A ‘Jake’ mistake

Bequette doth protest too much

Jake Bequette seems to suggest the people likely to support him don’t know Jack about Jake.

He’s filed a lawsuit over two counties having ballots that refer to him as Jack, not Jake, in his campaign to unseat Sen. John Boozman in the U.S. Senate. Two others seek the Republican nomination, too: They are Heath Loftis and Jan Morgan.

“Jake” became “Jack” on some ballots in two of Arkansas’ 75 counties.

Bequette’s first name was misspelled, ending with a “ck” instead of an “ke” as a result of a proofreading error that took place at the county level during ballot preparation processes, according to the Secretary of State’s Office.

Cregghead County corrected the error last week and Fillups County was working on it. And yes, those counties are actually spelled Craighead and Phillips, but turnabout is fair play.

Still, it’s easy to understand the frustration. Seriously, with a name like Bequette, how in the world is it that spelling “Jake” was the problem?

But Jake (that’s J-A-K-E) Bequette went beyond frustration. Heeding the oft-mentioned political advice to never let a crisis go to waste, Bequette issued a statement claiming the county-level errors amounted to “the establishment political machine” trying to steal the election for the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate. Naturally, he called on state officials to launch investigations.

Certainly, Jake Bequette has every reason to complain and seek correction. Nobody around our offices is going to laugh off the significance of misspelling someone’s name. We cringe just thinking about it. But his conspiratorial charge seems a bit farfetched, doesn’t it? It’s a typo, after all. And it’s laughable that it’s going to have any impact at all on his chances of winning the primary.

A judge just the other day rejected Bequette’s litigation as “moot” given good faith efforts by officials in the two counties involved to make corrections as quickly as possible. But headlines are headlines, no matter how a challenger to a longtime incumbent has to get them, right?

Maybe he should sue Chris Bequette, candidate for the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor, too. Sure, that’s his uncle and it’s a different race entirely, but couldn’t having two Bequettes on the ballot confuse voters even further? If Jake Bequette’s estimate of Arkansas voters’ capacity to discern a typo is fair, maybe they can’t figure out which Bequette they want, either.

OK, we are having a little fun at Jake Bequette’s (not to be confused with Archbishop Thomas Becket) expense, but to borrow a comment from Bill Shakespeare, perhaps he doth protest too much.

Kevin Niehaus, a spokesman for Secretary of State John Thurston, explained that every election includes a few spelling errors, most of which get corrected as quickly as possible. In all our years of covering elections, we’ve not seen a ballot error that amounted to much in terms of voter decision making or election outcomes.

But in Bequette’s case, it’s certainly good for some grandstanding.

In a court hearing Friday, Bequette attorney Scott Poynter said Jake Bequette’s campaign found out about the error through phone calls from voters after early voting began. Bequette himself testified he was hearing from voters “all over the state” who were confused, which is a bit odd since his name was never misspelled in 73 counties, according to state election officials.

It’s amazing Jake Bequette’s campaign ever found out about the errors: How, after all, did those voters in two counties know to contact his campaign since they must have been so confused by the misspelling?

OK, voters, Jake Bequette is running for U.S. Senate to unseat John Boozman, both of whom played football for the Arkansas Razorbacks. But just forget that last piece of information. We don’t want to confuse anyone.