-My own entry was the congressman (the Hon. Jay Dickey) who always brought
his beautiful and beautifully behaved ashen-gray Weimaraner to interviews.
Her name was Romy, after the German actress Romy Schneider, although The
Honorable, being from Pine Bluff, Ark., where the real South begins,
pronounced it Rah-my.
I miss the dog.
-This entry came from an editorialist in upstate New York: "Our former Green
Party candidate for mayor rode in here on a Skateboard (and his platform)
consisted entirely of getting the city to legalize hemp. When we informed
him the mayor couldn't legally do that, we just kind of looked at each
other, said thank you, and he got up and left."
Well, he was concise, which beats some candidates I have known.
-At one interview, a candidate solemnly assured the assembled editorial
writers that he was not the Antichrist.
Hey, it's good to know these things.
-Then there was the candidate who, in the midst of his campaign, was
confronted by the news that the IRS was coming after him for several hundred
thousand dollars in unpaid taxes. He withdrew from the race, but then
re-entered it a few days later, explaining that, by not paying his taxes,
he'd saved his employees' jobs. Besides, he owed it to his fellow citizens
to offer them his expertise in business.
-One candidate running for a city council seat somewhere said he was doing
so because his rural property had been annexed 15 years ago and he was still
sore about it. Told that the city council couldn't un-annex land, he
replied: "Well, then, I don't want on there. I haven't got time for all them
meetings anyhow."
He got 20 percent of the vote.
-When asked the usual question at the end of an endorsement interview about
whether there was anything else the editorial writers needed to know about
him, one candidate replied, with considerable emphasis: "I have a closet
full of skeletons and I'm not sharing them with you!" Another pulled out a
scrapbook of newspaper clippings about his embezzlement conviction.
There was a post-endorsement story, too. It seems a county coroner was
unhappy when the paper chose not to endorse the candidate she wanted to
succeed her in office. Next day the editorial page editor - fellow by the
name of Mike - got a short note from her. It was marked Personal, and all it
said was: "Mike, no warm slab for you!"
This is the same lady who, at her political fund-raiser, served the wine via
an IV line.
Red or white, do you suppose? It may not have been the choicest of vintages,
but, as the connoisseurs say, surely its presumption amused.
Finally, there was the ingenious candidate for mayor of a little town who
came up with the idea of building a swimming pool above a pizza restaurant,
using the heat from the pizza oven to heat the pool. How efficient. He lost
but went on to open a hot dog and beer joint, which he named - steel
yourself - Frank 'n' Stein.
I may never again complain about the quality of candidates in Arkansas.