Word filtered out a few weeks ago that longtime Circuit Judge Dan Kemp of Mountain View might offer himself as a candidate for chief justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court.
Then in mid-October Kemp received three Freedom of Information requests from a private investigator in New York. The investigator sought any and all records of Kemp's disposition of duties as a circuit judge affecting paroles, probations, plea bargains and his office budget.
Since the Arkansas FOI law applies only to residents of the state, Kemp denied the request, understanding full well that a resident could easily be dispatched to make the same request and commence a broad, vague and yet ominous dragnet in search of something, anything, suitable for political exploitation.
That, tragically, is what elected judicial politics has become under the Citizens United case and with big-money special interests newly invigorated to install the judges they want to give them the law they want.
We need people to stand up to that kind of thing, which is why I write today about the rather brave candidacy of Circuit Judge Dan Kemp for chief justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court.
It's seems fair to speculate that the purpose of the FOI request was intimidation.
It seems fair to mention that Supreme Court Associate Justice Courtney Henry, wife of the politically hyperactive and super-rich class-action lawyer from Texarkana named John Goodson, had already announced for chief justice at the time Kemp fielded the investigative request.
And it seems relevant to mention what happened last year to Supreme Court candidate Tim Cullen.
He was opposing Robin Wynne, who now sits on the Supreme Court. Late in the campaign, a mystery group spent big money from undisclosed sources for creepy television commercials accusing Cullen of being soft on sexual offenders of children.
What Cullen had done--all in the wide world he had done--was get appointed by the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals to do a lawyer's duty and prepare an appeal brief for a convicted sex offender.
Kemp told me by phone Tuesday afternoon that he is not easily intimidated, but is highly competitive.
He said he chose to file as a candidate knowing full well what may face him, but assured that, whatever may happen to his reputation superficially, "my true character will be intact" when the race is over.
People tell me Kemp's character seems unassailable. I don't know him, and can't attest. But I see that he's an elder in his local Church of Christ. More to the point, I see that he got elected circuit judge in 1986 and has not drawn an opponent--nary a one--since.
Kemp said he began to consider running for chief justice in 2014, but decided against it. He said he reconsidered early this fall when he received encouragement from persons seeking a viable alternative to the Goodsons.
In the end, he said, he opted to run because he believes the integrity of the Arkansas judicial system has been harmed by recent events and needs to be restored.
"People have got to know that they're going to get a fair shake when they go into court," he said.
He said the Mike Maggio scandal in Conway points to the need for two new sets of procedural rules that the state Supreme Court has the power to impose.
As chief justice, Kemp said, he would begin the process of designing and implementing a rule outlining a clear procedure for judicial recusal in cases posing conflicts. And his second idea for a new rule would ban judges' acceptance of gifts from potentially interested parties, much in the way a new constitutional amendment bans gifts to legislators from lobbyists.
Naturally, I wondered if Kemp's concern for the state's judicial integrity extended to the current Supreme Court's odd, winding and internally contentious delay in deciding--or never deciding--the same-sex marriage appeal from Circuit Judge Chris Piazza's court.
"If what I've read in the press is true, then, yes, it's troubling," he said.
What has emerged from press accounts is that Goodson and others didn't want to rule on the case before the U.S. Supreme Court made the matter moot, and managed to use a series of procedural delays and intra-court squabbles to keep the case hanging.
But Kemp said, not surprisingly, that he doesn't intend to "go after" Goodson.
He said he will offer instead a campaign emphasizing his own personal integrity, his emphasis on restoring general judicial integrity and, if needed--as I suspect it will be--a vigorous defense of himself against whatever slime may be hurled his way by cowardly secret sources.
Actually, I've had people--not affiliated with Kemp, I should make clear--tell me that slime can be hurled both ways.
That's a spectacle I don't relish.
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John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, was inducted into the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame in 2014. Email him at [email protected]. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 11/12/2015