LITTLE ROCK — A former aide to President George W. Bush, Tim Griffin, defeated state Sen. Joyce Elliott in Tuesday’s election, becoming only the second Republican elected to represent central Arkansas’ 2nd Congressional District since Reconstruction.
Green Party candidate Lewis Kennedy of Conway and independent candidate Lance Levi trailed.
With votes counted in 411 of the 412 precincts, the unofficial count was: Griffin .........................119,876 Elliott............................79,151 Levi ............................... 4,342 Kennedy ....................... 3,549
Griffin told his supporters that Republicans needed to gain 39 seats to strip control of the U.S. House of Representatives from Democrats. He said he was informed in a phone call, he said, that “we were 39.”
Griffin thanked God, his wife and two children, and an “incredible, incredible team,” referring to his campaign.
He was “very proud of the campaign,” he said. “We worked hard and built a campaign of folks from all parties. I believe ours was a fact-based campaign.”
At her party at Cajun’s Wharf restaurant in Little Rock, Elliott said, “We knew it was going to be tough.”
Her campaign manager, John Whiteside, said Elliott was waiting until all the election returns come in before calling Griffin to congratulate him on a victory.
“We see the writing on the wall,” he said.
Griffin “had a lot of money, and he picked great year to run,” Whiteside said when asked why Elliott lost. “There was just a movement for Republicans, and that’s about it.”
Griffin, 42, is a lawyer and public-affairs consultant who said he would be “a check and balance” in the Democratic controlled Congress and the Obama administration. He is a former interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas and worked for the Republican National Committee.
Elliott, 59, is a state senator who said she would work to create jobs and improve education, and be no one’s “lackey” in Washington. She served in the state House of Representatives from 2001-07 and taught in the public schools for 30 years.
Since mid-June, Griffin consistently led Elliott by double digit percentages in polls.
He had a financial advantage. Through Oct. 13, he raised $1.67 million and spent $1.06 million. Elliott reported contributions of $903,564 and expenses of $857,438 as of Oct. 13.
Griffin would be the third Republican to represent the district since Reconstruction. Ed Bethune was the first. He was elected in 1978, defeating Democrat Doug Brandon by 65,288 votes to 62,140, according to the Historical Report of the Secretary of State. Bethune was re-elected in 1980 and 1982.
Democrat Tommy Robinson was elected in 1984, 1986 and 1988, and he switched to the GOP during his third term.
Elliott aimed to become the first black since Reconstruction to be elected to represent Arkansas in Congress. In recent years, unsuccessful black congressional candidates have included Democrat Judy Smith in the 4th District in 2000 and Republican Princella Smith in the 1st District this year.
Griffin announced his candidacy in September 2009 to oppose Democratic incumbent Vic Snyder and contended that his values were more in line with those of central Arkansas voters. Snyder has represented the district since 1997, besting GOP nominees who argued in campaign after campaign that he was too liberal for Arkansas.
Griffin initially considered challenging Democratic U.S.Sen. Blanche Lincoln but decided that other Republicans planning to run in that race represented his views.
In January, Snyder announced that he wouldn’t seek re-election, citing a desire to spend more time with his wife and four young children.
In announcing her bid for the Democratic nomination, Elliott said she would work to balance the interests of competing factions such as Wall Street, Main Street, community banks and big banks, and homeowners and lenders. She resigned as director of government relations for the southwestern region for The College Board to run for Congress.
In February, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee alleged that Griffin was the architect of a voter-suppression scheme at the Republican National Committee in 2004, and Griffin dismissed the charges as “completely false.”
In the May 18 Republican primary, Griffin defeated restaurant owner Scott Wallace of Little Rock although Wallace contended that he didn’t have “the [Washington] D.C. baggage” that Griffin has and that “the Washington party establishment” shouldn’t be hand-picking candidates in a primary. Griffin said no one handpicked him.
In the Democratic primary, Elliott and House Speaker Robbie Wills of Conway advanced out of a five-candidate field to a June runoff. Elliott won after Wills described her in mailers and interviews as too extreme to win in November. But Elliott said Wills was desperate and was distorting her record.
An unsuccessful Democratic U.S. Senate candidate, D.C. Morrison of Little Rock, announced his support for Griffin shortly thereafter.
At one point Elliott said she wasn’t running against Washington, D.C., saying “any pinhead can do that.” She said she wouldn’t balk at accepting earmarks for federal projects,taking a position different from Griffin’s. She said she wasn’t referring to Griffin or anyone in particular with her “pinhead” remark.
Elliott later released a “Clean UP Congress plan” under which she would not accept automatic congressional pay raises, proposed requiring departing congressmen to wait five years before they may become lobbyists and aimed to cut the federal travel budget.
After a September forum on the firing of several U.S. attorneys by the Bush administration, including Bud Cummins of Little Rock, Elliott started raising questions about whether Griffin, a protege of Bush adviser Karl Rove, could be trusted to represent the district’s voters.
She said Griffin kept “an email friendliness” with Cummins as he undermined him by spreading rumors that he was lazy. Griffin countered that the list of attorneys who were going to be fired “was put together long before I ever stepped foot at the White House.”
Griffin said that in a 2008 U.S. Justice Department inspector general report that he didn’t believe that Cummins was lazy, although he had heard such comments and he was sure he had passed the comments on. Rove advanced Griffin’s name in e-mails to White House officials for the position.
Elliott also distributed campaign fliers referring to a Washington-based group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, calling Griffin “one of the most crooked candidates for Congress” this year.
The flier also said Griffin “wants a new 23 [percent] sales tax on everything we buy, including groceries, gas and medicine” and “called for privatizing Social Security, gambling our seniors’ retirement in the stock market.”
Griffin repeatedly disputed the charges, though he signaled support for either a flat sales tax or a flat income tax earlier this year. He said he favored some sort of flat income tax after studying the issue.
The candidates didn’t agree on much. Griffin said he would vote to repeal the health-care legislation enacted by Congress and the Obama administration, and Elliott said she wouldn’t do that but would work to improve the law.
Griffin said he favored extending the Bush-era tax cuts that were enacted in 2001 and 2003 for all taxpayers, and Elliott said she favored extending only the tax cuts for those making up to $250,000 a year. Griffin called for cutting federal discretionary nondefense spending to levels in existence before the economic-stimulus package was enacted last year, and rescinding unobligated federal stimulus funds.
Griffin said he opposes the Wall Street regulatory overhaul legislation enacted by Congress, and Elliott said she supports it.
Griffin said he opposed the Obama administration’s several-month deep-water drilling ban in the Gulf of Mexico, and Elliott said she supported it.
Elliott twice unsuccessfully pushed state legislation to allow the children of illegal aliens to pay the tuition rates that Arkansas residents pay at state-supported colleges and universities, rates that are cheaper than out-of-state residents pay for going to school in Arkansas. Griffin said he opposes doing that. Elliott said she supports similar federal legislation.
Griffin also opposed “cap and trade” legislation to reduce carbon emissions, legislation to make it easier for unions to organize in nonunion workplaces, and changing the policy that bans openly-homosexual service members. He said he won’t accept a congressional pension and would serve up to six two-year terms if voters continue to elect him.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 11/03/2010