Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Pryor: Ebola plan poor
Senator says Obama’s actions lack urgency
U. S. Sen. Mark Pryor criticized President Barack Obama’s response to the Ebola virus Friday.
Pryor had been criticized last week when he told an MSNBC reporter that he didn’t have enough information to say whether Obama’s administration handled the Ebola issue appropriately.
In Little Rock on Friday, he gave the administration low marks.
“I don’t think President Obama has done enough. I think his piecemeal approach has not been helpful in someways. We need a comprehensive, multi-layered strategy,” he said. “We need to make sure … that there is a sense of urgency, not panic, but urgency here. We want to make sure no one else falls through the cracks.”
There have been three confirmed cases of Ebola in the United States: a man who traveled from Liberia to Dallas and two hospital workers who helped care for him.
The perceived threat that the deadly virus will spread has crept into the midterm campaign in Arkansas and across the country with Democrats and Republicans pointing fingers for funding cuts and slow response by the federal government.
Pryor is in a tight race to hold his seat against U.S. Rep. Tom Cotton, a Republican from Dardanelle. The race is being watched nationally as Republicans seek to gain control of the Senate.
On Oct. 4, Cotton and the rest of Arkansas’ House delegation called for travel restrictions, airport screenings and other methods aimed at stemming the disease’s spread before it becomes an epidemic.
Speaking to reporters Friday, Pryor suggested the United States temporarily should ban travelers from the three African nations that have been severely affected by the outbreak, have Centers for Disease Control and Prevention employees screen travelers at major airports, and tighten federal quarantine rules.
Pryor said it’s right for Obama to send military resources to Africa to help contain the outbreak but questioned whether the commander in chief made the right choice in picking Ron Klain, a former chief of staff to Vice President Joe Biden, as the “Ebola czar.”
At the news conference, Arkansas Health Director
Nathaniel Smith said the Health Department said that only about 150 people per day enter the U.S. from the African countries most affected by the outbreak. He estimated that, on average, one or two of them would enter Arkansas each day.
State and federal authorities now are sharing information about people who enter the country from affected countries and are flagged as potentially exposed. State health officials will monitor that person for 21 days. So far, the health department is not monitoring any one in Arkansas, he said.
In August, Pryor aired a commercial that accused Cotton of voting “against preparing America for pandemics like Ebola.”
Pryor’s Ebola commercial made headlines and drew criticism. The Washington Post called it “scare- tastic political advertising” and Joe Scarborough, host of the MSNBC program Morning Joe, said it resembled something from Saturday Night Live.
But Friday’s Ebola news conference, Pryor said, was apolitical. Discussing politics in his official U.S. Senate office would be inappropriate, he added.
“What we’re talking about here today is above and beyond politics,” Pryor said.
The news conference originally was scheduled to take place at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, and UAMS Medical Center CEO Dr. Roxane Townsend was scheduled to join Pryor.
But the event was moved at the last minute.
UAMS Vice Chancellor Leslie Taylor said Pryor’s office approached the hospital about hosting the event late Thursday afternoon and they agreed to participate.
Friday morning, however, hospital officials discovered that the lobby gallery and other areas on the campus that could accommodate a news conference were unavailable, she said.
Since the UAMS staff members scheduled to be at the event were there as a “backdrop” and to talk about UAMS’ role in Ebola aware- ness and prevention, they did not attend the event once it was moved off campus, she said.
“We didn’t want to be giving mixed messages to folks,” Taylor said.
While Pryor declined to discuss the politics of Ebola during his news conference, his campaign addressed it shortly thereafter.
Pryor’s deputy campaign manager, Erik Dorey, said by phone that Arkansans should know about Cotton’s record of opposing funding for key health-related programs, but that on Friday, Pryor was most worried about educating people about what Arkansas health officials are doing.
“This is a vote that Cotton took, and it is incredibly relevant to what we’re seeing play out,” Dorey said. But “this has become a pressing and imminent concern for Arkansans, and Mark Pryor is not someone who will rush to play politics with something when he could be addressing this serious issue as our senator, and that is exactly what he did.”
Cotton’s campaign spokesman, David Ray, was critical of how the Pryor campaign has treated the issue.
“Ebola is a serious matter, but Sen. Pryor’s silly attack ads about the issue are simply politically motivated. Tom Cotton is working to hold the president accountable for the lackluster response to this outbreak, and when he was asked about President Obama’s response, Sen. Pryor couldn’t even construct a complete sentence that would answer the question,” Ray said.
In a news release Thursday, Cotton said the House delegation’s request to limit travel fell on deaf ears.
“President Obama’s failure to take appropriate action against the spread of Ebola over the last several weeks has left Arkansans and all Americans unnecessarily vulnerable to this terrible disease,” Cotton said.
Some Democrats have said Republican budget cuts depleted government resources needed to keep Americans safe from the threat of Ebola. One ad running in Kentucky titled “Republican Cuts Kill” by a little- known liberal group, the Agenda Project Action Fund, flashes the faces of more than a dozen Republican politicians saying the word cut, including Cotton and U.S. Rep. Tim Griffin, who is running for lieutenant governor of Arkansas.
Some Republicans, including potential presidential candidates in 2016, have said the issue raises questions about Obama and the competency of the executive branch. Others have linked Ebola to the Islamic State militant group and border security.
Art English, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, said voters may be more worried about why the government or the health care industry hasn’t moved more quickly to contain the threat, rather than what funding bills candidates voted on.
“I guess when you’re in a political campaign you take shots wherever you get them, and this race is extraordinarily close,” English said. “I don’t know how much that is going to play into the election itself.”
Ouachita Baptist University political science professor Hal Bass said candidates need to be careful what information they release.
“We live in an age where everything is potentially politicized,” Bass said. “In a situation like this, we are well advised to keep our heads about us and listen to the experts. What you want to do is avoid panic and alarm and politicizing it doesn’t really achieve that goal, but it’s campaign season.”