Campbell’s political soup

Riff Raff, by Michael Tilley
[email protected]

Republican leadership in Arkansas this week sought to expose Matt Campbell as a cheater who, while working at his taxpayer-supported job at the Arkansas Supreme Court, was allegedly researching, writing and posting damaging stories about the administration of Arkansas Secretary of State Mark Martin.

Campbell, Kind Readers should know, is one of them pesky liberals. Martin is a Republican who was swept into the office by a great mass of moderate Arkansas Democrats and motivated Arkansas Republicans who were eager to let the world know of their distaste for Obama, Pelosi and Reid.

The early results of FOIA requests by the Republican leadership in Arkansas to secure e-mail and other work activity of Campbell has proven nothing.

Whereas, the FOIA requests of Campbell have exposed numerous and troubling problems within the office of Martin. A lack of records on use of state vehicles, payroll records that place office employees in two places at one time and hiring of consultants with financial ties back to a top Martin employee are just a few of the items exposed by Campbell. And that doesn’t include a $54,000 contract — plus expenses — for a few days of employee training from the Soderquist Center in Northwest Arkansas. Also, we, the public, have not been able to ascertain if a spokeswoman for Martin was working on state time when she espoused partisan political views on FOX News.

We may also learn in the coming days that several members of Martin’s staff post partisan political messages on twitter and Facebook during working hours. To be sure, such revelations will not come from FOIA requests made by the Republican leadership in Arkansas.

The move by Republican leadership in Arkansas against Campbell essentially forced Campbell to pull the plug on his “Blue Hog Report” website. This follows the Richard Nixon/Bill Clinton philosophy: If you can’t take the heat, remove or disparage the heat.

This move by the Republican leadership in Arkansas was given credibility by mainstream media reports which essentially wanted to know if Campbell had yet to stop beating his wife. The reports did more to question Campbell than the Republican leadership in Arkansas.

It is clear the Republican leadership in Arkansas intended to kill the messenger. However, they fail to realize there is no one messenger, and the messengers eventually win. This episode will likely prove nothing more than an asterisk in Arkansas history, but it is important we all learn from this experience; we learn the benefits of principled journalism; we learn the concepts of investigative integrity; and we learn that the politics of the moment is no match for the honesty of historic reflection.

I’m confident the next 2-3 years will prove seismic in the transition between journalism tied to ink and subscriptions and the journalism tied to links and collaborations. To that point, any political party attempting to kill the messenger of the future, will by its own actions suppress the broadcast of its future messages.

Certainly, Campbell’s weak point was, and is, he is a state employee who manages a partisan website. Some may think it tempting for The City Wire, other relatively nascent online media outlets and citizen bloggers to believe we are safe from the Republican leadership in Arkansas or other targets who would prefer to kill the messenger than respond to the message. But that would be to ignore what is a clear warning. If the Republican leadership in Arkansas can spike Campbell — even if it proves to be temporary — they and others may come after the rest of us who do not have the financial resources and political connections enjoyed by newspapers, TV stations and other traditional news sources.

To prove their move was not an attempt to intimidate and silence Campbell, the Republican leadership in Arkansas said other media members had written negative things about Republicans and the GOP didn’t do anything to them. But that’s somewhat less than a half-truth. Closer to a very-low-percentage-truth, really. No other member of the established and respected traditional media in Arkansas has come close to pointing out the obvious and long-list of deficiencies in Martin’s office. To compare Campbell’s reporting about Martin’s ineptitude and/or malfeasance to the traditional media is to compare something that exists to Santa Claus. Furthermore, most reporting by the traditional media on Martin’s office has followed Campbell’s investigative stories.

Also, Republican leadership in Arkansas has yet to fully explain their meeting with Martin and his top lieutenants a day before the Republican leadership in Arkansas began its FOIA campaign against Campbell.

This essay is not written only to chastise the Republican leadership in Arkansas. As a libertarian with a conservative bent, this is a request for a personnel or philosophy change in the Republican leadership in Arkansas. After November 2010, it was my hope Republican leadership in Arkansas would take advantage of their largely unearned historic gains and provide the type of common sense down-the-political-middle leadership to which most Arkansans gravitate and with which Gov. Mike Beebe has practiced to become the most popular governor in modern state history.

Unfortunately, the Republican leadership in Arkansas decided to morph into the nonsensical divide-and-conquer political organization one might recognize in Washington D.C. The Republican leadership in Arkansas wholly and, possibly, fatally forgot that Republican gains in Arkansas had everything to do with distrust of Democrats and nothing to do with trust of Republicans.

Republican leadership in Arkansas that will succeed would have come closer to encouraging Martin to get his house in order instead of attempting to turn the lights off at Campbell’s house.