Democrats pick ex-legislator to run despite past conviction
A vacant candidate spot in a traditionally Democratic state House district centered around Helena-West Helena was filled Monday by Jimmie Wilson, a former state legislator whose past legal issues prompted Republicans to threaten a lawsuit to remove him from the ballot.
Wilson, 74, was nominated by a 5-3 vote at a virtual Democratic nominating convention Monday night to fill the vacancy on the ballot left by former Rep. Chris
Richey, D-Helena-West Helena. Richey stepped aside last month after taking a new job that required him to move out of the district.
Before Wilson’s nomination, Democrats had raised concerns about his 1991 misdemeanor conviction for illegally converting federal farm loans for personal use and selling mortgaged crops, for which he later received a pardon from President Bill Clinton.
Wilson served in the Legislature after his conviction and 4½-month prison sentence, but a change to the Arkansas Constitution approved by voters in 2016 could bar him from holding office, the state party warned in a letter last week to the delegates to the Democratic nominating
convention.
Republicans immediately seized on Wilson’s nomination as a chance to flip the district by removing him from the ballot. A Republican, David Tollett of Lexa, is also running for the seat.
“If the Democratic Party of Arkansas fails to take action and remove this convicted criminal from the ballot, the Republican Party of Arkansas will take the necessary action,” state GOP Chairman Doyle Webb said in a statement Tuesday.
Attempts to reach Wilson for comment on Tuesday were unsuccessful.
In a statement released after the convention, state Democratic Party Chairman Michael John Gray responded to threats of a legal challenge by promising to stand behind Wilson.
“Right now, all we have is a press release from Chairman Webb,” Gray said in a phone interview Tuesday, adding, “We will fight vigorously to defend our nominee.”
Political parties and candidates have had past success in kicking opponents off the ballot by bringing up past convictions for “infamous crimes,” a disqualifying distinction set in the Arkansas Constitution.
In 2016, Democrats were successful in a suit to disqualify Republican Jim Hall from running to fill an open seat in House District 9, after discovering that Hall had pleaded guilty to writing a bad check to purchase a $500 egg incubator. The judge’s ruling in that case came after ballots had already been printed for the November election, so the judge ordered that votes for Hall not be counted. The Democratic candidate, current Rep. LeAnne Burch, D-Monticello, was declared the winner.
In that same election, voters approved the state constitutional amendment that clarified the definition of infamous crimes to include those involving “an act of deceit, fraud or false statement.”
Two judicial candidates, Adam Weeks and Jim Wyatt, were ruled ineligible for office earlier this year because of infamous-crime convictions, though Weeks later had his disqualifications overturned by the Arkansas Supreme Court.
The attorney who challenged both of those candidates’ qualifications, Chris Burks, said Wilson’s 1991 conviction in federal court appears to meet the constitution’s definition of an infamous crime because one of the federal laws he violated was an “intent to defraud.”
Burks, a former attorney for the state Democratic Party, said he is not representing any candidates in House District 12.
Burks said Wilson’s best argument for remaining on the ballot would be to say that the Legislature waived any disqualification by allowing him to serve after his conviction, though he quickly added, “I don’t think that’s a really good argument.”
Gray said he did not ask Wilson to withdraw from the nomination process.
In a letter by Gray sent last week to the eight convention delegates, he addressed the “different legal arguments” surrounding Wilson’s potential eligibility issues, and included excerpts from a 1964 Arkansas Supreme Court ruling in which the justices refused to remove a candidate’s legal disqualification for embezzlement after he was pardoned for the crime.
The other Democratic candidates vying for the nomination were former Helena-West Helena Mayor James Valley and Elaine
Mayor Michael Cravens. Valley received three delegate votes at the convention and Cravens received none.
Gray added to his criticism of Republican Party threats by accusing them of trying to “steal” the election in a majority-Black legislative district. Wilson, who is Black, is well known for representing the Lake View School District in a landmark school-funding lawsuit.
“It brings into question Chairman Webb’s belief in his own nominee that he wants to try to go to court to win this rather than win this at the ballot box,” Gray said.
In a statement released through a spokesman Tuesday, Webb brushed off the criticism, calling Tollett’s qualifications “impeccable.”
“I understand Chairman Gray’s frustrations that he has to defend a person convicted of a federal crime,” Webb wrote. “Even Michael John himself wrote a memorandum expressing these significant concerns last week, but the committee chose to ignore his warnings.”
Richey, the four-term Democratic lawmaker who most recently represented the district, won his 2018 reelection campaign with more than 60% of the vote.