Following up on Jeff’s post, today’s Arkansas “Democrat”-Gazette had an interesting piece in the Voices section regarding Mark Martin’s attacks on Pat O’Brien.
Long story short, in the wake of Autogate, O’Brien offered a seven-point plan for how he would change state-car usage at the Secretary of State’s office, basically calling for fewer cars, fewer miles driven, transparency in auto usage, and a way for the public to notify the appropriate persons if they suspected violations of O’Brien’s auto-use policies.
In response, Martin said that the plan sounded good to him, but that O’Brien was being a hypocrite in proposing such a plan while, at the same time, accepting $650/mo reimbursement for use of his personal vehicle as Pulaski County Circuit Clerk. After noting that O’Brien had consistently reported the $650/mo as income and paid taxes on it, the article fired off this little nugget:
Translation: I got yer “hypocrite” right here, holmes.
Though I don’t really expect an answer, at this point I have to ask any Martin supporters who happen across this blog: why? What about this guy suggests that he would be a good Secretary of State? Heck, what about him suggests that he would even be an adequate Secretary of State (which, let’s be honest, would still be an upgrade over Chuck Daniels)? He’s done nothing of consequence as a state legislator, he’s demonstrated that — despite voting on tax policy multiple times — he had little to no clue what the current state of Arkansas tax law was, and now he’s decided that his only chance of beating O’Brien (who actually has a record of success doing a job similar to what he would do as Sec. of State) is to (a) try to link O’Brien to the ignorant visceral anti-Obama sentiment that pervades this state and (b) hope that voters will focus on the mote in O’Brien’s eye while ignoring the beam in Martin’s.