(Jan. 25, 2021) Political staffer and former Arkansas first daughter Sarah Huckabee Sanders is running for governor of her native state, but there’s already a Republican candidate there who is better qualified, better funded, smarter, more personable, and more honest.
Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin has done a lot more in his career than tell fibs for a president, work on failed presidential campaigns, and grow up with one’s father as governor. Indeed, no matter who runs against Griffin, it’s hard to imagine anyone with experience, skills, and judgment better suited for the job than Griffin’s.
A colonel in the Army Reserve who served in Mosul, Iraq, Griffin is a former congressman, former U.S. attorney, and former top presidential aide with graduate degrees from Tulane (law) and the U.S. Army War College (master’s) after graduating from Arkansas’s Hendrix College. His list of charitable board service is long, and his Arkansas roots five generations old. He’s a solid conservative pushing a bold plan to phase out the state income tax, with a record both in Congress and in Arkansas of delivering constructive, conservative results.
I’ve watched Griffin’s career since he graduated from Tulane Law School in 1994, I consulted his expertise when I worked for the right-leaning Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in 1997, and I admired his priorities years later as he relinquished a promising career in Congress because he didn’t want to be away so much from his young family in Arkansas. He has always been refreshingly approachable and also refreshingly transparent. He has sort of a guileless ambition: He wants to do big things and wants to be an important voice, but he wears the ambition lightly, without subterfuge or cynicism.
His attitude is that of someone asking others to join him on an adventure to do great things. If you don’t, it’s no big deal, but if you do, well, heck, it’s gonna be a whirlwind of hard-working fun….
[The full column is at this link.]
