A daddy and daughter duel
They say the lower the stakes, the louder the spat. It seems the spat is quite noisy in the Republican runoff tantamount to election to be decided today, thank goodness, for the state House of Representatives district in Howard and Hempstead Counties, with a sliver of Miller County.
The stakes are about which of the runoff’s professed fine conservative Christian women will get to vote next year at the state Capitol the same way the other would have voted if she’d been elected.
It’ll be either Arnetta Bradford of Hope, a religious-themed coffee-shop operator endorsed by both Gov. Sarah Sanders and a mysterious Wisconsin-addressed political action committee, and Dolly Henley of historic Washington, endorsed by Mike Huckabee, father of Sarah.
Henley has been viciously attacked by that mysterious Wisconsin-addressed political action committee. It’s accused her of being someone who, during her lifetime, has voted in Democratic primaries.
Oh, my God. For real? For a Democrat? In southwest Arkansas?
Do you reckon it was for Mike Beebe? He is a well-known dirty moderate and golfer. Or Maybe Henley voted for David Pryor or Dale Bumpers back in the day. The word I get is that those guys were friendly with Joe Biden in his eons-ago prime.
At least Henley voted. Research shows that Bradford—the religious coffee-shop vendor endorsed by Sanders but not Huckabee, daughter but not pop—has an inconsistent personal voting history.
I don’t much blame her. For the quality of politics we’re seeing in this race, people might tend to get turned off.
As for former Governor Huckabee endorsing one way and current Governor Sanders the other—well, sometimes kids grow minds of their own. Sometimes they don’t.
For the record, Huckabee put out a statement that Henley was an old friend with whom he had worked over the years on worthy projects and who had supported him as governor and as a presidential candidate. Sanders … well, she doesn’t talk much, except to Fox News.
Sanders had her political action committee ship Bradford more than $6,000, about 45 percent of what Bradford has raised.
Sarah is said to be friends with this coffee-shop owner receiving help from Wisconsin mailers showing her opponent riding down the highway in a ragtop with Joe Biden.
Yes, mailers have been streaming into country mailboxes attacking Henley, one showing her riding in a convertible with that rascal Biden.
Somebody told me that didn’t really happen, that the image was doctored.
An unidentified Wisconsin-addressed hit group doctoring a photo of a fine Christian woman in southwest Arkansas to help elect a different fine Christian woman in southwest Arkansas, with identical voting records at stake … isn’t politics great?
Then there are the reports of … well, I hesitate even to say. Illegal conduct. I think it’s mostly stupidity and ill-advised motor-mouthiness.
Here’s the wild story: Rep. Danny Watson is the non-running incumbent in this race. Last week, Sen. Jimmy Hickey in Texarkana, a strongwilled independent candid type, put on Facebook that Rep. Carol Dalby, also of Texarkana, had told him that Watson had told her that he wasn’t running again because Sarah’s people had told him that he could get a hundred-grand job on the Post-Prison
Transfer Board (the state parole board) if he’d facilitate getting a candidate Sarah liked elected without Sarah having to spend much money.
Dalby, a lawyer and former Miller County district judge who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, confirmed Watson told him that. She said she’d attest to it on a stack of Bibles.
Watson called it a flat-out lie—that, yeah, he might be interested in the Parole Board and couldn’t very well do that and run again, so, yeah, he looked for a prospect to run for his seat.
Hickey and Dalby also say Watson acted tactically, not telling people he wasn’t running until late to facilitate Bradford’s unfettered last-day filing. Watson says he didn’t do that either.
More importantly, Hickey said the people of the district are at risk of having their House seat filled for them by a secret out-of-state group telling lies.
Now that I think about it, that might amount to a serious stake in this race.
Why would an outfit unknown in terms of its principal operators send pricey colorful doctored photographs into country mailboxes to attack one candidate and boost the other? We have no way of knowing because we don’t have the gumption to regulate or restrict that kind of affront.
There is no sign that these outof-state PhotoShoppers are the same friends of Sarah who were the go-betweens on that lectern purchase. Let’s not get that started.
I kind of hope the good folks of District 88 vote for the candidate shown riding in a convertible with Joe Biden, which she did not do.
It turns out that, regarding this race at least, I prefer daddy Mike over daughter Sarah. I previously thought I had them tied for last place with Donald Trump.