Mark Martin: Can’t Hit The Floor

Several readers have asked why I have not written anything about Republican Secretary of State Mark Martin with all his stumbles and fumbles. 

It’s simple: Martin is so incompetent that I could end up writing about him every day of the week.

As Secretary of State, Mark Martin is so bad he makes me long for the unethical days of Bill McCuen. 

The Democratic Party of Arkansas has done a fine job of bringing Martin’s glaring incompetence to light and received some good press in the process. 

John Brummett has a helpful column today that rounds up Martin’s past and most recent fumbles.  Here is an excerpt:

A quick catch-up: Martin preached responsible spending while he bought a taxpayer car and hired a couple of political pals for the state Board of Apportionment until Gov. Mike Beebe explained that he shouldn’t have. He lost an aide who said his office was trying to skirt the Freedom of Information law to excise potentially embarrassing disclosures, like this one: He spent $54,000 of our money so his staff could go to a retreat put on by Wal-Mart refugees at John Brown University on how to govern with values, as if he and his staff didn’t have any values to start with.

Now, still struggling with this values void, Martin announces the appointment of a 10-member advisory committee to hang around his office and help him run it with conservative ones — values, I mean.

Our two previous Secretaries of State, Democrats Sharon Priest and Charlie Daniels, both oversaw that office with professionalism and kept themselves and their staff out of the news. 

Mark Martin, on the other hand, is so incompetent he couldn’t hit the floor if he fell out of a chair.