The Truth In Arkansas Politics

What’s this—a candidate for attorney general who wants to keep candidates like himself from accepting campaign donations from public utilities? Talk about acting against his own financial interest. . . and merely because the attorney general is bound by law (and, we hope, conscience) to represent the consumers against the utilities in rate cases.
Gunner DeLay clearly has some new and strange ideas. He’s a Republican, which may explain it. The former state senator from Fort Smith clearly doesn’t know how things are done in this state, and have been done for years. When it comes to choosing between an abstract principle and real money, cold cash has long held the advantage.
The Democratic candidates don’t seem to have any big problem taking money from the utilities. What conflict of interest?
Taking the money isn’t going to affect how they deal with the utilities, or so they assure the public. There’s something unsettling about folks so sure of their ethical probity that they don’t mind being led into temptation. But what th’ heck, this is the kind of arrangement that’s been accepted for so long in Arkansas politics—the way the one-party system used to be—that it sounds strange even to hear a candidate question it.
Imagine: putting principle before money. What kind of politician can this DeLay fellow be?
It’ll be interesting to see how a candidate for attorney general with such strange new ideas fares as the campaign heats up. Choosing an ethical principle over a campaign contribution? We all know Arkansas politics has changed over the years, but has it changed that much?