The Tolbert Report

Roby Brock and I are pleased to welcome the newest member of Arkansas Election Line – Matt Campbell from Blue Hog Report.  Matt is filling the shoes of Blake Rutherford of Blake’s Think Tank as Rutherford has taken a position as the chief of staff for AG Dustin McDaniel and has “retired” from blogging.

Matt blogs from the left but has a good grasp on the Arkansas political landscape.  His views will be an important balance as we re-evaluate our AEL ratings coming into the thick of the 2010 general election cycle.

We don’t plan to let the grass grow under our feet and will be taking a fresh look at all our ratings in the coming days.

Welcome Matt aboard and make sure check out his Blue Hog Report.  It will soon become your daily dose of left leaning Arkansas blog reading. You can also follow Matt on twitter at @BlueHogReport.

I am fortunate enough to live in a Saline County where politics is never boring.  Perhaps more so this year than ever.  Inside Saline reports today on just how high unrest in the county, with my own hometown of Benton leading the way.

Benton claims the top spot in the first Voter Unrest Top 7 poll following the historic Saline County municipal voting period that produced an unprecedented list of 108 candidates.

Challengers outnumbered incumbents 59-49 when filing ended at noon Tuesday for candidates in the county’s seven cities.

Among those filing in the municipal election was the Republican Party of Arkansas finance director Heather Kizer who will be challenging incumbent Bryant City Clerk Brenda Cockerham.

“I want to bring my 13 years of experience in state government to the city of Bryant,” said Kizer in her press release yesterday. “Transparency and accountability in government are my top priorities and I believe that begins at the local level.”

An interesting races is former RPA Chairman and two time state representative candidate Dennis Milligan who is challenging incumbent Democrat Doug Kidd. Also, Jim Harris former communications director for Gov. Mike Huckabee and current spokesman for Beth Anne Rankin for Congress is running as a write-in candidate for constable against another write-in candidate Ed Collins.

If you are a true political junkie, you should read some of Inside Saline from the last few days on the all the race developments.

I did not hear about this one until Mike Huckabee put out a strongly worded denial this morning. A Florida blogger is quoting an anonymous source saying that Huckabee approached Republican candidate for governor Rick Scott about endorsing him for $250,000.  Huckabee ended up endorsing Bill McCollum.

“Let me be perfectly clear, Governor Mike Huckabee has never had a conversation with Rick Scott or anyone on his staff about such matters,” said Huckabee’s spokeman Hogan Gidley in a statement denying the charge on the HuckPAC blog this morning. “If Rick Scott made this claim, he needs to publically (sic) and immediately admit this is total lie – and if he didn’t say it, he needs to fire whichever member of his campaign staff said it.”

This could get interesting but obviously you can’t trust anything you read on a blog.

With his new job in the AG’s office, Blake Rutherford officially sends out word in a post tonight that he is shutting down his blog.

From likely the last post on Blake’s Think Tank…

I started this blog almost four years ago as way to contribute to a larger conversation. At first, that conversation was broad and covered myriad topics: public relations, marketing, web strategy, social media, politics, and more. Over time, however, it narrowed and eventually became a blog dedicated to the discussion of politics. It was a hobby, and a truly enriching one.

But like all things, it must come to an end. I am leaving my position at Stone Ward to become chief of staff to Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel effective September 13th. In the interim, I am going to transition out of my position at the agency, spend some time traveling with my wife, and focus my attention on my new responsibilities at the Attorney General’s office. As such, today is my last day as a blogger.

Blake and I seldom agreed but over the last couple years we enjoyed sparing in cyberspace, through email, sometime on tv or the radio, and often over lunch.  We formed a friendship and I honestly learned a lot through our debates.  He was nice enough to help show me the ropes as I found my footing in the Arkansas blogosphere.

There is no doubt in my mind that much of the sucess of Arkansas blogs is owed to the work Blake did as one the first and one of the best blogs in the state.  The Think Tank and public debates will definately be missed.  Hopefully, the  semi-regular debates over lunch will continue so he can point over the folly of my conservative wicked ways.

Thumbs up, Blake!

Today, Arkansas sadly lost an esteemed member of the blogging elite with the announcement that Blake Rutherford will be taking over as the new chief of staff for the Attorney General’s office.  The vacancy was caused by the departure of the current chief of staff Melissa Moody, who is leaving to start a new government relations consulting firm.

Rutherford was often my nemesis particularly on twitter but was a level headed left leaning blogger.  I imagine his new position will limit his blogging abilities.

Congrats!

Press release on the jump.

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There is good news for Arkansas polling junkies like myself today as content partner Roby Brock with Talk Business has announced a new partnership with Hendrix College to begin a research and polling operation.  The operation will use technology from Broadnet based in Denver to conduct polls on “Arkansas politics, current events and the economy.”

Brock mentions his successful polling on the past year particularly in the Senate and Congressional Republican and Democratic primaries.  The new operation will allow Brock to poll on a variety of issues with even greater frequency.

You can read his full announcement here.

It appears the Secretary of State’s race will begin in earnest on Friday afternoon with a planned announcement from Republican Mark Martin at an appearance before the Arkansas Association of Election Commissioners.  According to his campaign, Martin plans “to announce proposed new restrictions on employees of the Secretary of State office and himself.”

What is Martin talking about? I will refer you to the post from 2008 from left leaning blogger Blake Rutherford questioning the wisdom of Martin’s Democratic opponent Pat O’Brien heading up Arkansans for Obama in 2008 while serving as the Pulaski County Clerk.  Rutherford wrote at the time…

Does anyone else find it peculiar that Pulaski County Clerk Pat O’Brien is the Obama campaign spokesman in Arkansas? O’Brien’s done a nice job cleaning up the office after years of misery under the previous clerk, but doesn’t his proximity to the voting process, including the handling of voter registration, early voting and absentee ballots in Arkansas’s largest county, suggest something of an inherent conflict-of-interest?

Absent a conflict, shouldn’t Mr. O’Brien stay out of the political fray for, I don’t know, appearances sake alone? That, and shouldn’t his time be spent focusing on running a smooth and fair election process, rather than working for one of the Presidential candidates?

UPDATE – Rutherford has his feathers ruffled by my above post, going so far as to question my journalistic ethics by not scrolling through his post to notice a trackback to another somewhat related post, and then scrolling through the comments in that post to notice that O’Brien responds within the comment section of this second post to the above statements from Rutherford. You know – standard journalism 101 stuff.

Anyway, here is the comments from O’Brien in response to Rutherford.

“I understand your criticism about my public support of a candidate in the race. There is nothing illegal about it and I have done it before in other races. I publicly endorsed Mike Beebe for Governor and not even one Republican raised an issue with that endorsement. You are certainly entitled to your opinion. As for anything that happens at our office, though, the buck stops with me.”

The past couple weeks the Arkansas left has gladly paraded a report from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) as proof that Republican Tim Griffin is a repugnant human being.  Ernie Dumas writes in a column for the Arkansas Times…

Griffin, the anointed Republican candidate for Congress from Central Arkansas, was named by a Washington ethics watchdog as one of the 11 most corrupt candidates for Congress who are not already in Congress. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington is a bipartisan scourge of ethical malefactors in the national Capitol, both Democrats and Republicans.

Dumas then regurgitates the standard dribble drivel floating around the internet, most of which simply points to an ambitious politician and also most of which has been debunked.

What Dumas completely misrepresents is the nature of CREW, which is about as “bipartisan” as the Club for Growth. Roll Call did a good piece a couple years back laying out how they were funded by the left to be their attack dogs.

But a review of entities against which CREW has filed complaints and information about its donors suggests that the organization may be guilty of the same practice — attacking groups and individuals who are the foes of CREW’s donors.

The organization refuses to reveal information about its donors, and Deputy Director Naomi Seligman told Roll Call that “donors play no role in CREW’s decisions as to the groups or politicians we target.”

Several news stories — in this newspaper as well as in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and others — have pointed out that much of CREW’s funding comes from liberal groups and big donors to Democratic candidates and causes.

And all but a handful of its complaints against Members of Congress have targeted Republicans.

The handful of Democrats that have been targeted by CREW are all what most would consider to be conservatives.  Our own Rep. Mike Ross is an example.

CREW filed a complaint with the Department of Justice back last year when Rep. Ross was leading the Blue Dogs to oppose the health care bill.  The complaint was based on the unfounded charges that he received a sweetheart deal for the sale of his Prescott pharmacy.  If you recall, these charges turned out to be nothing but the liberal blogosphere posted CREW’s compliant as their proof that Ross was in bed with health insurance companies.

CREW is once again attempting to attack another Arkansas politician that stands in the way of their leftist agenda.  With the exception of the liberal blogs and Ernie Dumas, I hope Arkansas won’t get fooled again.

In case you missed it, Blake Rutherford of Blake’s Think Tank and myself discussed Arkansas politics on Talk Business with Roby Brock last night. In the segment above, we discuss the Senate race and the First and Second Congressional District races. You can see more including our discussion of the governor’s race and constitutional officers races on Talk Business website here.

As a side note, I have heard some grumbling that Brock introduced Rutherford as a “progressive blogger” and myself as a “conservative blogger.” But let not your heart be troubled.  I am glad that as a conservative I don’t have to make up a pseudonym for my political beliefs.