For those who may have missed the weekend news coverage, here's a report on steps taken Saturday by the Democratic Party of Arkansas to keep Dwayne Dobbins off the ballot for District 39 of the House of Representatives, which includes Argenta. I'm having trouble gettingit to link, so you may have to cut and paste.

http://www.arkansasnews.com/archive/2008/07/20/News/347093.html

I've also written a op-ed piece about this topic for the Dogtown Wire. It's posted on the jump here for those who are interested.

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Crisis in the Church of Incumbency

By Eric Francis
Contributing Writer
It’s not too often that the race for a North Little Rock seat in the state House of Representatives  merits top-of-the-page, A1 coverage in the statewide daily newspaper. On a Sunday, no less.
However, that’s what we got over the weekend, when the Democratic Party of Arkansas met to certify its nominees for the general election ballot ... but only after crafting a new rule meant to explicitly prohibit Dwayne Dobbins from making a run for the District 39 seat he once held.
You probably know the story, but here it is again in a nutshell: Dobbins left that seat three years ago as part of a plea bargain to avoid a felony sexual assault charge for fondling a 17-year-old girl in his home. His wife Sharon took over his seat after a special election, then won election in 2006, but this year instead of filing for re-election as expected, she sat out ... and he walked in at the end of the filing period to get on the primary ballot — unchallenged.
To clarify something, when I say she didn’t file for re-election “as expected,” what I mean is “as expected by the Democratic Party of Arkansas leadership.” That’s because said leadership never bothered to ask Sharon Dobbins if she planned to run; they just assumed she would.
And we all know what assuming gets you, right?
Since then, fingers aplenty have been pointed in a wild free-for-all of blame. But I’ll maintain what I’ve said before: The people most responsible for this are the political establishment, due to the mindset I’ve come to think of as the Church of Incumbency.
In far too many political offices in this state, once you’re elected you are, by and large, safe from serious competition. Certainly from within your own party; sometimes even from general election challenges. And that’s bad for the voters, because it can mean a more-qualified candidate might sit out a race (most likely a primary) against a less-effective incumbent. (Term limits have reinforced this behavior, but that’s another column.)
Many political observers will point, with justification, to the lack of a strong second party in Arkansas politics — the Republicans being somewhat anemic, in part because of the historically conservative Democrats we raise here — but I think an equally important consideration is that too many people believe if they run and fail once, they’ll never have a shot again. So they stay away from any incumbent, lest their win-loss record become tarnished. Incumbency, in effect, has become holy, something not to be challenged or questioned by the faithful.
I happen to think that’s bad not just for politics, but for governance.
And it leads to things like what happened over the weekend, with the Democratic Party of Arkansas voting to change its rules so that nobody can run under their banner if they’d previously given up an office as part of a plea agreement to avoid a felony prosecution.
On the surface, it sounds like a good idea; I’m sure it would’ve sounded just as good if it wasn’t being made as a desperation move at the 11th hour. I also wonder if they’d be making this rule right now if Dwayne Dobbins had been facing a white-collar crime felony rather than a sex crime; or if they’d just found out about a felony that happened 20 years ago.
I don’t think so, but then after nearly 17 years in journalism, maybe I’ve gotten a little jaded.
In any event, the Democrats made their rule change and effectively barred Dobbins from the November ballot. Then, predictably, the posturing began.
Perhaps the most galling statements reported from the Democrats’ meeting were made by Attorney General Dustin McDaniel — statements that, to my skeptical ear, sounded awfully well-rehearsed, the kind of thing designed to look good in a newspaper article.
But again, maybe I’m just a little jaded.
Firstly, McDaniel disparaged the manner in which Dobbins came to be on the primary ballot. The attorney general declared that to be “a bait and switch.”
Oh, really? Well, where was the outrage years back when Sherwood Municipal Judge Milas Hale, a well-liked incumbent, waited until the last hours of the filing deadline to walk into City Hall ... with his son, Milas “Butch” Hale III, who filed for his father’s bench instead? No cries of “Foul!” then, as I recall. Just a savvy move by a popular politician whom nobody cared to face off with, but whose seat would’ve drawn at least a couple of contenders if he’d announced his intent to step down at the end of the term.
This isn’t a nefarious bait and switch, it’s a time-honored (if not exactly honorable) political tactic. A way for an incumbent (and, by extension, a party) to hand-pick a successor. I’m sure a survey of the history of Arkansas politics would find similar instances happening again and again over the decades.
If that’s an ethically questionable tactic, then the parties ought to close that loophole. They could easily require incumbents to publicly state their intentions about seeking re-election no later than the day before the filing period opens. That would be far more constructive than offering a holier-than-thou sound bite about a political persona non grata.
But something else McDaniel said rubbed me even wronger. He proclaimed that the “spirit of his [Dobbins’] plea agreement was not to return to the Legislature.”
Excuse me? Tell us again, sir, what part you took in the negotiation of said plea agreement. What statements were uttered by Dobbins, or the prosecutor, that support such an interpretation? Or perhaps you’ve been an especially close confidante of Dobbins in the past few years, and he told you that’s what he understood his resignation really meant?
Spare us. This is, again, sound bite speculation. The plea agreement is part of an official court document and a lifetime prohibition from seeking office would have to be spelled out in it. In my dictionary, at least, “resign” is not defined as “never run again.”
McDaniel, of course, isn’t the only person in this mess who’s said things that raised my eyebrows. There’s Dobbins, himself, who awhile back responded to a question about why he pleaded guilty with something along the lines of, “Sometimes innocent people have to plead guilty.” I’d call that playing the martyr card. If Dobbins was, indeed, innocent of the charge and had the evidence to prove that, he should’ve gone to court; clearly, the prosecution was ready to. Further, it seems to me that claiming innocence now would mean he must’ve lied at his sentencing, where he acknowledged his guilt before a judge.
If you truly believe you can be exonerated, sir, by all means bring your evidence before the courts and the public. But if you’re just trying to resurrect a political career by downplaying past wrongdoing, spare us. There are already plenty of hypocritical politicians, in Arkansas and everywhere.
Naturally, the likelihood we’ve heard the last of this is faint. It would be no surprise if Dobbins mounted a legal challenge to the Democratic Party’s action. I’d rather like to see that happen, myself, as it would doubtless involve some rather interesting testimony. Unfortunately, even if the state’s highest court eventually said yea or nay to the new party rule, that wouldn’t solve the core problem. But if the Democrats (and the Republicans, naturally) would require their incumbents to state their intentions before filing opens, there won’t be any repeating of this kind of scenario.
And the people — you remember them, right, the voters? — would be better served for it.

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