. Then 9/11 hit, but more importantly, the anthrax aspect of 9/11, and 30 percent of our projects disappeared overnight. Suddenly, we’re looking at each other like, ‘I’m not sure how we’re going to do this.’ That’s when we adjusted and went into government relations.
“We knew that we weren’t going to be one of the powerhouses, but we did know that we had a lot of strong relationships with the few Republicans that were [in state government], and that mattered in certain committees.”
The duo scored an important win in the early 2000s over proposed tort reform legislation. Snubbed by colleagues working on the business side of the issue, Benham and Bearden adjusted on the fly.
“All of our friends were on the business side of it, and we were kind of patted on the head and told, ‘I think we’ve got it, fellas. That’s your corner over there,’” Benham said. “The other side needed an advocate, so we got hired. We locked [the measure] up, wouldn’t let it out of committee, got the part that our client cared about carved out and let the rest of it go through.
“We had a lot of hard feelings from a lot of our good friends over that, but what it did was it sent a signal that these two young fellas have got a little skill to them. All of a sudden, we started getting more projects from that. That was a moment where we turned a corner.”
The new guard
As the company grew, it attracted its share of young talent, who brought their own facets of expertise to the company’s operations. Robert Coon, managing partner, a South Carolinian who cut his teeth with a firm in Washington, D.C., by handling public affairs campaigns for corporations, trade associations and nonprofits, joined the compnay in 2005 among the first of the new guard whose individual talents blended seamlessly into the firm.
“It’s less of a generational thing to me and more of a spectrum,” Coon said. “On one end, you have the people person, and on the other end, on the extreme, you have the policy wonk. We all live somewhere on that spectrum. I look at Richard, and he’s the ultimate people person. People love to interact with him. He’s very social. No one wants to let him down. He’s just an enjoyable person to be around.
“I find myself of the other direction, and that’s not to say he’s not policy-minded and I’m not relationship-minded, but I live a little bit on the other end of the spectrum. I’m more focused on policy issues, and I catch myself sometimes not being as relational as maybe I should be. I think where each of us lives on that spectrum is a good complement to the others.”
Scott Pace, another 40-something and the fourth IMG partner, agreed. The attorney, pharmacist and former vice president and CEO of the Arkansas Pharmacists Association said diversity of age does not begin to adequately describe the team’s varied skill set.
“We’ve all got our own individual subject matter expertise that lends really well together,” he said. “Terry and Richard came from that political campaign background, and both of them served as executive directors of state Republican parties. They’ve got that in-the-trenches kind of political background that is really helpful for Robert and I to rely on and learn from.
“Robert spent several years in D.C., working for national public affairs companies, which I think has also been something that I’ve learned from every day, and I worked in the nonprofit-association world, running a trade association and bringing the health care and legal background. I think we all just kind of complement each other with the skill sets that we bring to the table.”
Coon said it is a popular misconception that technology and social media have replaced the fundamentals of political campaigns, especially in a state like Arkansas.
“Retail politics is still king. Candidates still have to be willing to get out and be active, interact with people at social settings,” he said. “Knocking on a voter’s door is still as impactful today as it has ever been and probably more so. There’s lots of new technology and tactics out there to help increase name ID, and there’s obviously been a transition from traditional media to online media, social media and digital targeting in general. Still, I think the door-knocking and interacting face-to-face with a voter is fundamentally going to be the most persuasive thing any candidate can do.”
That is not to say IMG has not stayed abreast of technology and analytics in its work, be it in a political campaign or in government relations on behalf of a company, nonprofit or other client.
“One thing that’s always been part of politics and always been part of advocacy, even more so today, is public opinion research and having the pulse of the community,” Coon said. “Legislators want to know what the public thinks about issues they’re dealing with. A lot of issues that get dealt with at the legislative level in particular can be kind of obscure, and they’re not things that have a track record of public opinion data on them. I think elected officials want to know what the pulse of the public is on some of those things.
“That’s been an area where we’ve started doing more and more, trying to help our clients understand not only the best way to position an issue through public opinion research, but also being able to communicate to the folks that you’re interacting with where support or opposition of that issue will put them. That’s a continually growing part of the marketplace, both from a political standpoint and from an advocacy standpoint.”
Pace said the forward-looking view for the firm has less to do with any given industry or business sector but in how well such data is gathered and leveraged on behalf of clients.
“Public opinion research for candidates is important, but it is really important for individuals who are trying to advance a message. Frankly, legislators and regulators respond to good quality data that’s done in an objective, unbiased way,” he said. “It’s really a sophisticated way to get your point across. It’s not always a slam dunk that good data equals the right outcome, but it is certainly an advocacy tool that has gotten far more sophisticated in the last number of years. It’s a great arrow to have in your quiver.”
One-stop shop
As the reputation of the firm continued to expand its reach, additional professionals were added to round out the team. Among these are Megan Tollett, chief financial officer, Ashley Bearden Campbell, director of communications, and Shelly Dupré, a team member based in Baton Rouge, La. Each brought a unique background and valuable skill set to help manage the rapidly growing client list and played an important role in delivering the highest in customer service.
Dupré brought a large breadth of experience to IMG, including time in state government as a legislative aide and as a contract employee in the Louisiana lieutenant governor’s office, where she led public relations efforts on behalf of the state’s seafood industry following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. A registered lobbyist, she sees her role as a communicator tasked with getting out key information on complex measures and gathering the opinion of the electorate in response to those issues. She said the blend of talents at IMG is one of the firm’s major advantages.
“I think it’s often very challenging for somebody to really understand the nuances of an issue based on what’s reported,” she said. “Many times, people are not aware of how they may be affected by specific legislation, and we often reach out to the grasstops or grassroots of people who could be affected and see what their understanding is and what their position is on those issues.
“I think that’s where tapping into everybody’s experience [at IMG] is important. If you’re working with only a group of young people who don’t necessarily have the depth of experience, you’re missing something. If you work with just a group of older people who don’t have the kind of nuances of today’s communications environment, you’re missing out also.”
Bearden Campbell came to the firm in 2009, after interning with Little Rock advertising firm CJRW in the public affairs and advocacy sector. Today, she runs point on communications and is also one of the firm’s registered lobbyists, a term she feels gets a bad rap from the general public.
“When people hear the word ‘lobbying,’ there is a negative connotation that immediately comes to mind,” she said. “I am so proud that Impact Management, as a firm, is incredibly committed to not only the formal ethics rules that are in place, but also from a personal standpoint. There are a lot of different ways to lobby, and our firm is known for building true and genuine relationships with each and every legislator, as well as making sure they’re provided with every viewpoint of the issue that we’re working with.
“When I am approaching a legislator about an issue that we want changed or passed, I make sure they not only have all the statistics from our side, but I always talk to the lobbyists on the other side. I want to make sure we’re being transparent with the information that we’re providing, but I also think it’s important for each and every legislator to make an informed decision based on all of the information.”
On the surface, Tollett’s role as CFO appears the most traditional, largely governed as it is by generally accepted accounting procedures and state law, but here, too, there is more than meets the eye. She came to the firm in 2015, after a stint as executive director for the Republican Party of Arkansas during a time when the party was starting to gain unprecedented traction in elections across the state. She looks at those days as great training for what was to come at IMG.
“We were able to receive funding from so many different entities, and that was part of what I did at the state party was manage that money,” she said. “There are so many different rules that come along with how you can spend that money and accounting for it and just keeping so much documentation of that, so that was a huge part of my job there.”
In her previous role, Tollett said, it was common to be the only woman at the table in a roomful of her peers, which can exhausts many women working in politics. She credits the inclusive environment of IMG for helping her keep her hand in the industry while reducing much of the stress that comes with it.
“Politics can burn you out when you’re working at the grassroots level and all of that, and I knew by 2014 that I wanted to do something else,” she said. “Ultimately, I went with Impact Management Group because they had been one of our vendors when I was at the state Republican Party, and they were great to work with. We all got along really well, and it seemed like a great fit for me. It enabled me to stay involved in politics, doing my own thing without having to deal directly with as many candidates and different entities.”
The future
After 25 years, the firm’s docket has never been more full, and Benham predicted the coming election cycles will do nothing to slow that momentum. While the stakes have never been higher and the issues have never been more complex, both he and Bearden insist the fundamental things still apply in the little business that grew into a dominant player in its field.
“Here’s the thing, I think, to remember,” Bearden said. “It’s a small state. It is very much a relationship state based on trust and expertise. Our client is always the most expert in the field, but that client sometimes needs to connect with someone or get help from someone from the state. A lot of times, we’re the connectors, the train conductor, whatever you want to call it, getting the client in front of the right people in state government.”
“Our firm represents pretty much every segment of the Arkansas economy,” Benham said. “Each client is different because it’s all based on what their objective is, what they’re trying to do and what relationships are important in that whole process. We have three legs to the stool, and that’s influence, information and image. What we do is just what Richard said — we connect, and we solve problems. That’s really what we do. We solve problems by connecting the people that need to be talking to each other.”
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