LITTLE ROCK — A Republican candidate for state representative in west Arkansas, Tommy Fite, is ineligible for election next Tuesday because of a 1984 misdemeanor conviction, Pulaski County Circuit Judge Collins Kilgore ruled Wednesday.
Kilgore cited the state constitution’s provision that states that anyone “convicted of embezzlement of public money, bribery, forgery or other infamous crime” shall be ineligible to serve in the General Assembly, or incapable of “holding any office or trust or profit in this state.”
He also cited an Arkansas Supreme Court ruling on Tuesday in which justices found that Greenwood Mayor Kenneth Edwards cannot seek re-election because he wasconvicted of stealing three campaign signs in 2009.
Before making his decision, Kilgore expressedreservations about reaching back to “something that happened 26 years ago,” despite the merits of the case.
Kilgore’s ruling cameafter arguments and testimony over parts of two days. Most of the hearing dealt with whether Fite, the GOP nominee for the House District 83 seat, had been properly served with the legal documents associated with the lawsuit contesting his eligibility.
Fite said he would pursue an appeal to the state’shigh court. “It’s too bad that elections can’t be decided by the voters instead of throwing mud in court,” he said after the ruling.
But Michael W. Grulkey of Alma, who filed the lawsuit last week after learning of Fite’s misdemeanor conviction in an Oct. 9 article in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, said the result of the litigation was “good government. I give that civics lecture a lot: Participate, stay involved,” Grulkey said.
The ruling came just days before Fite was to face Democrat Leslee Milam Post of Ozark. District 83 corresponds to sections of Crawford and Franklin counties.
Fite’s daughter Tawni Fite of Little Rock, called the collaboration between Grulkey and Post “dishonorable and cowardly. Leslee Post may steal the District 83 seat, but it will be unearned, and it certainly has an expiration date.”
Grulkey said he knows Post only through a local Rotary Club of which both are members and through a small amount of campaign business that she did through Grulkey’s printing company, which he said amounted to about $76 for some campaign cards.
Fite’s attorney, William Gregg Almand of Little Rock, spent much of the hearingTuesday and Wednesday unsuccessfully trying to get the lawsuit thrown out because Fite wasn’t formally served with the legal documents associated with the case.
Even though Kilgore decided against Almand’s argument, Grulkey had his attorney, C. Brian Meadors of Fort Smith, serve Fite with the papers once Fite showed up for court midway through Wednesday afternoon’s hearing to make the case “bulletproof on appeal.”
Once the attorneys got to the merits of the case, Almand argued that Fite’s conviction for Medicaid bribery wasn’t, in fact, bribery under the Arkansas Constitution.
Fite originally was charged with a felony. A first trial, which lasted three weeks, ended in a mistrial for Fite, who testified that the case had cost him “my business, my money and my marriage.”
Federal authorities then offered to let Fite plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge in exchange for not having to take him to trial a second time on the felony charge. Almand called that misdemeanor charge a “status” charge.
Fite was sentenced to three years’ probation after admitting that he paid $1,500 to a Louisiana pharmacist who purchased drugs from Artex Labs Inc., a relabeling company that bought generic drugs from manufacturers, then bottled and labeled the drugs for resale.
Fite told a federal judge at the time that the payments were to compensate the pharmacist for working with Artex salesmen.
But Meadors said no legal maneuvering could get around plain English. “Bribery is bribery, and the conviction was for bribery,” he said.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 10/28/2010