Arkansas Democratic Party leaders on Saturday formally called for an outside audit of the party's finances, as a meeting was held to address a series of blog posts alleging mismanagement by the party chairman.
The series of articles by Little Rock attorney Matthew Campbell on his Blue Hog Report blog over the past two weeks had roiled the party's membership in the lead-up to Saturday night's Clinton Dinner, the party's biggest annual fundraiser.
No motion was made by any member of the party's State Committee to make changes to the party leadership, including Chairman Michael John Gray.
Gray called the audit an "appropriate" step in the wake of accusations about his leadership.
The party has struggled with lingering debt that dates back a decade, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported this month after reviewing years' worth of financial statements.
The debt dates back to election cycles when the party spent large sums of money trying to hold on to power as Republicans won control of the Legislature and other state and federal offices.
Gray asked that the audit cover his tenure as well as the several years before he took over as party chairman in March 2017, a request that the committee approved.
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"I won't sit here and say we're way better off" than before he took over as chairman, Gray told members of the committee Saturday. "But we're no worse off."
In his blog reports, Campbell alleged that financial statements submitted by the party to federal and state officials were rife with errors, and that Gray had violated party rules in giving raises to staff members at party headquarters in Little Rock.
After Gray denied any wrongdoing earlier this month, Campbell posted several other articles accusing Gray of "misleading" party members. Campbell also raised further questions about Gray's personal campaign finance reports.
The party hired the Little Rock law firm Shults and Adams to investigate the allegations against the party in Campbell's first article, posted on Aug. 6.
Attorneys for the firm interviewed more than a dozen people and issued their report to the party's State Committee on Saturday.
The report finds some merit to allegations that Gray and his staff had violated party rules, but overall, it determined that most of the alleged issues stemmed from the party breaking ties with a compliance company that it had long relied on to compile state and federal reports.
Gray said the party fired the firm, Next Level Compliance, in 2018.
Attorneys with the Shults and Adams law firm are continuing to investigate additional grievances filed by party members.
Meanwhile, the state Ethics Commission is investigating a complaint that Campbell made against Gray in regard to missing campaign finance reports from Gray's unsuccessful re-election bid for the state House of Representatives last year.
Gray said Saturday that any problems with his reports amounted to "clerical" errors, and he expressed optimism that the Ethics Commission will resolve the matter.
Metro on 08/18/2019