THAT WEIGHT you feel around Arkansas’ head and shoulders has a name: Mark Darr. And it refuses to go away. Like an albatross tied to a whole state’s neck.
Our not so esteemed lieutenant governor came down to Little Rock on Tuesday to give citizens and taxpayers the bad news: He plans to stay our lieutenant governor. Even after he’d agreed last week to pay an $11,000 fine for mishandling some $40,000 in campaign contributions and official expenses. (Gosh, do you think he put this trip on his expense account, too?) And there’s no sign of relief in sight before next month, when the Legislature convenes to consider his impeachment. That’s a long time for him and the rest of the state to twist in the wind.
Last week the state’s ethics commission found that Mark Darr had committed 11 violations of state laws and/or regulations but, what, Mark Darr resign? That’s what some of his colleagues did after they’d disgraced themselves, their offices and state. Cases in point: Paul Bookout, now a happily former state senator, and Martha Shoffner, who resigned as state treasurer after her scandal broke. At least they preserved a last shred of dignity, for nothing became them in office like their leaving it.
But our current lite-gov is a cut below even those discredited pols. He declines to make that final, farewell gesture and render the people of Arkansas a last public service. Instead, he seems determined to hold out to the bitter end. It may yet require the services of a crane to lift him out of the lieutenant governor’s office.
Tuesday, he was explaining that his case was different from Ms. Shoffner’s and Senator Bookout’s. Why? Because he hadn’t tried to hide anything. Really? In that case, why did he wait till a public-spirited blogger exposed his disgraceful doings before he reported himself to the authorities, in this case the state’s ethics commission?
As an ol’ boy once told us, folks don’t suddenly go bad. They just suddenly get found out. Mark Darr needs to go, and has needed to go for some time. But at this point he may be about the only person in the state who hasn’t got that message. He sounds determined to hold on to his title-and salary plus expenses-till the bitter end. Which would not come till 2015, when his term formally ends. Till then he insists on hanging around, like a persistent pain. And daily embarrassment.
ADD ANOTHER offense to Mr. Darr’s list: cruel and unusual punishment, this time self inflicted. Imagine the nerve it’ll take for him to take his seat as presiding officer of the state Senate when it convenes for a fiscal session next month, as if to advertise his and the state’s shame. Now that’s torture, or would be if the man had any sense of shame. But some politicians are shameless.
Remember how Jim Guy Tucker reneged on his promise to resign as governor on his last long, long day in office? It took him all the long day before he finally saw reason.
At the time, we thought that day would never end as we walked back and forth through the marble halls of the Capitol, waiting and wondering and fuming, our footsteps echoing in the long corridor as rumors and counter-rumors spread. The crowd that had come to attend the swearing-in of a new governor grew angry and amused by turns. The atmosphere of crisis mounted as the state was confronted by the real and growing possibility of having two governors rasslin’ for the office. As in any other banana republic, but without the palm trees and Latin charm.
What a show that was, but not one we’d like to go through again. It lasted all day, but eventually the disgraced governor got over his shame deficit and did the right thing, if in the worst way. And now Mark Darr is still holding on to his office rather than cut the pain short. Till then, he’s going to be the best campaign ad Democrats have this election year. (“See what happens when you elect Republicans to high office in Arkansas?”) And he’s refusing to let his colleagues off the hook, essentially challenging them to impeach him next month. Happily, his more honorable colleagues are already rising to the challenge.
The longer Mark Darr stays in office, the smaller he seems. By next month, he’ll be just a speck on the Capitol wall. The man seems intent on demonstrating his lack of character, which means it’s up to his colleagues in the Legislature to demonstrate theirs, and finally put an end to his embarrassing presence in an office he’s disgraced. It’ll be interesting to see how many legislators have the honor to rise up and save Arkansas’ good name.
MEANWHILE, in the other ring of Tuesday’s circus at the Capitol, the mutual accusations and sheer acrimony in the higher echelons of what is supposed to be higher education were on full display. Courtesy of the thoroughly fouled-up administration at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. That, too, was quite a show, but one the people and taxpayers needed to see, if only to appreciate/apprehend what “education” has come to in the hands of some of our “educators.” It was an education, all right, and not a pretty one.
There are some action-packed, farce-filled days in the news-like Tuesday-when it occurs to us that politics in the old days south of the (state) border, down in the Looziana of the Longs, whether the current serving Kingfish was Huey or Earl K., had nothing on today’s politics right here in antic Arkinsaw. Oh, A. J. Liebling, court chronicler of The Earl of Louisiana, thou shouldst be with us now; Arkansas has need of you. As an old friend of ours once said as she was trying to choose from all the events, meetings, and shows on tap in Little Rock one weekend, “there’s too much goin’ on.”
Tuesday all the leading characters in this ongoing tragicomedy at Fayetteville finally got their chance to be heard, and the people of Arkansas to hear them. However painful the spectacle, those witnesses who did their best to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth are to be commended, and encouraged to tell the rest of us even more. They performed a public service Tuesday.
As for which of the witnesses in this long parade of them were telling the truth under oath, that determination can be safely and properly left to the judgment of the prosecutors and people of Arkansas. In the meantime, the show goes on. Yes, it’s unseemly, but it’s also instructive.
The lesson of the Mark Darr Show, now to be continued indefinitely, is clear enough even if it continues to elude its star: The man needs to go, go, go. Soonest. And give his office and the state a chance to start all over with a slate wiped clean-of him.
How long before that same lesson percolates down to the high command at UA-F? How long before it becomes clear that Mark Darr isn’t the only official who needs to start cleaning out his desk?
There is an old Army rule that may be relevant here: A commander is responsible for everything his unit does or fails to do. That same rule should apply in civil life, too. And while some of our “educators” talk about taking responsibility for what happened on their watch, till they submit their resignations, it’ll remain just talk.
Editorial, Pages 12 on 01/09/2014