The Hempstead County Republican Party's annual Lincoln Day Dinner took place in Hempstead Hall Monday evening and at center stage was Leslie Rutledge, the twice-elected incumbent Attorney General now running for Lieutenant Governor.
Introduced by Hope City Board of Directors member Mark Ross who said at the beginning of his speech, "It's my honor to introduce this young lady," Rutledge came to the podium smiling. "Well, thank you, Mark, so much for that kind introduction. And perhaps the best part of it was when you said young," she said.
She said it was good to be in the county again, having been here many times. She also mentioned the other Republican officials and candidates present. "It's great to be joined by other elected officials such as my dear friend, Representative Danny Watson, and soon to be elected officials, Senator-elect, Steve Crowell and his wife. So thank you all so much for your leadership and [i] look forward to working with you in the state legislature.
"Well, you all have seen me perhaps on television more than you do in person and if you have to probably thinking to yourself, Wow, she's a lot taller on TV than she is in person. And I sure am. But when you leave here, what I want you know about me is that I'm a Christian pro-life, gun-carrying conservative mama," Rutledge said.
Rutledge then described how, when she was campaigning as a single woman for attorney general, members of her audiences would ask her whether she'd gotten married yet. "I'd have to say no, but God's putting in my path. He's gonna have to make another pass, because I'm missing the first go round. And sure enough, God did, because God does things on His time, not on my time.
Rutledge said that she met Boyce after campaigning in December 2013 at the State Farm Bureau convention when she gave her card to a man standing in the Capitol Hotel lobby and asked him for his vote then proceeded upstairs to join another campaign gathering. "I get to this event that first--Susan Hutchinson, she wasn't our First Lady yet--she was hosting for her husband's campaign this lady's tea, and I see my friends were working the desk and I said, 'Ladies, we're a bunch of fools. There's a thousand men across the street. We're over here having tea with a bunch of women.' Not knowing that I had just met my future husband. So if you all have a daughter and granddaughter and niece, or maybe even an ex- wife that you're trying to offload from your payroll, send her to Farm Bureau. For $35, she's going to get a catfish dinner and a husband."
She cited the accomplishments of being Arkansas' first woman attorney general and first Republican attorney general and the first Arkansas constitutional officer holder to give birth. "In 2018, when I gave birth to our daughter, Julianna Carol, I knew when I saw that little face for the first time, exactly how much God loves us. And it has made me a better person, it's made me a better Christian. It's made me a better attorney general. And with you all's help, it's going to make me a better lieutenant governor for the great state of Arkansas."
Turning to her platform, Rutledge said she was sick of seeing Arkansas at the bottom of so many indexes for quality of life. She said she wanted to see Arkansas at number one for cutting taxes ("It's time and it's past time to permanently eliminate the individual income taxes in the state of Arkansas as well.") and for education. She says she wants to allow parents more choices in how their children are educated, because, as her teacher mother told her, all students learn differently. She cited the case of her brother and sister-in-laws two children, the girl making good grades in public school and the boy "on the autism spectrum," needing different modes of teaching despite "living under the same roof." "He was not flourishing in public schools," Rutledge said. "But once they were Be able to homeschool him and find someone that can help help him learn how he learned he began to flourish, and he is flourishing to this day."
She named school safety as a high priority, saying families thinking of moving to Arkansas look first at a location's quality of schools and then its crime rate. She brought up her service on Governor Asa Hutchinson's School Safety Commision over the past weeks and its recommendations to schools. "I'm going to be working with these legislators so that way, we can find the dollars to help those schools provide what they need to ensure that those children are safe every single day," she said.
Rutledge called for "more alternative sentencing courts" as a way of dealing with the results of drugs being used and dealt in the state. "We look at our crime rate in Arkansas. And we look at drug addiction, and the amount of crime that has occurred either because of the drug addiction, they were under the influence. Or they were manufacturing methamphetamine. Now we're introducing fentanyl into it. A couple of numbers for you. In 1970, we had 1,370 folks in the Arkansas State Penitentiary. Now that number is about 17 to 18,000 people. We can't continue to grow with this exponential rate." She acknowledged that 'dangerous criminals" would still have to be locked up but that "more resources should be put into alternative sentencing courts, but that we should "not lean on government for everything." She named the John 3:15 ministry as a group to emulate, because it can "remind men who are battling addiction that they have something so much greater to live for, and that God has a better plan for them. And we will lower that recidivism rate when we start focusing not just on saving money, but on saving minds."
Rutledge said she had visited the southern border of Texas and was readying to attend a briefing by federal agencies with a group of other state attorneys general when it was learned, Rutledge said, "the Biden administration pulled those officials who were supposed to get these attorneys general a briefing. Nonetheless, Texas Department of Public Safety, gave us a tour of the border and I saw firsthand and heard from those officials firsthand the challenges that we face."
Among these challenges, Rutledge said, is fentanyl from below-the-border cartels, coming up the interstate. "It's coming to Arkansas and certainly those of you all who live right here on I-30. It's less than a day's drive from Little Rock. And so certainly less than a day's drive from Hope to the southern border. And those cartels are shoving that fentanyl right up 30 and across on 40. Within a week that I had traveled to the southern border for this briefing, an individual was arrested outside of Memphis who had presumably come up I-30 and then across on 40 with enough fentanyl, which is a very small amount, but enough to kill the entire population of the state of Arkansas." Protection against fentanyl is the reason the U.S. needs to better track those coming across the southern border, she said. "We want people to come to the United States but we want them to come in the light of day and not the dark at night."
Next, Rutledge mentioned working with Arkansas police to help train them and seeing them come to Attorney Generals' conferences for law enforcement." She also mentioned a more somber way that she interacts with officers' families. "In the last eight years, I've attended every funeral of every officer in the state of Arkansas, who was killed in the line of duty. I have cried with those families. I have prayed with each and every one of them. From the daddy in Hot Springs who stood by his son's casket, to little TJ over in West Helena, who I looked in the eye when I gave him a challenge coin and I reminded him his daddy died a hero. And so to these people that tell us that we need to defund the police. I say no, no, no. Not in Arkansas. We don't defund the police. We defend the police in the state of Arkansas." She said that her office has sent $20 million to police from funds won in lawsuits.
She said her office is a busy one, its staff of 180 working "from 13 to 1,500 cases a day ongoing." She cited work done last Monday presenting Arkansas in the US Supreme Court against a Delaware state policy of keeping unclaimed funds she says belong to Arkansans who used a cash transaction service headquartered in the state, pointing out that Delaware is Biden's home state. Then her office hosted a state law enforcement summit Tuesday, gave a press conference later in the week "talking about how we have saved taxpayer monies and gone after those who have taken advantage of Arkansans. We have had a yet another record breaking year in our Medicaid Fraud Division."
She said she wanted Arkansas to be viewed by other Americans as the state that defended rights, touting her involvement on behalf of "the florist in Washington State, the cake-baker in Colorado and the t-shirt-maker in Kentucky." Why? "Because I know they're going to go after their religious liberty rights. It's just a matter of time before they come after our rights right here in Hope, Arkansas."
Rutledge asked whether there were any "friends of the Second Amendment in this crowd," and received raised hands and applause. She told a story about her grandfather, a man who died when Rutledge was one year old, owning about 50 guns and seeing a photo of him posing near a Christmas tree with members of his family. In the picture, his large family is included but "you can still count on his wall 26 firearms. So it was a genetic to me to be as pro-Second Amendment as I am." She said recently the NRA, whose work she said the attendees should be thankful for, had chosen her to represent their case against New York Attorney Letitia James' who two years ago, Rutledge said, "started going after the NRA." Of all the 26 Republican Attorneys General at the time, the NRA chose her, "because they know I will protect them." Rutledge said.
Rutledge then said when she ran for Attorney General in 2014 she promised she would wake up every day thinking of what to sue President Barack Obama for. "And we sure did. We had victories, whether it was the Waters of the U.S. Rule, the Department of Labor's Overtime Rule, the so-called Clean Power Plan." She said she had to get up even earlier now to sue the Biden administration against whom she was filed over 100 lawsuits.
Against Biden, she said, she'd filed suits "on environmental issues, such as the cancellation of the Keystone pipeline, the executive order canceling all new oil and gas leases on federal lands. Again we're back with the waters of the U.S. and other clean water rules by the Biden administration. She also said she'd stood up with other states to successfully contest Biden administration mandates of the COVID vaccination in court.
"And most recently, and even though we're on a beautiful college campus, I think it's not only painfully unfair, but it's against the law for the president united states to issue an executive order, wiping out canceling student loan debt and putting it on the backs of hard working men and women," she said.
Continuing on her stance against the Biden administration's move to forgive up to $20,000 in student load debt, Rutledge said, "I've long been a proponent of having more workforce development in our high schools so that way we can have young people leaving high school going directly into the workforce. So they can be a plumber, electrician, machinist and nurse What this will do if the President is successful is saddle each and every one of those individuals with a debt and a loan that they never took out. So to every one who's taken out a college loan, I encourage you to do what I did. Pay it back."
"We're not simply reacting to this liberal woke left agenda. We're being very proactive in Arkansas. And I want to commend our legislators, and our legislators that are here tonight. And Representative Watson, for working on these issues over the last couple of years, some of the laws that we've passed are proactive in the face of questions and issues most of us didn't even know existed. Now we're having to pass laws to prevent," Rutledge said, explaining that the SAFE Act would safeguard minors against being prescribed gender altering drugs and procedures.
For passing the law, Rutledge said Arkansas is facing a lawsuit. "Those suing us are ages 16,15 and nine years old. This issue is about protecting children. And making sure that in Arkansas, we always do everything we can to protect children. These medications and procedures that are being pushed for propaganda, and liberal woke left media have been outlawed in Europe." she added.
Rutledge also said she would not abide what she calls "the liberal attack on womens' sports." That's why, she said, "we authored and we passed this last legislative session [a bill] called the Girls Act, and it quite simply says that we will not allow biological males to play in all female sports in the state of Arkansas."
Still, Rutledge said when she looks back on her time as Attorney General, "the most incredible moment came on June 24, 2022. On that day, I signed a certification in accordance with the law in Arkansas that we hit past that said that yes, I as the attorney general recognized that the Supreme Court in the United States had in fact overturn Roe vs. Wade and that our trigger law banning abortion except to save the life of a mother would go into effect." She expressed pride in Arkansas being deemed "the most pro-life state in the United States of America."
She said she also took pride that as Attorney General, a picture of a woman is finally seen along the hallway with all the pictures of past Attorneys General and one will follow, if she's elected, along the row of photos of Arkansas Lieutenant Governors. "And you can imagine what that looks like to a young child. It looks the same. Except for the very last picture right now will be her mom's picture. And that's not just for Julianna, that's for all little girls." She added that if Sarah Huckabee Sanders is elected governor, it would be the first time in U.S. history two women would have held those two offices in the same state.
In closing, Rutledge said, "we've accomplished so much, but we've got lots more to do. And that's why as your Lieutenant Governor, I want to be the economic ambassador for the state of Arkansas. I want to make sure that we're bringing more jobs here to southwest Arkansas, and we're encouraging Arkansans to grow and expand their businesses, that we are recruiting companies from Texas, recruiting companies from Oklahoma, from California or Minnesota, or across the country to come right here to Arkansas, because we're going to have great schools, low crime rate, low taxes and incredible Constitutional Rights that are being protected and fought for every single day. Thank you all so much."
After the event ended, Rutledge was asked whether her office would be releasing publicly a set of policies governing Arkansas prosecutors choices in taking on cases resulting from charges for violation of Arkansas' trigger ban against abortion. "Prosecutors are elected individually, and so they're going to have to make that determination whether or not a crime has in fact occurred. Those are really fact-specific decisions,.and that's going to be a decision if a legislature wants to go further on it or the prosecutor coordinator's office."
GOP District Chair Eddie Arnold speaks with Hempstead County GOP Committee Chair.
Ed Flagg calls the auction.
The flyer advertising the evening's guest speaker
The evening's program.
Leslie Rutledge takes the podium.
Silent auction items.
Hempstead County GOP Committee Chairman Troy Lerew
Veterans are welcomed to the front to be saluted.
Veterans gather up front to be saluted.
