‘Extremist’ Holt? Well, depends on who’s asked
Posted on Sunday, July 2, 2006
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/159282/
In the race for the state’s top executive offices, Republicans portray the Democratic slate as “too liberal for Arkansas” and Democrats paint the Republicans as “extremists.”
In that mix, the GOP nominee for lieutenant governor, state Sen. Jim Holt of Springdale, is a key.
He’s the candidate most clearly marked — rightly or wrongly — as the extreme element of the Republican ticket, the link that Democrats hope will hamper GOP gubernatorial nominee Asa Hutchinson in his contest with Democrat Mike Beebe for governor.
Actually, candidates for governor run independently of lieutenant governor candidates, and at times the governor and lieutenant governor haven’t belonged to the same political party.
State Democratic Party Chairman Jason Willett of Jonesboro was first to call Holt “extremist,” tagging him that right after Holt won the nomination for Arkansas ’ second-highest executive office, the one from which the state’s past two governors sprang.
Some of Holt’s Senate colleagues would agree with the label. State Sen. Steve Bryles, DBlytheville, for example, said he considers Holt an extremist.
But other Senate colleagues declined to put that tag on Holt. Those included Jim Argue, DLittle Rock, president pro tempore of the Senate and chairman of the Education Committee; Jack Critcher, D-Batesville, who is in line to be president pro tempore in 2007 and 2008 and is chairman of the Committee on Public Health, Welfare and Labor; Percy Malone, D-Arkadelphia, the Democratic leader; Jim Luker, D-Wynne, vice chairman of the Judiciary Committee; Tracy Steele, D-North Little Rock; Shane Broadway, D-Bryant; Mary Anne Salmon, D-North Little Rock; and Barbara Horn, D-Foreman.
But two points about that: Senators cite “an unwritten rule” that one member of the Senate doesn’t publicly speak ill of another, a “rule” occasionally violated. Some senators who wouldn’t put “extremist” on Holt indicated that they didn’t necessarily mean it didn’t fit. “I disagree with him on a great number of issues,” Luker said. “I just don’t like the name calling,” Argue said. “I don’t question his sincerity. I just question his choices.” Horn described Holt “as an ultra ultraconservative,” but added, “as are others by conviction, I assume.” She declined to say who else she had in mind. Holt opponents and critics say they find him extremist for a handful of reasons:
THE ANTI-EVOLUTION BILL In 2001, Holt, then a House member, sponsored House Bill 2548. It would have required that when public schools refer to evolution that it be identified as an unproven theory. The bill would have prohibited using public funds to present as fact evolution-related information that the bill declared to be false or fraudulent. With that as background, some Holt critics say Holt wants to prevent science from being taught in public schools. Holt and others insisted that the aim of the bill was not to ban teaching evolution and substitute biblical creationism. The aim, they said, was to stop the dissemination of inaccurate information to schoolchildren in material distributed or endorsed by state agencies, school districts, museums, zoos, cities and counties.
Opponents argued that the bill cited as fraudulent only evolution-related items and so was an implicit attack on evolution and a promotion of creationism. Its passage, they said, would have made Arkansas a laughingstock. They pointed to 1981 when the state mandated equal treatment of creationism and evolution in schools in a law that was struck down in federal court.
How “extremist” was it ? It came within six votes of the 51 needed for passage in the 100-member House. A co-sponsor is the current chairman of the state Republican Party, Sen. Gilbert Baker of Conway. Another was Critcher, the Democrat who’s in line to be president pro tempore of the Senate for the next two years. Holt hasn’t offered anti-evolution legislation since 2001. “I am not saying that is over,” he said. He later added, “I am not threatening or anything like that. I am just saying I think it’s still something that needs to be looked at.”
ILLEGAL-ALIEN BILL Last year, Holt sponsored Senate Bill 206. It would have prohibited state services being extended to illegal aliens unless the services are mandated for them by the federal government. It also would have set up stricter identification requirements for voter registration. Gov. Mike Huckabee called his party colleague’s bill “inflammatory... race-baiting and demagoguery,” assertions Holt disputed. “The issue is not about color or racism. It is about a commitment to a country,” Holt said. Bryles, the senator who agreed that Holt is extremist, said Holt used illegal aliens as “a rallying cry” and proposed “to mistreat those people.”
Salmon, whose seat in the Senate chambers is beside Holt’s, said he seems to concentrate each session on some emotional issue like evolution or illegal immigration.
Holt said he’s not trying to exploit emotion. “I believe from every fabric of my being that [his legislation ] is the right thing to do,” he said.
Sen. Denny Altes, R-Fort Smith, co-sponsor of the evolution bill and the illegal-alien bill, said, “I don’t know that he is extreme. He is not crazy. He is right wing. We have people on the left wing in the Senate who are just as extreme as Jim Holt is on the right wing.”
Holt said “if somebody likes you, then you are an expert in the field. If they don’t like you, then you are a one-issue candidate.”
After last year’s legislative session, Holt said his “grass-roots network” was gearing up for a petition drive in hopes of qualifying an illegal-aliens measure for this year’s general election ballot. No drive materialized. He said it’s difficult to do while running for statewide office. He said people he thought would help didn’t. Now, he’s saying that as lieutenant governor he’d launch a drive to put the measure on the 2008 general election ballot if the 2007 Legislature doesn’t enact it first. He has also said that if the Legislature doesn’t enact such laws beforehand he’ll try to promote ballot measures to: Bar homosexuals from adopting children. Prohibit lobbyists from buying legislators, state officials and their employees even “a cup of coffee.”
SPENDING Although Senate Democratic leader Malone wouldn’t call Holt an extremist, he said that if the other senators voted as Holt does, the state couldn’t function and wouldn’t have a division of health, prisons or public schools.
Holt said some agencies would be “trimmed down quite a bit” but that “there is a need for government. I mean it is not like that I think all government is bad. I just think it is out of its jurisdictional bounds.”
The legislative record suggests that Holt’s voting has changed.
In 2001, he was recorded “not voting” on the appropriation for the Department of Health, but he voted for it in 2003 and 2005.
He voted against the appropriation for the Department of Correction in 2001, but for it in 2003 and 2005.
He voted for the public school fund appropriation in 2001 and 2003. He voted against it in the 2004 special session on education. But he voted for it again in the 2005 regular session and in the 2005 special session, although things he said beforehand could have given the impression that he wouldn’t. He had opposed having a special session, warning taxpayers to hold on to their wallets.
EDUCATION In the 2003 special session on education, Holt voted against a bill to consolidate school districts with fewer than 350 students. He voted against a bill to appropriate $ 40 million for pre-kindergarten programs. Bryles said Holt’s opposition to pre-kindergarten promotes “a backward agenda” when the state needs to produce educated and skilled workers. Holt has said he opposes pre-kindergarten because “children are not wards of the state.” Holt maintained that the state Supreme Court overstepped its jurisdictional bounds by reopening the state’s school-funding case. That led some to count him as “defiant” of the court’s order for Arkansas to adequately fund public schools. Two members of the court itself dissented from that ruling and said the court majority had overstepped its jurisdictional bounds.
Holt also said legislators weren’t happy that the court was attempting to dictate to the legislative branch and the executive branch. In that context, he said that when one branch controls everything it’s “tyranny.”
Argue has said Holt’s willingness to “defy the court” was reminiscent of Orval Faubus, who as governor a half-century ago interrupted a court-approved school desegregation plan in Little Rock.
Argue said defiance of the court in the school-funding case “would be absolutely the worst course of action by the Legislature.”
“The truth is our court has been very respectful of separation of powers and it has been restrained in its decisions,” he said.
In the April special session, Holt voted for a bill appropriating nearly $ 200 million more to the public schools. He said he did so because the bill included $ 3 million for districts with isolated schools and was among four bills that the Senate voted on at the same time. An appropriation doesn’t necessarily mean the money will be spent, he said.
TAXES Holt said Arkansas has the fourth-highest tax burden in the nation. He cited the Washington, D. C.-based Tax Foundation. But a foundation spokesman said the foundation hasn’t given the state any such ranking. The foundation said Arkansas has the 10 th-worst business climate in the nation.
Holt signed the Americans for Tax Reform pledge to “oppose and vote against any and all efforts to increase taxes,” according to the Washington, D. C., group’s Web site. So did two other Arkansas legislators — Republican state Rep. Mark Martin of Prairie Grove and Democratic state Sen. Bobby Glover of Carlisle — according to the site.
Holt and then-Rep. Russ Bennett, R-Lewisville, signed this pledge for 2003 and 2004.
But in 2001, Holt voted for a beer tax increase. It was for prekindergarten programs.
He has said he regrets that vote.
In his lieutenant governor campaign, he has said he’ll try to get a measure on the ballot to give voters power to decide on tax increases and some state spending increases, if the 2007 Legislature doesn’t enact such legislation on its own. He said state government has incrementally drifted left, raising taxes, and needs to “compromise incrementally back to the right direction” to cut taxes. During six years in the Legislature, Holt has introduced four bills to cut taxes. None cleared a committee.
WAGES In April, Holt was one of only three legislators who voted against bills raising the state’s minimum wage from $ 5. 15 to $ 6. 25 an hour. He said some of his supporters advised him to vote for it. Retired teacher Debbie Pelley of Jonesboro said she tried to convince Holt “his opponents would hammer him incessantly on this.” Political campaigns revolve around “sound bites,” she said, and it’s hard to explain a vote against the wage increase in a sound bite.
Holt said he told her he’s never voted for his own political gain.
“If you compromise to get there, you’ll compromise when you are there,” he said.
“I made the right vote, and I think I can defend it,” he said. “It is really up to the individual to negotiate with his employer what he is worth. It goes back to individual responsibility.”
He said if he gets into a debate over the minimum wage with his Nov. 7 general election opponent, Democrat Bill Halter of North Little Rock, “I’ll whip him every time.”
Holt has said he, his wife and their nine children live on his legislative salary and expense reimbursements. That was about $ 39, 000 last year, according to state records.
He voted against cost-of-living raises for state elected officials, including lawmakers, in 2001, 2003 and 2005.
In 2003, he said he’d propose a constitutional amendment to let voters decide whether legislators get raises. But he didn’t. He said he was advised that lawmakers wouldn’t put it on the ballot.
THE HOLT RECORD Although not a basis for calling him extreme, some say Holt has been an ineffective lawmaker. Sen. Paul Miller, D-Melbourne, who doesn’t count Holt as an extremist, said Holt votes his conscience. “You have to give him credit for that. Against all odds he will stick with what he believes in,” Miller said. Sen. Jimmy Jeffress, D-Crossett, called Holt “a good man and a well-principled man and a man of good morals,” adding, “but I don’t think he has been effective at all as a state senator. If he has been mainstream, how come he hasn’t been a more effective legislator ?”
During six years in the Legislature, Holt introduced 77 bills, 35 becoming law, including 29 appropriations.
The others: Act 1273 of 2001 authorized the governor to award the Governor’s Pro Bono Adoption Service Award to recognize attorneys providing adoption services on a volunteer basis. Act 1524 of 2001 allowed surviving spouses of war veterans, Pearl Harbor survivors and retired military members to keep and renew specialty license plates.
Act 1830 of 2001 provided additional procedures for notice and a hearing when unattended and abandoned vehicles and their contents are removed by law enforcement officers.
Act 1730 of 2003 required Arkansas’ political parties to disclose how they spend contributions and report the contributions more often. Act 2143 of 2005 levied additional penalties for violations involving the failure to yield the right of way that result in the injury, serious bodily injury or death of another person. Act 2287 of 2005 provided that mechanics’ and material-men’s liens may be challenged by declaratory judgment proceedings and standardized notice requirements for lien filings.
Holt said he hasn’t tried to pass many bills.
“I think most people would agree that we have enough laws,” he said.
He said his main purpose is to kill bad bills.
Among the bills he said he helped kill: The Huckabee-backed proposal to make illegal aliens eligible for cheaper in-state college tuition rates and state-funded scholarships.