NEWPORT - People in this small, northeast Arkansas town remember her as “a real looker” - no, an “absolute knockout” - who had brains, grit and an entrepreneurial streak that would surely take her far.
In Newport High School’s 1962 yearbook, then-senior Martha Shoffner strikes a variety of poses, smiling broadly each time.
In one photo, she sits primly on a couch - deemed by her peers as “Most Beautiful.” In another, she is part of the homecoming court, wearing a frothy confection of a dress and accompanied by two escorts. And there she is again, on Page 95, a grinning girl who appears thrilled to have been named a Thanksgiving royalty maid.
The girl had class, say those who knew her then. Her father was a farmer, her mother a schoolteacher. Shoffner was a Southern lady who “came from good stock.” A heady future surely awaited her.
Over the years, Shoffner slipped easily into a wide variety of roles: businesswoman, tamale-shop owner and office manager.
She was confident and proficient, unafraid to wade into Arkansas politics during a time when women at the Capitol were a rarity.
She never married. Never had children. But that didn’t seem to bother her - yet another characteristic that set Shoffner apart from her peers in those early years.
And then recently, at age 68, Shoffner’s life began to unravel. Last week, she lost her elected position as state treasurer and the support of her fellow politicians.
Arrested May 18 by U.S. marshals at her stately, columned home in Newport, Shoffner is accused of accepting cash payments in exchange for directing a significant share of the state’s investment business to one broker.
Federal authorities say two of the payments were designated for Shoffner’s campaign expenses. But six other payments described in the criminal complaint went to pay her rent, investigators say.
Authorities allege that Shoffner committed a federal crime so that she could afford to live in Little Rock, and thereby avoid a daily commute to and from her home in Newport.
“At this point I don’t believe it,” says longtime friend and former employer Lawson Turner III. “It is so totally unlike her. I’ll believe it when the jury convicts her, but not until then.”
Former state Auditor Julia Hughes Jones - who hired Shoffner as an administrative assistant during Jones’ term as auditor - says she was stunned by the allegations.
But given the state treasurer’s salary, $54,304.80, and the need for constitutional officers to find accommodations in Little Rock, Jones is willing to concede that her old friend may have been financially desperate.
“The problem is when you’re a public officer, you’re expected to do things you can’t really afford to do,” Jones says, adding that she had been fortunate to have a husband’s income to help support her political career.
“Martha has always been above reproach,” she continued. “I’m so sorry about this. I just really hate it.”
‘A REAL SWEETHEART’
Martha Shoffner was born in 1944 in Weldon, a small farming community in Jackson County, about 8 miles southeast of Newport.
The Shoffners have been entrenched in Jackson County ever since Aenas E. Shoffner - Martha’s grandfather - moved there from North Carolina in 1859. He was one of the largest planters in the area when the railroad was built through in the 1880s.
The railroad company put a station on Aenas Shoffner’s land. That station was called Shoffner’s switch, which is when the community became known simply as Shoffner.
Shoffner is about 4 miles north of Weldon. Both communities still boast old, wooden storefronts and abandoned cotton gins, including the large Shoffner Gin.
Martha Shoffner’s family followed tradition, farming cotton and rice. Her parents, James and Helen Shoffner, also raised cattle and goats. Helen Shoffner worked for decades as a schoolteacher, as well.
Until third grade, Martha Shoffner attended class in a one-room schoolhouse in Weldon. She then transferred to a consolidated school in Newport.
Those who grew up with Shoffner remain devoted to and protective of her, and didn’t want to be quoted speaking about her. They did say, however, that she was a popular and outgoing student who became a cheerleader and was a member of the pep club.
She was beautiful and sought-after, an old friend said.
“But she never went with anyone,” another friend mused.
“Never married,” said another.
“She was a real sweetheart,” a third recalled fondly.
Shoffner graduated from Newport High in 1962. She then attended Memphis State University and Arkansas State University.
In 1965, Shoffner, 21, and a friend from ASU, Tommy Lynn Couch Crawford, decided to head to Little Rock, where they would “work and make our fortunes,” Crawford told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in a 2006 interview.
The pair spent the summer interning in then-Gov. Orval Faubus’ office. Shoffner, whose aunt served as a longtime circuit clerk, already was intrigued by politics.
The internship only heightened that interest, Crawford said. “Something was there then without her really knowing. You look back and think, ‘This is where she is supposed to be.’”
At some point, Shoffner took a job as a receptionist at Dixie Equipment in Little Rock. That’s where she met Jones, who at the time was a young mother whose husband worked in sales at Dixie.
“They were all crazy about her,” Jones recalls. “She did a good job.”
Shoffner has said previously that her first full-time job in Little Rock was in the print production department at the public relations firm of Cranford Johnson, now Cranford Johnson Robinson Woods. She left the firm in 1981.
MISS MARTHA’S TAMALES
Shoffner’s entrepreneurial streak emerged in the early 1980s when she went into the tamale business.
It all started with Pat Rasch, a friend from Newport, who at one time owned Mama’s Bar-B-Q on Colonel Glenn Road in Little Rock. Mama’s, it was said, sold some of the best tamales in town. Rasch couldn’t make a go of the restaurant, however, and soon returned to a nursing career.
Then, around 1986, Shoffner persuaded Rasch to give the tamales another try. They named their shop Miss Martha’s Tamales because it sounded Southern. Rasch made most of the tamales, relying on a Cajun recipe. Shoffner handled the marketing and helped out in the kitchen. She also contributed her own recipe for Southern tamales.
The tamales were made and sold out of an old house atop a hill, just above an old commercial building that housed a liquor store. The shop was just north of the Executive Building at 2020 W. Third St. Rasch and Shoffner also ran a takeout operation near the Capitol.
“They were wildly successful,” recalls Turner, who was a Little Rock attorney at the time. His brother, William Hastings Bransford III, invested in the operation at one point, Turner says, adding, “All I did was eat them.”
Aside from the tamale shop, Shoffner owned a second business, Tele-Merica, which helped people whose credit cards had been stolen. Turner ended up acquiring Tele-Merica and hiring Shoffner, who took a job as his office manager.
“She was the hardest-working girl,” Turner says. “She worked Saturdays and Sundays.”
In 1988, an Alabama businessman sampled Miss Martha’s tamales during a visit to Little Rock. He was impressed and asked Rasch if she and her partners would be willing to sell tamales wholesale so that he could offer them at his nightclub. The businessman invested $250,000, and Miss Martha’s Food Inc. soon opened a 2,700-square-foot factory at 11800 Arch Street Pike in Little Rock.
“They were really about to take off,” Turner recalls.
But just months later, a burglar set fire to the factory, destroying it and the women’s dreams of selling their tamales nationally.
Shoffner continued to work for Turner until Sheffield Nelson ran for governor in 1990. At that time, she quit her job to go work on Nelson’s campaign, Turner says.
“I was really disappointed when she left,” he adds. “But she had so much respect for Sheffield and thought he would win.”
In later years, Turner would help Shoffner buy her sister’s share of their mother’s Newport home.
Property records show Turner’s name on the deed from March 12, 2004, to Dec. 28, 2006. It was removed after Shoffner got a formal bank loan, Turner says.
A NEW CAREER
When Nelson lost his bid for governor, Shoffner was left without a job.
Around that time, she bumped into Jones at a grocery store, Jones recalls. The encounter proved fortuitous for both. Shoffner needed work, and Jones, then the state auditor, needed an administrative assistant.
“She was good at her job. She did everything she was supposed to do,” says Jones, who now lives in Florida.
But two years later, Shoffner had to have surgery. She ended up leaving the auditor’s office, and after her father died in 1993, she returned to Newport, where she became a Realtor.
In 1994, she ran for the state House of Representatives seat but lost to then-Jackson County Sheriff Donald Ray. Undeterred, she ran again in 1996 and defeated Ray by five votes.
While in the House, she served as chairman of the State Agencies and Governmental Affairs Committee, and was a member of the Joint Budget Committee and the Joint Committee on Public Retirement and Social Security.
After term limits ended her tenure in the Legislature, Shoffner ran for auditor in 2002. She lost to Jim Wood, however, and resumed her job at Sink Realty in Newport.
In 2005, Shoffner announced that she would run for treasurer. In a news release, she wrote: “I promise to protect the fiscal interest of Arkansas taxpayers and will make sure the staff of the treasurer’s office is the most competent, experienced and public-service minded available.”
She won.
THE SCANDALS
Even before her arrest and resignation last week, Shoffner had been no stranger to controversy.
In July 2010, a question arose as to whether state constitutional officers should pay income taxes for the personal use of state vehicles. As several elected officials announced plans to begin paying the taxes or to stop using state vehicles, Shoffner remained firm: She wasn’t giving up her car, and she wasn’t paying taxes to use it.
At the time, Shoffner had an apartment in Little Rock and a residence in Newport. She said her state vehicle was her only vehicle. And she made comments about Gov. Mike Beebe that created a firestorm.
“The governor has a manservant driving him around,” Shoffner said. “If the governor is going to say he’s exempt, why wouldn’t we be exempt? We’re all constitutional officers.”
A week later, in an interview with the Democrat-Gazette, she apologized for the remark, saying that she had sounded “like an ogre.”
“I’m not arrogant. … I was just frustrated. I just sounded terrible. I was just jabbering.”
Part of her frustration stemmed from the fact that she didn’t think she could afford to pay “any more taxes,” Shoffner said then. “I don’t have any [income tax] deductions. I’m in the 30-something-percent bracket. It was just more than I thought I could pay.”
The first hint of trouble involving bond investments surfaced in October 2011 during a routine audit, when auditors wondered why her office had purchased more than $500 million in bonds through only one of the 13 brokers her office dealt with on such investments. Records showed that $518 million went through St. Bernard Financial Services of Russellville. The next-largest amount was $220 million through Morgan Keegan.
“That’s … not out of the ordinary,” Shoffner said in an interview then. “We work with the firms that bring us the best pricing.”
Auditors also noted that the treasurer’s office had sold 30 bonds before they had reached maturity, which caused the state to lose out on about $434,000 in earnings.
On Nov. 2, 2011, Shoffner again made headlines, this time because she had to amend her campaign reports five times after the Democrat-Gazette had noted some discrepancies.
Then, a week later, the newspaper questioned her about a $10,000 check that she had received in 2009 from a New York law firm. The money was for her re-election campaign.
The single check was intended to be contributions of $2,000 each from five law partners at the firm, Shoffner’s chief deputy said. But it was unclear whether Arkansas ethics rules allow multiple contributors who are not married and not sharing bank accounts to make their donations in a single check.
But the real sticking point was that the law firm — Kaplan, Fox & Kilsheimer LLP — had a securities monitoring contract with the Arkansas Teacher Retirement System. Shoffner was a member of the board of trustees for that system.
Shoffner opted to return the check.
Questions about investment bonds emerged again in September 2012, when the Legislative Joint Auditing Committee decided to question Shoffner about an audit’s findings. Two subpoenas later, Shoffner finally appeared before the committee, telling lawmakers that she couldn’t recall why her office had sold bonds from its investment portfolio before their maturity dates; nor could she remember why it had purchased similar bonds from the same brokers.
In January, fed-up lawmakers decided to ask law-enforcement officers to look into the matter.
Last weekend, Shoffner was arrested at her Newport home after an FBI informant secretly recorded her taking $6,000 in cash hidden in a pie box, according to the criminal complaint filed in federal court. The complaint accuses Shoffner of attempt and conspiracy to commit extortion under color of official right.
In the federal documents unsealed last week, an FBI agent contends that since 2009, Shoffner has accepted cash payments of at least $36,000 — as well as $6,700 in cash campaign contributions — from an unnamed bond broker in return for directing a significant portion of the state’s bond business to him.
The crux of the deal, the complaint states, was Shoffner’s financial difficulty in paying her rent.
While she owns a home in Newport, Shoffner has lived primarily in Little Rock since she became treasurer in 2006. She was able to live rent-free just a few blocks from the state Capitol for most of her first term.
That arrangement was made possible by Texas lawyer Tim Herron, who said Shoffner began staying at the two-story home he used as an office at South Ringo and West Second streets soon after she was elected in 2006. Herron, who owned the building at the time, told the Democrat-Gazette that Shoffner paid the utility bills in exchange for housing until about two years ago, when he allowed the office to go into foreclosure because his firm didn’t need it anymore.
Shoffner then moved into an apartment at Rainwater Flats, also owned by Herron and his wife, Che Williamson. This time, though, she had to pay rent, which ran about $800 per month, Herron said.
That move, federal authorities allege, is what prompted Shoffner to strike a deal with the broker, who paid Shoffner $6,000 about every six months so she could pay for what she said was a $1,000-a-month apartment in Little Rock, according to the complaint.
Found at her Newport home on Wednesday, Shoffner declined to comment per the advice of her attorney.
Her friends, meanwhile, struggle to understand.
“I’ve known her since she was barely more than a teenager, and she’s always done good work,” says Jones, the former state auditor who hired Shoffner.
“She left nothing undone, always took care of the details. That’s why I’m so surprised by this. She must have really been hurting.”
Front Section, Pages 1 on 05/26/2013