LITTLE ROCK — The leader of the group that failed earlier this month to gain enough signatures for a ballot measure denying certain public benefits for illegal aliens said Wednesday that Arkansas hasn’t heard the last from Secure Arkansas.
“We’ve been all called liars, racists and radical right and teabaggers. And the last thing they called us was dinosaurs,” Jeannie Burlsworth, Secure Arkansas’ chairman, told a lunchtime gathering of about 40 supporters in a banquet room at Little Rock’s Holiday Inn Presidential. “You can call me all these names if you want to, but just don’t call me a socialist.”
Burlsworth urged supporters to go door to door to campaign on issues like smaller government, lower taxes as well as illegal immigration.
“We’ve got to keep on fighting. Keep moving forward,” she said.
Burlsworth said Secretary of State Charlie Daniels’ office shouldn’t have turned over the group’s signatures to an accounting firm that she suggested was allied with liberal activist groups.
“To me, that was just unconstitutional,” Burlsworth said.
Before the meeting, Burlsworth told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that her organization is contemplating a lawsuit, but she wouldn’t discuss what it might contain or who would be named as defendants, citing the advice of her attorneys.
“When attorneys get involved, they put bridles on us,” she said.
In early July, the group claimed to have turned in about 750 signatures more than the 77,468 required to qualify the proposal for the Nov. 2 ballot.
But JPMS Cox PLLC of Little Rock, hired by Daniels to process the petition, only tallied 67,542 signatures. The firm has workedfor the office in 2004 and 2008, officials have said.
Since the total fell short, the accounting firm didn’t begin to verify which signatures were valid. And because the signatures were short, Secure Arkansas didn’t get an additional 30 days to collect more.
On Wednesday, Burlsworth said that JPMS Cox’s “association” with what she called liberal groups like the Arkansas Friendship Coalition and Just Communities of Arkansas was troubling.
“We don’t like that at all,” Burlsworth told supporters. “We’re not too crazy about that.”
JPMS audit manager ClayGlasgow said the company doesn’t comment on client matters.
Ruth Shepherd, executive director of Just Communities of Arkansas, scoffed at Burlsworth’s charges.
One of JPMS’ partners, David L. Mosley, is a former board member of her group, Shepherd said.
“Just because he’s a former board member?” Shepherd asked when informed of Secure Arkansas’ claims. “Absolutely not, that’s ridiculous.”
Steve Copley, chairman of the Arkansas Friendship Coalition, said he didn’t think the coalition had ever worked with JPMS.
Daniels’ office doesn’t have an immediate response to the charges, said spokesman Sandra McGrew.
When asked before themeeting how she explained the discrepancy between Secure Arkansas’ numbers and JPMS, Burlsworth said “our numbers, the secretary of state’s numbers and the accounting firm’s don’t jell.”
Burlsworth promised a “very interesting” 2011 legislative session, although she declined to say which lawmakers might support the group’s proposals. She referred to a liberal blog, Blue Arkansas, that said the group might be at work on a “radical profiling bill like the one in Arizona.”
“Go for it,” said one woman in the audience. “Let’s go,” said someone else.
Shortly after, the event’s keynote speaker said Secure Arkansas had focused on “the wrong issue” and that Arizona’s law was misguided and endangered civil liberties ofall Americans.
“Stop with fighting immigration and going out there and wasting your time,” said Mark Lerner, executive director of Constitutional Alliance Inc., a Mountain View-based group that opposes the federal Real ID Act of 2005 or any attempt by the federal government to use biometric measurements to track Americans.
Lerner said requiring states to digitize and sequentially number birth certificates would solve the illegal immigration problem. Such action also would limit federal power and prevent corporations and special-interest groups from controlling the finances and movements of Americans, he said.
Lerner said he was working with Secure Arkansas to develop legislation on the issue.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 9 on 07/22/2010