Attacks have begun in a so-far-so-quiet Arkansas Supreme Court election, according to two people who said Tuesday that they were the recipients of a faux telephone poll that spoke negatively about two candidates in the race.
The call, one of the recipients said, clearly favored a single candidate: David Sterling.
The Supreme Court campaign -- in which Justice Courtney Goodson is being challenged by Sterling and Court of Appeals Judge Kenneth Hixson -- has been low-key in the lead-up to the May 22 election. Expensive TV ads have yet to appear favoring, or excoriating, any of the candidates.
But over the weekend, Pulaski County Circuit Judge Morgan "Chip" Welch posted on Facebook that he'd been called by a "scam" masquerading as a political survey. A similar call was described by Columbia County Justice of the Peace Carolyn Terry.
Welch, who said he wanted to stay out of the nonpartisan race, declined to say which candidate the automated caller appeared to favor, but he told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on Tuesday that the call spread negative information about two of the candidates.
It wasn't clear where the call came from, Welch said.
Terry, a Republican from Magnolia, said it was not explicitly stated who paid for the call, but it was easy to infer from the content of the call which candidate was being promoted.
"It wasn't Kenneth Hixson and it wasn't Courtney Goodson," she said.
Reached Tuesday, Sterling said he didn't have anything to do with the calls, adding that his campaign has yet to spend money on TV, radio or telephone advertising.
"I don't know who they're targeting. They may be targeting me," Sterling said.
Both recipients described an automated voice -- Terry said it was a male voice -- asking if they were likely to vote in the election and which candidate they preferred. The voice then prompted them to press a button to indicate their choice.
"It told me all kinds of bad things about that candidate," Welch said, adding that the same thing happened when he pressed the option for another candidate in the race.
"It wasn't until I got to the third option that it seemed to think it was the right one," Welch said.
Asked what attacks were made about the pair of candidates, Welch paraphrased: "'This candidate has let rapists go free, this candidate has let murderers go free,' that kind of thing."
In a separate interview Tuesday, Terry described a similar line of attack being levied against Hixson in the call, accusing the appellate judge of letting criminals out of jail. She said she didn't remember what was said against Goodson, recalling only that "it just went on and on and on."
Of the three candidates, only Sterling has never served as a judge. He is the top attorney for the Department of Human Services.
Goodson's campaign did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
In a brief phone interview, Hixson said he had first heard about the call Monday, and that night at a campaign stop in Fort Smith, he said about 10 of the 50 people in attendance raised their hands to indicate they had received a similar call.
"I'm proud of my record, and I'd appreciate if he or she or it would not distort it," Hixson said. He promised not to levy similar attacks against "a sitting justice."
Neither Welch nor Terry said the attacks stuck with them.
Explaining that she normally just hangs up on so-called robocalls, Terry said she decided to listen to this one because she had recently met Hixson, was "impressed" with him and wanted to learn more. The call only left her not wanting to vote for Sterling, who she felt was behind it, she said.
"It just felt dirty to me," she said.
Welch also derided the call's tactics.
"I think it's deceptive when you try to pawn it off to the public as a poll," he said.
Goodson became the target of attack ads during her failed 2016 bid for chief justice, when the conservative Washington, D.C.-based Judicial Crisis Network ran ads against her. Such out-of-state spending, known as "dark money" because the groups do not have to report their donors as candidates do, has become common in recent state Supreme Court races.
The Judicial Crisis Network also became involved in the 2014 Republican primary for attorney general, running ads against Leslie Rutledge, who beat Sterling in that race and went on to win the general election.
Carrie Severino, the policy director of the Judicial Crisis Network, said Tuesday the group had yet to get involved in this year's Arkansas Supreme Court race, but may do so at a later point. She declined to say whom the group would support.
Metro on 04/11/2018