Now that’s just perfect

It’s Mark Darr again: He’s BAACK!

Thursday, February 27, 2014

AWHOLE herd of politicians, their aides, hangers-on and assorted others-a grand total of 32 at last count-is rushing to apply for a soon-to-be-available job at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. Its current lobbyist at the state Capitol is resigning at the end of this fiscal year, and the scramble to succeed Richard Hudson in that $202,000-a-year post is on. Innocent bystanders better stay out of the way or risk being trampled. Shades of the old Gold Rush.

But among all the candidates for the job as UA-F’s lobbyist-in-chief, one name stands out. Like something that doesn’t belong in a punch bowl. It’s that of the one and only (let’s hope) MARK DARR! Yes, the same Mark Darr who used to go by the purely titular name of The Honorable Mark Darr.

Well, sure, when you think about it, it was inevitable that his application be somewhere in this ever-growing stack of aspiring promoters, politics being politics and lobbying being lobbying and UA-F being UA-F.

That’s just perfect. The man would fit right in with all those at the top administrative level of the university who have been fired or forced out or still need to be. And he’s had experience, having just had to resign in disgrace as the state’s lieutenant governor.

Our decidedly former lite-gov says he’ll explain why he had to leave his last government post once the interview process gets under way. And his explanation will doubtless be interesting, too, indeed outrageous. Since before quitting public employ, Mr. Darr was fined a record $11,000 for 11 violations of state law by the state commission on ethics, which investigated his lack of them.

At this point, Mark Darr’s qualifications, if any, for the soon-to-be open job of representing the university “at the county, state and federal levels on issues of interest to higher education . . .” consists of writing “Woo Pig Sooie and Go HOGS Go!” in his letter of application. But no one can deny the man has a sense of irony, and it would take one to envision his ever being back on the taxpayers’ payroll. It’s only a sense of shame that he seems to lack.

What next? For the comic opera at UA-F never seems to end. How long before some ex-dignitary like Martha Shoffner, the former state treasurer, applies for a job as finance director of the university’s well-known, not to say notorious, Advancement Division? Because somehow these types always seem to find one another.

Editorial, Pages 14 on 02/27/2014