There's a lot of cleaning up to be done in some of Arkansas' constitutional offices. Not all those officials who were elected last time out have been arrested and convicted, or just shamed into leaving. It only seems that way some days.
One office in need of extensive cleaning (and maybe some basic repair) is the lieutenant governor's. What's needed in that office is somebody honorable, respected and experienced, with Arkansas roots, an ingrained sense of duty, and a record of service in elected office. An experienced congressman and former U.S. attorney would seem a good hire. And it would help if he was a lieutenant colonel on the side.
It just so happens that the congressman from the state's Second District is a former U.S. attorney and current officer in the Reserves. And he's ready to get out of Washington, D.C., and come back home to his family. (He clearly has the right sense of priorities.)
So enter, stage right, Tim Griffin. He was the responsible pick for this office in the Republican primaries and now he's the responsible pick in the general election.
Back in the primaries, various pols and pundits were talking about getting rid of this office altogether. As if the state didn't need a replacement for the governor trained and ready to go to work if and when needed. The lieutenant governor doesn't just break ties in the state Senate. He or she also acts as governor when the real one is away, and even has to take over--at a moment's notice--if a governor has to resign in disgrace, or just be removed from office.
Think it can't happen? Remember a decidedly former governor named Jim Guy Tucker who held on to his office not just to the last minute but beyond? Remember how a chief executive named Mike Huckabee came to reside in the Governor's Mansion after a day of tension and uncertainty before the crisis was defused--after considerable embarrassment?
Tim Griffin grew up in that most Arkansas of towns, Magnolia--the one between Waldo and Emerson, but nowhere near Ralph, more's the pity for those of us who like our Arkansas place names to have a certain ring to them.
Congressman Griffin got his degrees at Hendrix and Tulane. Add to his impressive résumé a stint with the 101st Airborne in Iraq, service on the House Ways and Means Committee in Washington, and his acting as assistant majority whip while in the U.S. House.
Yes, he's got experience.
Tim Griffin also has ideas. He's for reforming burdensome tax laws and improving two-year colleges. The lieutenant governor may not have much legislative or executive power in this state, but the job does come with a bully pulpit, which can be used for better or worse. (For an example of the latter, see Bill Halter and the Arkansas Lottery and Official State Scam.) Something tells us that an experienced Arkansas politician like Tim Griffin will surely find a way to get his agenda a hearing.
In this race, Mr. Griffin has drawn an undistinguished opponent who's waged a campaign to match. And whose record in elected office, as far as we can discern, might be summed up as nil.
On the basis of his judgment, experience and his own down-home decision to leave that madhouse known as Washington on the Potomac, Tim Griffin is our choice for lieutenant governor.
His election would go a long way toward restoring good sense to an office its previous holder disgraced. We've had quite enough officeholders like that in Arkansas--from both parties--and it would be a real step up to have somebody like Tim Griffin as the state's lieutenant governor and its second-in-command. Somebody ready and willing to take over if and when Arkansas needed him to.
Editorial on 10/17/2014