MUMS THE WORD: Neither Secretary of State Mark Martin nor aide Alex Reed plan to say another word publicly about Reeds smear of Democratic county clerks.

  • MUM’S THE WORD: Neither Secretary of State Mark Martin nor aide Alex Reed plan to say another word publicly about Reed’s smear of Democratic county clerks.

One more comment on Alex Reed, the Republican attack dog in residence for Secretary of State Mark Martin, featured here for telling an El Dorado Republican meeting that Republicans needed to be elected county clerks because of all the illegal immigrants (Latinos are the focus of his unhappiness) getting registered to vote on the watch of Democratic county clerks. I sent him some followup questions today:

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Anything further to say today relative to the El Dorado talk?

Were you misquoted?

Were you taken out of context?

How?

Do you have proof of illegal immigrants are registered in Arkansas?

Do you have evidence that Democratic clerks are more likely to register illegals than Republican clerks?

If not, why did you suggest Republican clerks would be better than Democratic clerks on voter registration?

Why is your focus on Latino voters? Are they the only people who try to register illegally?

Mark Myers, another Republican message machine employee of the secretary of state’s office who moved onto the public teat after working for Martin’s campaign, replied for Reed:

You can keep hounding us for more follow-up, but the office does not comment on what our employees do on their personal time, unless it affects the health and safety of our employees and constituents or is in direct violation of office policy.

Alex will have no further comment on this

It seems to me that voter registration affects the office’s constituents and an employee’s statements about shortcomings of that effort, including suggestion of misfeasance of public office by others, cover a matter of public concern. Sorry. Mark Martin and his minions will control that message, thank you. Preferably someplace a reporter’s tape recorder isn’t running in the future.

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Being a Republican in public office means never having to say you’re sorry.

UPDATE: After much back-and-forth, this issues forth from Myers:

As I have also said to multiple media, Alex’s reported statements do not reflect the views of the office. To the extent some partisans want to make those statements a part of the office’s comments, then we refudiate [sic] them. If somebody took the statements to be the office’s position, then I apologize to them and assure them that is not the case.

Clerks are up in arms about the smear. Witness:

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