Sen. Alan Clark (R-Lonsdale) saw his seniority stripped last year after fellow lawmakers determined his claims against Sen. Stephanie Flowers (D-Pine Bluff) were made-up and mean-spirited.
But on Wednesday, as the clock ticked down on the final week of the Arkansas legislative session, senators voted to let Clark off the hook, reinstating his seniority so he can claim dibs on committee assignments and chairmanships next session. The vote came after a similar attempt to vacate Clark’s punishment failed on March 29.
Busted for fraudulently claiming per diem expenses for a meeting he didn’t attend, Clark lashed out, taking to social media with odd threats about burning things down and slaying monsters. He also filed his own ethics complaint against Flowers, who had been mistakenly paid mileage for meetings she attended virtually. The mistake was a clerical one by Senate staff, but Clark refused to withdraw his complaint.
The Senate Ethics Committee found Clark’s attack on Flowers “spurious, frivolous and retaliatory.”
As with the March 29 attempt, it was Sen. Jimmy Hickey (R-Texarkana), who asked senators to vote to repeal Clark’s punishment.
When the issue came up last month, Flowers was justifiably outraged. “I deserve better than this and y’all ought to be better than this!” she told her colleagues, noting that Clark had never apologized to her for making a spurious complaint against her. She called him a “doggone scoundrel.”
Siding with the guilty white Republican man over the innocent and wronged Black Democratic woman is a horrible look, but we’ve come to expect nothing less from the Republican supermajority at the Arkansas Capitol.