|
|
"A comprehensive, collaborative elections resource."
|
A Former Globetrotter Wins Election by Globetrotter-Like Margin
|
|---|
| Parent(s) |
Race
|
| Contributor | Craverguy |
| Last Edited | Craverguy Nov 07, 2012 02:35pm |
| Logged |
0
|
| Category | News |
| Author | Lynn Zinser |
| News Date | Wednesday, November 7, 2012 07:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | In the pantheon of former athletes who have embarked on political careers, Fred Smith of Arkansas has carved himself a unique, particularly chaotic corner. Consider that Smith, a former Harlem Globetrotter known as Preacher, won his election to the Arkansas state legislature Tuesday night as a candidate from the Green Party with 100 percent of the vote, and that is only a small part of what makes the whole story so bizarre.
Smith, who played at Oral Roberts and for the Globetrotters in the 1990s, got 100 percent of the vote because a judge had ordered no votes for his opponent, the Democrat Hudson Hallum, could be counted. That was because in September Hallum pleaded guilty to election fraud for a scheme that involved buying and destroying absentee ballots.
Hallum only won the seat in that now-tainted special election because Smith, who had previously held it as a Democrat, had been forced to resign when he was convicted of theft for stealing money from a local school district in 2010. A judge later voided Smith’s conviction, but the Democratic Party successfully filed suit to keep him off the ballot for 2012 because the conviction had not been voided before the party’s deadline. So, the Green Party decided to make him its candidate. |
| Share |
|
|
2¢
|
|
| Article | Read Full Article |
|
| Date |
Category |
Headline |
Article |
Contributor |
|
|
