Editorials

For Leslie Rutledge

For attorney general of Arkansas

Today we endorse Leslie Rutledge as the next attorney general of Arkansas--the real Leslie Rutledge, the one who's devoted years to both public service and her political party, not the grotesque caricature her opponents have painted of her in emails, press releases, and attack after attack in this mud-caked election season. Each time she's gotten up, washed off the political crud, refuted the latest accusation hurled at her, and given as good as she's got--sometimes worse.

It's been that kind of election year, and by now the Arkansas voter can be forgiven for wondering which candidate for this high office is the lowest-down, most scandalous nominee ever to run for Arkansas attorney general.

It's not easy to just keep count of all the slurs directed at Leslie Rutledge over these past few months, let alone go into them in any detail. This editorial column has only so much space. Here's just one of the hoked-up accusations thrown her way: She's been found unfit by the state agency where she worked for years, the Department of Human Services. Why? Because somebody screwed around with her personnel records after she'd left to work in Mike Huckabee's presidential campaign. Imagine the DHS, with its scandal-plagued record, finding one of its top lawyers not fit to re-hire--though it's easy eough to understand why the muckety-muck who pulled off this piece of character assassination didn't have the courage to let the victim know about it.

Leslie Rutledge's opponent in this election, a Democratic legislator who now wants to be the state's next attorney general, Nate Steel of Nashville, Ark., has demanded that the lady release all her state personnel records. Why? So he can rifle through them looking for--what? More things to misconstrue? More dirt to throw?

Let it be noted that this same Mr. Steel has been in no rush to release details of his own employment as little Nashville's city attorney, claiming he was "only" on contract, though he seems to have been treated like anybody else on that city's payroll, complete with taxes withheld and even a retirement fund. No matter what state law has to say about double-dipping, in this case a state representative who's been drawing paychecks as both a legislator and a city attorney.

Yet we can't help but sympathize with Rep./City Attorney Steel and his town, for we understand that Arkansas' small towns may have to make some, shall we say, informal arrangements to find and keep a city attorney. Also, the Arkansas Municipal League, which is a stickler for following the rules, says this arrangement is perfectly kosher, which is good enough for us.

Without taking a stand on the legalities involved--for we're certainly not qualified to play judge and render a decision on all the tangled legal issues here--we're all in favor of Arkansas' struggling small towns, those wide places in the road like Nashville and Dardanelle, for without them, and their close-knit communities, this small, wonderfully interconnected state might never produce leaders like Tom Cotton and Mike Beebe and so many others with small-town roots. What we don't understand is why Nate Steel would be so all-fired hot to get a peek at Leslie Rutledge's personnel file while staying so quiet about his own. It all comes a little too close to hypocrisy for our tastes.

What's more disturbing is Mr. Steel's legislative record, which shows he voted for the smelliest proposal on this year's ballot--Ballot Issue No. 3 to extend legislative terms like his own even while telling us when we interviewed him that he was really against it. Maybe you have to have a fine legal mind to understand his contorted position--or just be another pettifogging lawyer in politics, which is what we suspect. We also wonder if, should Rep./City Attorney Steel become the state's next attorney general, would he treat his staff the way DHS treated Leslie Rutledge, monkeying with her personnel file after she'd left without telling her about it? That's no way to treat a lady--or anybody else.

Leslie Rutledge was also the victim of a concerted effort to kick her off the voter registration rolls. It seems a thoroughly partisan type got Pulaski County's county clerk to do his bidding and cancel her voter registration, even though that same county clerk never objected to her voting in election after election, and that same office gave her a voter registration card. Talk about voter suppression.

Oh, yes, Leslie Rutledge is also supposed to be some kind of closet racist because she kept an email in her files from an old friend some seven years ago, said email being a piece of fiction by a short-story writer whose work has been recited on NPR's Tales From the South, and who claims to be a pure, died-in-the-cotton, yellow-dog Democrat. Even if she and Ms. Rutledge are old buddies.

You have to wonder: If it's now a crime to keep a short story written in dialect in your emails, can you also be hauled up before some People's Court for reading Huckleberry Finn unexpurgated, let alone the Uncle Remus stories or William Faulkner's fiction? Or maybe some of Barry Hannah's more hilarious (and uninhibited) short stories.

But that's the intolerant, tin-eared, culturally ignorant and politically correct era we now seem to have entered. And can't seem to outgrow. As usual, our high-minded censors claim they have only the noblest motives. Don't they always? But if theirs is the Wave of the Future, to quote that master of the malaprop, Sam Goldwyn, include us out.

And so the smears go on, and probably will till election day. And good people who honestly don't know better may believe one or two of them. That's the risk anybody who runs for public office takes these days. And has always taken. Look at the smear job Pat Hays and his highbinders have been doing on his opponent in this election, a quite respectable banker named French Hill. We'd just as soon stick with a candidate's real record, thank you. Which is why we're endorsing Leslie Rutledge today. The real Leslie Rutledge.

Editorial on 11/01/2014

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