An effort by Johnson County residents to get an alcohol sales question on the November ballot has drawn opposition from an organization bankrolled by liquor-store owners in neighboring Conway County.
"This is our community. This is where we live," said Susan Edens, spokesman for Keep Our Dollars in Johnson County. "To have so much pressure exerted from an outside force is really frustrating."
Edens said she is part of a group that wants to try to make Johnson County "wet" as a way to boost the economy and make the county a more fun place to live by inspiring events such as festivals and by drawing more restaurants.
The group needs 5,181 signatures on petitions to get the question on the Nov. 8 general election ballot. As of Thursday, the group had collected more than 3,500 signatures. Edens said the goal of the Keep Our Dollars in Johnson County group is to have enough signatures by July 1.
Edens said an opposition organization -- the Stand Strong, Stay Dry, Be Safe Committee -- has bought billboard space on Interstate 40. Young people wearing sandwich-board signs bearing the Stand Strong message have appeared periodically around Clarksville. Stand Strong ads have started playing on television, residents have been receiving fliers in the mail, and in the past couple of weeks they have been getting phone calls from the organization opposing the petition drive.
One of the Stand Strong group's fliers posted on the Keep Our Dollars in Johnson County Facebook page urged residents to "Decline to Sign" the petition. It cautioned that if the person signed, "your name is in the public record."
The flier comments on the presence of canvassers from Blueprint Action LLC. It said the canvassers were promoting the sale of alcohol and urged residents to "Tell Blueprint Action to stop sending these strangers onto your private property to knock on your door."
Edens said many people in the county told her they have become so annoyed with the opposition's campaign that they decided to sign the petition even though they opposed the sale of alcohol.
Edens' group, with a $40,000 donation from Wal-Mart, hired Blueprint Action, of Denver, to conduct the canvassing. Edens said she didn't think local volunteers would be able to complete the canvassing job in time to get the question on the November ballot.
Wal-Mart spokesman Anne Hatfield said the company granted Keep Our Dollars in Johnson County's request for help because alcohol sales would better serve Wal-Mart customers in Johnson County, giving them more choices and making it more convenient for them because they wouldn't have to drive to other counties to buy alcohol.
"If our customers are heard and the law is changed, we will offer our customers an assortment of beer and small farm wine," Hatfield said in an email.
Ethics Commission records show that Wal-Mart also contributed money to other alcohol-petition drives this year. It gave $40,000 to Keep Our Dollars in Independence [County], $30,000 to Vote for Growth in Little River [County], $30,000 to Keep Revenue in Randolph County and $10,000 to Growth for Farmington.
In each case but Farmington, which didn't list any expenditures in its financial reports, all three counties hired Blueprint Action to do the petition canvassing for the amount Wal-Mart contributed. Hatfield wrote that the individual committees hired the signature-gathering firm.
The Stand Strong, Stay Dry, Be Safe Committee was established, according to a document filed with the Ethics Commission, "to oppose the qualification and passage of local option ballot question to permit the sale and manufacture of alcoholic beverages in Johnson County."
The Local-Option Ballot Question Statement of Organization filed with the commission listed the address of the committee as a post office box in Lamar, which is in Johnson County. It listed the chairman as Charles Bosley with the address of the Lamar post office box.
Bosley is the owner of Blackwell Liquor at 10 Fish Lake Road, which is in Conway County.
The store's address and phone number were listed in a 2014 Ethics Commission financial report as the location of the Conway County Legal Beverage Association Action Fund that worked to defeat a ballot question to allow alcohol sales in Faulkner County.
Bryant Adams, spokesman for the Stand Strong committee, said the Conway County Legal Beverage Association is a group of liquor-store owners in Conway County. He said the group is opposing the Johnson County petition effort to protect its business interests.
Edens said she believes the liquor-store owners in Conway County feel threatened that Clarksville will capture a lot of business from I-40. She said Clarksville has three exits on I-40 that are easier to enter and exit than others in the area.
In a March 14 financial report filed with the Ethics Commission, a group called the Share Committee, with an address in Russellville, listed that it had received $20,000 in contributions from the Conway County Legal Beverage Association in three installments Feb. 9, 18 and 19.
In the same report, the Share Committee listed $18,000 in expenditures it made in five installments to the Stand Strong, Stay Dry, Be Safe Committee on Feb. 9, 11, 19, 22 and 23.
The Stand Strong committee listed in its March 14 financial report to the Ethics Commission that it received the $18,000 in contributions from the Share Committee and spent $17,005.19 of it. Among the expenditures, $9,198.20 was used on direct mail, $3,156.48 on signs, $1,800 on newspaper advertising, $1,775 on billboards and $789.43 on radio production.
State Desk on 04/10/2016