Sheriff race a rematch of 2008 contest

Incumbent Holladay faces Mulligan in Pulaski County

— The vote totals in the race for Pulaski County sheriff were not close two years ago.

Incumbent Doc Holladay won a second term in 2008 with 112,737 votes. His challenger, Pat Mulligan, said he ran just to get the experience and didn’t expect victory. He got 40,360 votes.

The same two men face each other again this year as they seek the same job Nov. 2.

“I want to win this time,” Mulligan said. “If I lose, I’ll run again in two years.”

It’s nothing personal against Holladay, Mulligan said - he just thinks he can do the job better.

Holladay said he doesn’t mind Mulligan’s attention.

“I have no animosity toward him, nothing negative to say about him,” Holladay said in an interview in his office. “Trouble is, he wants to be sheriff and I enjoy being sheriff.”

Mulligan, 46, is a narcotics officer in Ward and manager of Youth Home Inc., a nonprofit treatment center for troubled adolescents and their families. He began his law-enforcement career at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, joining the Pulaski County sheriff’s office after six years. He left the sheriff’s office in 2004 as a sergeant with experience supervising patrol and narcotics units.

Holladay will turn 61 two days after the election. He served with the Little Rock Police Department for 32 years, retiring as a captain. In his time in Little Rock, Holladay commanded the largest municipal narcotics unit in Arkansas. He also supervised patrol and special-investigations units, and served as the department’s public information officer from 1990 to 1995.

Former Sheriff Randy Johnson invited Holladay to work in the sheriff’s office’s professional-standards unit after his retirement from Little Rock police work, mostly conducting background checks on new hires.

He took a leave from that job when he ran for sheriff the first time in 2006.

Arkansas is the last state in the nation with two-year terms for all elected sheriffs.

Mulligan said he felt called to run for sheriff and saw the job as his best way to effect change in a line of work he loves. He said Holladay has presided over a sheriff’s office with low morale and staffed his jail in a way that put deputies’ safety at risk.

“If I’m elected, I’ll pull a shift down there myself if I have to,” Mulligan said.

He said that upon election he would have the jail fully staffed within 60 days with no additional money from the Quorum Court, which could open 75 more beds.

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Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Pulaski County sheriff incumbent Doc Holladay.

A sheriff, as an elected official, has a freedom that a police chief reporting to a mayor or city manager would not, Mulligan said.

“You answer to the people,” he said.

While he lacks some of Holladay’s administration experience, Mulligan said, his ability to talk to people would be an asset, making the sheriff’s office more responsive to the public.

“I worked in McAlmont,” he said. “I worked in College Station. I can talk to anybody.”

He suggested taking unused community-oriented policing offices the sheriff’s office already leases and staffing them with volunteers to open them to latch-key students as a safe place.

“I have a lot of ideas,” he said.

Holladay said he had no plans to go quietly.

“For almost 40 years this has been my life’s work,” he said.

He cited the installation of a fallen-officers memorial using inmate labor and the rehabilitation of unusable portions of the older part of the jail - also with inmate labor - as accomplishments. Deputies have better equipment and better training under his administration than before.

“The deputies didn’t have laptops when we came and now they have laptops,” Holladay said. “They didn’t have Tasers. They didn’t have rifles. And now they have those things.”

The number of unserved warrants has dropped from about 20,000 when he took office to less than 8,000, he said. He has been using money originally allocated for civilian employees to hire more deputies.

He said he planned to make a proposal to the Quorum Court in October to open the last 75 unused jail beds, which would bring the total to 1,130.

Asked whether the proposal was related to the election shortly thereafter, Holladay sighed.

“Well, the timing is the timing,” he said. If I want them open by Jan. 1, that’s when I have to do it.”

He said most of his effectiveness came in building relationships with people, whether local chiefs of police or the governor.

“I am blessed with an ability to relate to people,” he said. “But I am not very patient with people who do not have the foresight to see where we need to be going. I’m not bashful about speaking directly, voicing my opinion, and getting people to listen to what we need to get done.”

Arkansas, Pages 9 on 09/27/2010

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