PINE BLUFF - Pine Bluff Mayor Debe Hollingsworth filed a lawsuit Tuesday in Jefferson County Circuit Court asking a judge to stop former Mayor Carl Redus Jr. from running for the office this year.
Pine Bluff’s next mayoral election isn’t supposed to take place until 2016. But the wheels are in motion for it to be held two years early unless a judge steps in and rules otherwise.
Redus is named as the lead defendant, followed by Jefferson County Election Commission Chairman Ted Davis, county Election Commissioners Stu Soffer and Cynthia Sims, county Election Coordinator Will Fox and the county Election Commission as a body. Other candidates Hollingsworth contends are on the ballot improperly were included as defendants, as well.
On March 7, the commission approved placing Redus on the Democratic ballot fora May 20 primary election, despite a previous lawsuit and opinions by Prosecuting Attorney Kyle Hunter and the Arkansas secretary of state’s office that said the next mayoral election shouldn’t occur until 2016.
Hollingsworth, who defeated Redus in 2012 by more than 5,300 votes, listed Hunter’s opinion as an exhibit in her lawsuit. She is currently in the second year of a four year term.
Redus was the only candidate to file for the mayor’s seat in the May primary and maintains that the city’s highest office and those for clerk and treasurer are open this year because Pine Bluff ’s population has dropped below 50,000, according to the 2010 Census.
Cities with fewer than 50,000 residents are supposed to hold elections for these offices during the presidential midterm cycle, but the law doesn’t spell out what happens when a city that had previously been above that mark drops below it.
Pine Bluff’s population is now 49,083.
Hollingsworth - represented by Dermott attorneys Charles Sidney Gibson and Charles Gibson, his son - says in her lawsuit that “Redus filed as a candidate at the ‘last minute’ as a ploy to assure lack of interdictive scrutiny and action, albeit an overt act to carry out a conspiracy to flaunt the law.”
The lawsuit continues, “Davis was Redus’ chief of staff during Redus’ eight year term as mayor and is a core member of a conspiratorial cabal whose object is to disenfranchise the Pine Bluff voters of their lawful election of their choice of mayor for a four-year term.”
Both Redus and Davis, the Election Commission chairman, said they would comment on the matter only after reviewing the suit, which they had not done Tuesday.
Before the March 7 Election Commission meeting, Hunter had advised that the offices of city clerk and treasurer were not up for election this year.
However, the commission approved placing Pine Bluff City Clerk Loretta Whitfield - who was re-elected for a four-year term in 2012 and is named as a defendant in Hollingsworth’s suit - on the Democratic primary ballot, along with retired Arkansas State Police Capt. Lloyd Franklin Sr., who filed for city treasurer and is also a defendant in the mayor’s suit.
Pine Bluff Treasurer Greg Gustek was elected to a four year term in 2012. Gustek said neither he nor anyone else was notified that the positions were open this year, so “we had no opportunity to file [for the primary] at all. Not to mention how bad this makes us look as a city. This is taking power away from voters.”
Soffer, the only election commissioner to vote against placing the positions on the primary ballot, said in a written statement that his fellow commissioners did not follow the law, nor their “public obligation. … We now face a lawsuit, and I commend Mayor Hollingsworth to have the fortitude to stand up for the citizens of Pine Bluff.”
A phone number for fellow commissioner Sims was not located. Fox, the election coordinator, had no comment.
Hollingsworth’s lawsuit, which the mayor said she filed as an individual and is paying for out of her own pocket, asks a judge to place a preliminary injunction within seven days “mandating that any plans for such elections be nullified and cancelled.”
Further, the suit asks a judge to order “Johnson, Davis, Fox and the [Jefferson County Election] Commission to take necessary and appropriate action to nullify and cancel the scheduling of any such elections for Pine Bluff mayor, city clerk and city treasurer until 2016.”
Redus filed his own lawsuit before the November 2012 mayoral race to stop the election, making the same population argument, but a judge didn’t agree and ruled that the vote should continue that year.
The former mayor continues to point to Arkansas Code Annotated 14-43-305 as the core of his argument. The law states that cities with populations of less than 50,000 must hold elections for mayor, city clerk and treasurer during nonpresidential election cycles, but it doesn’t spell out what happens when a city that had had more than 50,000 residents drops below that mark.
Such an occurrence had never before happened in the state’s history, according to the Arkansas Municipal League.
Pulaski County Circuit Judge James Moody Jr., who presided over the 2012 case because judges in Jefferson and Lincoln counties recused themselves, ruled that the election date should not be changed.
Hollingsworth listed Moody’s ruling as an exhibit in her lawsuit, saying that “the court’s ‘Final Order’ is conclusive and finally determinative of when the next elections for mayor and ‘other municipal officers’ in Pine Bluff are to be held and that is every four years or in 2016.”
Hunter’s opinion, Moody’s ruling and a statement made by Arkansas Secretary of State Mark Martin on the matter all cite Arkansas Code Annotated 14-37-113 as the controlling statute.
That part of the code states, in part, that in the event of a population change, any law that was applicable before that change shall be “equally applicable to any such city, irrespective of the fact that the city no longer has a population within the classification prescribed by law.”
Hunter said he holds “the same opinion as the court. The Legislature made a specific provision in [Arkansas Code Annotated] 14-43-303 to apply to population increases from below 50,000 to above 50,000, which changes those cities’ election cycles,but this does not apply to Pine Bluff.
“No such provision is in [Arkansas Annotated Code] 14-43-305 to change the election cycle for a population decrease like Pine Bluff has experienced,” he said.
Martin’s office has not changed its stance on when the Pine Bluff mayoral election should be held. Alex Reed, a spokesman for Martin’s office, said it shouldn’t be held until 2016.
If the election is held, other candidates for the offices of mayor, city clerk and treasurer could file as independents between July 25 and Aug. 15 and would face off in the November general election.
Hollingsworth called that predicament “unacceptable,” adding, “It saddens me to think that the people elected me for a four-year term, and now someone is coming in and saying that I shouldn’t serve out that term.
“I vow today that I will fight this. I will make sure that the people of Pine Bluff ’s votes mattered in 2012.”
Front Section, Pages 1 on 03/26/2014