People who don’t live up to their wedding vows aren’t normally trusted by the voters. That’s not a moral judgment on my part. That’s a political fact of life.
State Attorney General Dustin McDaniel, the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination for governor in 2014, admitted to “inappropriate” interaction with a Hot Springs women in 2011. McDaniel had re-married in 2009 following an earlier divorce.
I don’t see much need for speculation on this. This is serious damage. Whether its fatal damage or not depends entirely upon who challenges McDaniel in the primary and, if he survives that, who the Republicans nominate.
My first thought on the matter is that Asa Hutchinson’s chances just went up dramatically. I’d written in the newspaper earlier that he made enemies of both Mike Beebe and Bill Clinton, giving him too much baggage. I have to reconsider that now, in light of the fact that infidelity will take some of the appeal in east Arkansas off. The region’s voters will be less eager to hold up McDaniel as one of their own. At least they won’t hold him as high.
Hutchinson has a brother and a nephew who have famous had marital problems. OK. So what? Asa is famously happily married and, in his personal life, the most scandal-free politician in Arkansas.
