Nothing so recommends the office of lieutenant governor’s abolition as Tim Griffin’s seeking it.
This Karl Rove-trained former suppressor of Democratic votes for the Republican National Committee-who helped himself to temporary status as U.S. attorney by getting Bud Cummins forced out for no other reason-has inhabited for nearly four years the Second District’s seat in Congress.
He distinguished himself for tweeting that it was the fault of the violent rhetoric of Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid that a crazy woman had driven into a barricade near the U.S. Capitol.
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A few months ago Griffin announced that he would not seek re-election to Congress because he needed to spend time at home with his two young children.
Not specifically stated, but apparent, was that he was in a position to make more money privately to attend to the financial well-being of that family and afford that home in the Heights section of Little Rock.
So now Griffin has looked around and come to the conclusion that he could be lieutenant governor and not have to do anything that would get in the way of being at home with his family and pursuing private income.
For that he would draw about $42,000 in salary on the taxpayer tab.
This is an office so worthless that the Legislature is passing a bill in the current fiscal session to say we need not fill it if somebody leaves it.
Griffin says he can’t yet say what he intends to do for a real job and real money because of ethical rules in Congress-but not, apparently, for any ethical inconvenience posed by his seeking or holding the pointless office of lieutenant governor of Arkansas.
I invite you to consider this quote from him: “I’ve not finalized my full-time job plans and won’t until late in my House term due to House ethics rules.”
He would not leave the House until early next year. He would appear on our ballot for lieutenant governor in November. So presumably he intends to get us to elect him to an inane office without telling us what he’s really going to be doing for a living while he holds that office.
Imagine: They take ethics more seriously in Washington-in Washington, D.C.-than we do in Arkansas for this goofy political office.
Alas, this is part of an unfortunate pattern.
When Mike Huckabee was lieutenant governor, he set up an entity called Action America and had people send money to him through that conduit so no one would know the specific identities of those lathering cash on him. Presumably the money was for preaching and after-dinner speaking.
After Winston Bryant became lieutenant governor, he needed a real job and signed on as an attorney for the Arkansas Municipal League, the lobbying organization for the state’s municipalities.
A lawyer mostly trained in political operations on a hyper-partisan basis, Griffin presumably would seek a real job falling in that arena or being drawn from it. “Consulting,” maybe.
But that’s speculation, of course.
Maybe he’s going into the ministry and after-dinner entertainment, like Huckabee. He simply can’t, or won’t, tell us yet.
He would be at home with the kids in the evenings. And the household would have more money. And he’d get called the lieutenant governor of Arkansas, which sounds like something important in a kind of auditory illusion, and requiring him to do not a blasted thing.
To his slight credit, Griffin says he’ll only need two employees at the taxpayer trough if elected to that office.
That’s two too many-three too many, actually, counting himself. But it’s two fewer than Senate President Pro Tem Michael Lamoureux says is required now for the office in its curious state of being unoccupied by any actual lieutenant governor-a vacancy affecting no one in Arkansas in any way, except the guy who had to leave the office because he supplemented his salary by tapping his campaign treasury and, occasionally, a state government credit card.
There is a better model for this office. It’s the one left us by the late Win Paul Rockefeller. He was lieutenant governor. But he had a lot of money already. So he didn’t need to hire himself out or set up money funnels.
Bill Halter kind of followed that model, leaving him time to create the dwindling state lottery.
John Burkhalter, the likely Democratic nominee against Griffin, is wealthy from business success, and perhaps would follow it as well.
It’s the next-best thing to our passing a constitutional amendment to do away formally with an office that was done away with essentially a long time ago.
Meantime, the staff for no one sits in chairs before computer screens on the second floor of the state Capitol, waiting feverishly for payday.
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John Brummett’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial, Pages 79 on 02/16/2014