What a neat deal: Come into office with with a reborn two-party system, the first since Reconstruction, in a Southern state overripe for reform. No wonder: For a century or so, Arkansas essentially had only one party (the Democratic one), one issue (race) and one crop (cotton). Then it elected a slate of Republican reformers. And the money started rolling in from the lobbyists. Different party, same old signs of corruption. It's an old story, and not an uplifting one.
How things have changed--for much the worse--since Winthrop Rockefeller and his band of merry men cleaned up state government after decades of Orval Faubus' demagoguery and scandal-a-day misrule. Now it turns out that one of the state's chief reformers, Michael Lamoureux, could stand some reforming himself. For he's compiled a record that begins to smell like a bad gas deal, and could prove just as explosive.
It seems Counselor Lamoureux had his law firm accept some $120,000 from a high-powered lobbying outfit for unspecified services rendered, aka "consulting" services. Not bad for a "public servant" who made only $17,700 when he became the shiny new president of the state Senate pro tem. Once again talk of hope and audacity would soon turn into disappointment and skepticism as all the flowery phrases fade away. No wonder newspapermen become cynics.
It's a classic story, like Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men, this time featuring a cast of unsavory characters--from Gilbert Baker, the former state senator who's been at the center of one political scandal after another by now, to nursing-home magnate Michael Morton and decidedly former Judge Michael Maggio, who confessed to bribery.
Quick, somebody turn off the gas. Before even more sad revelations surface.
Editorial on 10/24/2015