By Jason Tolbert
Last week’s special election to fill a state House of Representatives vacancy had the markings of a boring political story.
The eastern Arkansas district — one of the safest for Democrats — ended as expected. Democrat Hudson Hallum won by a wide margin with 51 percent. I’ll explain that later.
To get to the interesting part, some background likely helps.
A good place to start is the reason a special election was needed. Last year, former Harlem Globetrotter Fred Smith, a Democrat from West Memphis, was elected District 54 representative. His term lasted only two weeks into the legislative session, however. He resigned following his conviction on a charge of felony theft of property delivered by mistake. He was charged after state audit found the Dermott School District issued a duplicate payment of $29,250 to Smith’s nonprofit, Save Our Kids, and both payments were cashed.
About the time Smith was sworn in, questions came up about his residency. The controversy surrounded a Mississippi home he owned with his wife.
There was no reason for Democrats to be threatened by Smith’s resignation, however, even as Arkansas was seeing Republican gains most places. The district is so left-leaning that only about 30 percent voted for Sen. John Boozman, the Republican who won overwhelmingly in the last election. Statewide, Boozman received 58 percent of votes.
For some reason, the special election to replace Smith attracted seven candidates — a large number considering the new representative gets to serve only during the rather tame fiscal session next year after missing the more active regular session, which ended in April.
The four-way Democratic primary forced a runoff between Hallum and Kim Felker. Hallum survived by only eight votes. His narrow win was based on his performance in absentee ballots, which he won by an almost 6-to-1 margin — 401 for Hallum to 69 for Felker.
The absentee blowout caused Felker to cry foul. She produced a voicemail recording in which a person named Leroy Grant called and offered to help her “hustle” absentee votes. Grant explained to the local paper that he had helped with absentee votes for the third-place finisher in the primary and was merely offering to now help Felker.
She turned him down, but Hallum did not.
The whole business resulted in 2nd District Prosecutor Scott Ellington — also a Democrat — asking state police to investigate. The investigation is ongoing.
Meanwhile, Republicans, who stood no chance to win the seat, took pleasure in keeping the dust stirred up through the election.
Back to that wide-margin victory with 51 percent of the vote. D’James “Two” Rogers, an independent with close ties to the Democratic Party, became a candidate. He was familiar to voters, having worked on Gov. Mike Beebe’s campaign. In addition, he was the only African American running in a majority-minority district. In unofficial results, Rogers garnered 28 percent while the Republican ended up with 21 percent.
All things considered, not boring at all.
Jason Tolbert
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Jason Tolbert is an accountant and conservative political blogger. His blog — The Tolbert Report — is linked at ArkansasNews.com. His e-mail is jason@TolbertReport.com.
