The Tolbert Report

As part of their extreme makeover, the Saline Courier has announced a new weekly publication.  The Saline Record will be free and available at businesses and restaurants in a tabloid format.  Think Arkansas Times or Snyc but to a local audience in Saline County.

“We are thrilled to be able to once again expand our coverage of this growing county and offer a new way for Saline County residents to stay on top of the news and learn more about their communities,” said Editor Kristal Kuykendall. “This publication will include news, sports and special-interest articles that are tailored especially for the Saline Record audience. In addition, articles are categorized within the publication according to the county’s geography. It will be easy for each reader to quickly locate stories of interest to him or her.”

In a bit of smart marketing, the first edition of the Saline Record will focus heavily on the Salt Bowl between Benton and Bryant and will be available at the tailgate party before Friday nights game tomorrow.

The Clinton School of Public Service put out their list of September programs this week.  It includes some speakers which are likely to garner some interest but one program on September 20 stands out called “The Ousted U.S. Attorneys.” From their announcement…

“Clinton School and Bowen School will co-host a panel discussion featuring former U.S. Attorneys, including Arkansas’s Bud Cummins, who were fired in 2006 during an unprecedented political shakeup of the Bush Administration Justice Department.”

Obviously the interesting timing is that Republican Tim Griffin, who also spoke to the Clinton School back in 2008, will face off against Democratic State Sen. Joyce Elliott which voting beginning only a month after the program.  Democrats have attacked Griffin for his role in the firing of the attorneys and his appointment to briefly fill the vacancy created by Cummins’ departure.

“We’ve been working for months with the Bowen Law School planning this program,” said Skip Rutherford, Dean of the Clinton School, when I asked him about the timing. “When I first read about them (the fired US Attorneys) getting together for a public forum, we started working on it. I do think it will be their first time together since the Justice Department ruling, and it will be interesting to hear their commentary about that.”

Rutherford also reminds me that Karl Rove also spoke to the Clinton School during 2007.

The program will be September 20 at noon at the Friday Courtroom at the Bowen Law School. I would expected a packed house for this one.

Huckabee fans around the nation are rejoicing this morning at the news that he has a lead in a poll conducted by “The Iowa Republican.” The poll showed Huckabee earning the support of 22 percent of likely Iowa Republican caucus voters, Mitt Romey (who finished second to Huckabee in Iowa in 2008) was still in second with 18 percent, Newt Gingrich at 14 percent, Sarah Palin at 11 percent, Ron Paul at 5 percent, and Tim Pawlenty and John Thune each at 1 percent.

While obviously good news for Huckabee nation, I would caution reading to much into this poll.  As the 2008 caucus winner, Huckabee has the clear early advantage as at this point most people are going to support whomever they supported last time.  In addition, his media empire of radio, weekend talk shows, chicken dinner speeches, book tours and now a daily talk show gives him very high name identity.

I could be entirely wrong but my suspicion is that two or three of the top four people in this poll will ultimately not run. My eyes right now are on the bottom top.  I believe either Tim Pawlenty or John Thune have an equally strong opportunity at the nomination.  They are unknown at this point so they will not yet start showing up in the poll numbers. But they represent a fresh start for Republicans without the baggage from the very intense primary of 2008.

Interestingly enough, John Thume will be in Arkansas later this month. He will be at a fundraiser breakfast for Jeremy Hutchinson for State Senate at the Home Plate Dinner (one of my favorite breakfast spots) in Bryant on August 25 at 7:30 am.

The big news in my hometown today is that the Benton Courier has changed its name to The Saline Courier to better reflect the fact that it covers news across the Saline County.

“We recognize that Saline County is very spread out, and although covering the entire county is a big job for a smaller staff such as ours, we believe we bring a depth of coverage to county residents that can’t be found anywhere else,” Kristal Kuykendall, editor of The Saline Courier said. “With our name change, we are merely emphasizing our commitment to continue this mission and continue growing with all of Saline County.”

The paper has existed under several names since 1876 – included at one time The Saline Courier – but has been the Benton Courier since 1906.

The Saline Courier also announced today that they will be hosting a series of local debate on October 26, 27, and 28 in Benton. The state legislative debates will be October 26 including the high profile state senate race between Republican Jeremy Hutchinson and Democrat Dawn Creekmore.

Also, check out their FlexPlex coverage on this page. Voting wraps up for this on Tuesday, August 10. My guess is that the one cent sales tax increase will not pass but who can tell in these special elections.  The campaign has been like nothing I have ever seen.

 Arkansas is on the front page of Fox News today for some controversial artwork in Eureka Spring.  According to their report, there are two controversial pieces.  Here is how Fox News describes them. 

Exhibit A is a painting of Alice in Wonderland, by Beth Post of Fayetteville, Ark. Titled “The Temptation of Alice,” it is a rendering of the iconic children’s book character alongside the “Drag-Queen of Hearts,” a man wearing women’s lingerie. The two of them are surrounded by rabbits that are, ahem, busy making more rabbits.

Exhibit B is a painting of the Virgin Mary, by Michelle Levy of Eureka Springs, Ark. Titled “The Divine Mother,” it depicts a bare-breasted Mary nursing the baby Jesus, with text above the Madonna that asks, “Does this halo make my face look fat?”

Apparently the Eureka Spring city council is taking steps to take control and remove the art, which is leading to some to cry foul.  If you will recall, Eureka Springs was recently at the center of controversy over recognizing same sex domestic partnerships.

For more on this, see the Arkansas Democrat Gazette report from last week.

I am trying to limit my blog to no more than one post on Sen. Blanche Lincoln’s forever shifting position on card check but the story just keeps on going.  It seems now Sen. Lincoln is allowing information to leak that she is going to vote no on card check … probably.  I wonder if she will have to explain to the people in this picture why she is now opposing a bill she once co-sponsored.

Arkansas News Bureau opinion writer John Brummett opined this week in his column, “Lincoln will be against ‘card check’ if circumstances require an actual position, or so I confidently expect.”  This was just days after he bragged on his twitter account that Lincoln’s campaign manager called to take him out to lunch.  Of course, maybe he did not mean to tell the world about this, after all he has been begging me to show him how to use his twitter account.  Regardless, it seems those in the news who are in the good graces of the Lincoln camp are hearing the chatter of her card check shift.  I must not be in that category as apparently Brummett got a personal invitation to attend her fundraiser while (in spite of my request) mine must have gotten lost in the mail.  Shocking, I know!

Anyway, it will be interesting to see if she actually takes a position in Little Rock this weekend in front of the business community that has doled out the big bucks to try and influence her stance or if she continues to insist that she has more important things to worry about than this.

John Brummett writes about a familiar topic on his blog today, the troubled news industry and its relationship to bloggers. Brummett, continuing the parasitic cycle by quoting from Salon, says “if newspapers die, the coverage of news dies because the Internet is basically parasitic.” He goes on to write, “you have all these bloggers who boast of their greater relevance than newspapers even as 90 percent of what they presume to know comes straight out of a newspaper.”

In a sense, he is right. Although I am not sure if I would go as high as 90 percent, most of what I know comes from the research and shoe leather of beat reporters who work at the state capital for eight to twelve hours everyday of the week. Without the Rob Moritz’s and the Andrew DeMillo’s of the world, I would know very little about what is going on with our legislature. Sure, I do make a trip or two a week for hour or so to the state capital and pick up a couple interviews and tips of what is going on. I correspond by email and occasionally a phone call with our elected officials to get some direct information on a issue I am following. But for the most part, I let the pros do the leg work.

What the news industry needs to understand is that bloggers are not their competition. If anything my blog drives traffic to their online content. Many times my posts are more of a commercial for their actual story than anything else. The news companies that survive will be the ones that figure out that their business is the delivery of news information and then adapt their business model to deliver this information in the manner that consumers are demanding, whether that is in print, online, via twitter, or whatever the next big thing is. Brummett should be pleased to know that ArkansasNews.com is a good example of this. With their improved website, I now read most all of Brummett’s blog posts and columns.

Speculating on what Republicans may run for office a year from now is usually a task reserved for crazy right wing bloggers like Kinkade and myself. But for some reason the left leaning blogging crowd has entered the mix. Brantley, commenting on state Sen. Gilbert Baker’s vote against the tobacco tax increase on Thursday said, “He is still thinking about a challenge to U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln in 2010.”

Brummett read this and did the unthinkable for a blogger; he called him – and on the phone no less! No checking his twitter account, no reviewing the scheduled speakers at the Central Arkansas Young Republicans luncheon. Brummett is so old school. Anyway, Baker tells him that National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee has approached him about running but that he is really focusing on his work in the legislature right now. Brummett paraphrases Baker to say “Unlikely, but not absolutely not.”

So let’s review. So far Republicans (in no particular order) Tim Griffin, Tom Cotton, Rick Calhoun, French Hill, and Gilbert Baker are all rumored to be thinking of mounting a challenge to Sen. Lincoln. Of course, all of them have been approached by other people begging and pleading for them to run but none of them have been talked into actually doing it…yet!

But Republicans are not the only ones thinking a making a run against Blanche. Whispers around the capital are saying that the Lieutenant Governor Bill Halter (photo from Lance Turner) might be catching the Senate fever as well. Word is that the Union Bosses are keeping an eye on Lincoln’s vote on card check legislation. If she votes against them, they will put their support (and money) behind Halter for a primary challenge. Of course, all this could just be state legislators expressing their admiration for the job that they think Halter is doing and their desire to see him leave the state capital building for bigger and better things.

Either way, 2010 should be a fun year for Arkansas politics!