It was one year ago that we published our original “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profile of Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, who was elected with next to know qualifications other than being the former deputy counsel of Mike Huckabee. Her e-mail correspondence leaked from when she last worked for the state of Arkansas, where she would share racist jokes, make sexual comments alluding to an attraction to underage minors (“If there’s grass on the field, play ball!”), make fun of domestic abuse victims, and so on. Rutledge chalks all that up to just being good old “country talk”, though. She also was caught committing voter fraud by simultaneously voting in multiple states, and one of her first actions while in office was to fire two dozen attorneys at the state’s attorney general office including fifteen attorneys, some of whom she attended law school with.
Rutledge has used her post to push a socially conservative agenda, such as when she asked the Supreme Court to reconsider overturning an Arkansas state law that would have banned abortion at 12 weeks. The Supreme Court, of course, refused to revisit their decision.
Same sex marriage was also on Rutledge’s mind, as she incorrectly spent much of the summer of 2015 telling state officials to ignore the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Obergefell v. Hodges case, believing that a state law should trump the federal ruling (again, she’s partisan and underqualified in terms of law experience).
Rutledge’s term will last until 2018, so we’ll keep an eye on her for the time being.