The D-G reports that Josh Mahony, through an attorney, has finally broken his silence on his abrupt withdrawal from the race for Senate, just after the filing deadline had passed:
Mark Henry, an attorney in Fayetteville, confirmed Friday that he had been retained by Mahony to offer clarity to the Democratic Party about the circumstances of Mahony’s exit from the race.
“The family illness cited was not [to] himself,” Henry said.
Henry said he was not authorized to say more about the illness or who had it — other than that it was an “immediate” family member — and that he could not say when Mahony first found out about the illness.
Mahony was the only Democrat running against incumbent Republican Sen. Tom Cotton. Mahony’s surprise withdrawal was made without communication or warning to the party, and left Democrats in a lurch coming just three hours after the filing deadline had passed.
Cotton was going to cruise to victory over Mahony, but with no Democratic opponent on the ballot, Cotton can now devote campaign loot elsewhere. It’s also a black eye for the party if no candidate is on the ballot for the statewide office. And a bummer for voters who show up and wish to express their displeasure with the incumbent.
Mahony said he quit over a “family health concern” but then clammed up, refusing to speak to the media and deleting his social media accounts.
The reason for his departure is relevant for the Democratic Part of Arkansas, which has been exploring legal options for replacing him on the ballot. A candidate who leaves for health reasons can be replaced after the filing deadline; the case would be more murky if the issue involved a family member. In any case, the state Republican party has pledged to fight any effort to replace him.
It has been widely rumored that Mahony was in fact pressured to leave the race by Republican operatives who had oppo research against him. The party had already publicly gone after Mahony on shortcomings in his past campaign filings. A memo from Cotton’s campaign to supporters boasted that the campaign had uncovered “significant vulnerabilities in Mahony’s background” but chose to sit on the information until just after the filing deadline had passed.
Henry, Mahony’s attorney, told the D-G that Mahony hasn’t met with party leaders but is open to doing so, and that Mahony still supports the party in the 2020 elections. “We have no problems sitting down,” Henry said. However, Democratic Party chairman Michael John Gray said there had been little to no communication, and that Mahony had not responded to repeated requests for a conversation. Gray added that had the party been given even a few hours of warning before the deadline, an alternative candidate would have filed to run against Cotton.