So I chatted on the phone the other day with a wealthy extreme conservative.
He's a near economic libertarian, or full one. He's a big booster of Tom Cotton.
The conversation was not unpleasant. But this rich right-winger did accuse me of "purposeful disinterest."
It was a charge I found deserving of consideration and of addressing. So I will address it later in the column.
Actually, this fellow is the current chairman of the board of the Club for Growth. That is a group that gets mentioned frequently and unfavorably in this space for disdaining government, opposing government services and encouraging pliable members of Congress like Cotton--whom the Club adores and helps underwrite--to oppose farm bills and disaster-aid bills and Children's Hospital grants.
What I wanted to know from this gentleman--this Jackson T. "Steve" Stephens of right here in Little Rock, businessman and son of the late billionaire financier Jack Stephens--was why he had filed that lawsuit last week against the proposed initiated act to raise the minimum wage in Arkansas.
Stephens explained his motivation this way: "Oh, I guess that whenever everybody starts going one direction, I look the other way."
More to the point, he said, was that empirical data does not support the premise that minimum-wage increases actually help poor people.
But there was something beyond that, he said with his voice rising a little.
Public documents on file at the Ethics Commission plainly show, he said, that the group advancing the minimum-wage initiative received hundreds of thousands of dollars from out-of-state labor unions. And those records plainly show that the campaign sent a great deal of that money to a local Democratic political consulting firm called The Markham Group.
He asked: Did I know that?
I did.
Why hadn't I reported it?
Well, I had reported it broadly--that Democratic groups were trying to get the minimum-wage proposal qualified for the ballot to help the Democratic cause of working-man turnout.
Stephens said he wasn't buying that. He said that I had been guilty of the aforementioned sin--"purposeful disinterest"--in not engaging in clear reporting about exactly where the money came from and went.
That's a charge I take seriously, to the extent that I want now to make amends for any shortcoming.
This ballot initiative to raise the minimum wage sprang from a progressive local faith-based group, the Arkansas Interfaith Alliance, several members of which are nobly motivated only by a desire to provide a more livable minimum wage in Arkansas.
But at some point along the way, the campaign was taken over by Democrats, including their monied constituents such as labor unions.
Documents on file at the state Ethics Commission show more than $300,000 contributed to the Alliance's effort by labor groups, most providing out-of-state addresses.
All of that was undertaken as part of a Democratic strategy to seed low-income-voter turnout and enhance the Democrats' chances of hanging on to the U.S. Senate seat and governorship.
Stephens noted that he and I "go way back," not in an agreeable way, and said he knew I was apt to describe his action as that of an out-of-touch rich guy. He asked me to try, at least, to be fair.
So here is Stephens' point of view, as clearly and fairly as I can express it: He looked into this matter and found the dominance of out-of-state labor contributions. He was flabbergasted that no mention of that had been made in local media, elements of which, including the element producing this column, had railed loudly against out-of-state money for Cotton and conservative causes from the Club for Growth and the Koch brothers.
So he looked further, found what he believed to be fatal flaws in the petition process and filed his lawsuit.
I agree with Stephens that voters should receive full and clear context about who is underwriting the minimum-wage effort and for what purpose.
And that leads me to one final point of fairness.
The Interfaith Alliance, as a 501(c)4, is not required under law to reveal its donors. It did so in this matter only because, by raising money for political purposes to advance a ballot issue in Arkansas, it confronted state disclosure laws.
The Koch brothers route some of their political money through trusts and then outward anonymously to a vast and complex network sometimes called a Kochtopus.
Stephens' Club for Growth operates a political action committee that must make disclosures of political donations for strictly electoral purposes. But the organization itself, also a 501(c)4, need not disclose its underlying benefactors, though its essence is wholly political--anti-government, anti-union.
Let's wrap up this way: Labor unions are trying to elect Democrats and using hopes for a raised minimum wage to do it.
Stephens and his wealthy allies are trying to elect extreme conservatives like Tom Cotton and don't support a raised minimum wage.
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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 on 09/28/2014