Scattershooting: Omaha Trip Bust, RIP Sallings, Legislative News

Here are some tidbits torn from the pages of a reporter’s notebook while infrequent summer showers rain down on our over-heated heads.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson and his usual entourage of First Lady Susan Hutchinson and several staff and his security detail made it to Omaha, Neb., to see the University of Arkansas Razorbacks and the Oregon State Beavers.

But a rain delay, put off the first game of the College World Series — and as government schedules must prevail — Hutchinson and company came back to Little Rock — not having seen the Hogs play.

Channel 5’s weatherman, Joe Pennington, on the scene in Omaha, caught the Governor and First Lady, exiting a restaurant on live TV and interviewed Gov. Hutchinson.

He was in Omaha, the governor said, “to witness history.”

Too bad the weather didn’t allow it.

The Governor, before leaving the state, did say he was placing a “gentleman’s wager” with the Oregon Governor, a petite Democrat named Kate Brown.

Gov. Brown accepted Gov. Hutchinson’s wager.

To the winner of the bet — this deal was made.

Hutchinson, if the Oregon State Beavers, were to win, was to send 6 pounds of thick, peppered bacon — Petit Jean bacon, of course, one of the state’s best known brands.

Gov. Brown, if the Razorbacks were to win, was to send Gov. Asa Hutchinson a six-pack of local craft brews — beer, in other words.

A quick check of the computer search engines reveal that Gov. Brown welcomed Oregon State Beavers home with fanfare, a celebration and, yes, a box with 6 pounds of Arkansas bacon.

The defeat, which will sting Razorbacks for generations, was even more ironic, but not lost on Gov. Brown.

“The Beavers not only won the NCAA Championship,” she said. “They brought home the bacon.”

State Rep. David Whitaker, D-Fayetteville, will not be the minority whip in the 2019 legislature. Whitaker, who had no opposition, is set for his fifth term in the state House.

State Rep. Charles Jamaal Blake, D-Little Rock, after a vote, will be replacing Whitaker at the House Minority leader.

State Rep. Charlene Fite, R-Van Buren, is the new chair of the Aging, Children and Youth, Legislative and Military Affairs Committee in the House. She also supported the next Speaker of the lower chamber — Rep. Matthew Shepherd, R-El Dorado.

The pair were seat-mates during the 2017-18 sessions.

Fite, who represents House Dist. 80, is one of only handful of Republicans to be battling two opponents in the Nov. 6 General Election. She has a Libertarian and a Democratic opponent.

Sadly it must be noted that longtime head of the Arkansas Public Defender Commission, Didi Sallings, 56, has passed away.

She was a petite firecracker of a lawyer. Standing 4-foot, 10-inches in heels, she was a mentor to a generation of trial lawyers, many of whom cut their teeth in the public defender’s offices all over Arkansas.

Sallings was a giant in seeking ways to help Arkansas’ poorest, and often most scorned population, obtain legal assistance and help in their cases.

A noted Fayetteville defense attorney, W.H. Taylor, said Sallings was “a warrior against the death penalty.”

She will be missed by all the justice and legal community.

Have been asked by many about the impending sentences from the federal trial this spring on the Grant Improvements Funds; the first sentence will be handed down Sept. 5th.

Stay tuned.

The Nov. 6 Mid-Term Elections are 15 weeks away.