BENTONVILLE, ARK. — At a Democratic presidential debate last month, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton described Wal-Mart, the world's largest retail company, as a "mixed blessing." She spoke from experience.
From 1986 to 1992, Clinton was a member of its board of directors, carefully navigating through a spate of internal policy concerns that now weigh on Wal-Mart's corporate image.
Former Wal-Mart Stores Inc. board members and executives recall Clinton as a politically nimble insider who cautiously tried to nudge the company toward hiring more female executives and environmentally friendly practices, to limited effect, while remaining silent as Wal-Mart pursued anti-union strategies.
Clinton and Wal-Mart: An article Saturday in Section A about Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's tenure on the Wal-Mart board of directors said that in early 1992 she told two friends confidentially that her husband, then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, was planning to run for president. The conversation took place in early fall 1991.
Four times a year, Clinton would leave Little Rock, driven by Arkansas state troopers and sometimes accompanied by her husband, then-Gov. Bill Clinton, for a three-hour ride to Bentonville, the northwest Arkansas company town that sprouted up around Wal-Mart's headquarters.
While her husband tended to state duties, she joined all-day Wal-Mart board meetings chaired by the firm's billionaire patriarch, Sam Walton, and attended by Walton's family members, directors and top executives.
Crowded with the others around metal folding tables in the kitchen of a converted warehouse -- a no-frills board room selected by "Mr. Sam" himself -- Clinton assumed the role of loyalist reformer, making the case for measured change without rocking the boat.
She voted on company policies and joined several advisory committees during a period that was a turning point for the firm as it transformed rapidly from a regional chain of cut-rate stores to a worldwide retail powerhouse. Her Wal-Mart tenure exposed Clinton to the inner workings of a mega-corporation, and foreshadowed an impulse in her political career to both prod and accommodate big business.
"She brought a pragmatic understanding of how life works," said Robert K. Rhoads, a Fayetteville, Ark., attorney who was Wal-Mart's general counsel and the board's corporate secretary. "She was a real savvy board member and one smart lawyer."
Wal-Mart critics say her presence brought little lasting change to the firm. And former executives say she was not a voice for bold reform.
"She was not a dissenter," said Donald G. Soderquist, Wal-Mart's former chief operating officer and the board's vice chairman during Clinton's tenure. "She was a part of those decisions."
