The Bottom Line: Honesty may actually be the best policy, but the illusion of it often wins the day

Mark Twain observed in 1897: “There are people who think that honesty is always the best policy. This is a superstition. There are times when the appearance of it is worth six of it.”

One suspects he was writing about Fort Smith politics.

It has long been accepted local dogma that you don’t have to be honest with all the people. You only have to convince more of them that you believe what you say than to actually listen to yourself with a critical ear. This in a city where fewer than one-fifth of eligible voters usually bother to show up at the polls.

We have a crucial election in November. The mayoral race will generate the noise and the headlines. The real power, however, sits with the Board of Directors. That is where the fight to break the long-running cabal must be focused.

For years I howled about the “Gang of Nine” -- a tight circle of families and individuals who have steered the day-to-day operations of Fort Smith since the early 1970s. Those inside the circle have benefitted handsomely for decades. Time and circumstances have probably reduced the core group to six, but the structure remains intact. These are the power brokers. Call them what they are now: the GOBs — the Good Ol’ Boys.

I think the core group is down to six members at this point. Despite what you have been told, there is very little honor among thieves.

Their operating principle is simple. Unless one or more of them stands to gain -- directly or indirectly -- from a municipal project, the project is not considered particularly important. The absolute priority has always been protecting the majority on the Board of Directors.

For most of the past fifty years it has functioned as a reliable 5-2 or 4-3 machine, with one vote occasionally flipped to create the appearance of independence when someone needed a temporary image boost before an election.

We lived through the Carl Geffken years. He made decisions well outside the purview of the City Council and mayor, largely because of how carefully he was handled by the people who mattered. That included the disastrous DEI hire of Nathaniel Clark as his “military-focused” police chief -- a move designed to appease a handful of like-minded leftists after some ill-informed “racist” jokes by the previous chief.

Clark left after a few years with his tail between his legs, carrying the same problems that had driven him from earlier jobs. He lasted less than two years in his next post in Georgia.

I tried to warn the city about both men. It took a hot-mic moment for one and the past catching up to the other before either became a non-issue.

Remember the crane that toppled at the P Street treatment plant and nearly killed someone? Geffken covered it up so thoroughly that some sitting directors never even knew the accident had happened. I remember.

Remember Geffken working the consent decree behind the scenes while the city simply grew another day older and deeper in debt? I remember.

Remember when he agreed to sit down with us or an interview and then cancelled at the last minute once I insisted on recording it? I remember.

Remember the police chief who refused to let officers participate in the Relay for Life torch run on the clock, then turned around and organized a basketball team to play exhibitions at junior high schools on the city’s dime? I remember.

Those are only a few examples among dozens. Proper vetting would have kept both men from ever drawing a cent from our coffers. In one case, a man sat on his backside drawing a full salary for a year while doing essentially nothing.

Do you honestly believe that arrangement wasn’t blessed by the GOBs? Of course it was.

November offers a rare chance to disrupt the process. For the first time in a generation there is actual competition in a few races. Obstacles remain. One city director drew no opposition at all -- which has been the norm. Serious threats have a way of being “convinced” not to run too hard.

That same director voted last week to hire a lame-duck city administrator who iswho is a carbon copy of his predecessor. Before that vote, I might have lived with the unopposed result. Now I regret I have no opportunity to register my displeasure at the ballot box.

I’ll give one mayoral candidate her due: she announced early and surrendered any claim to her Board seat in an all-or-nothing bid. Another wants the mayor’s office while keeping his Board seat in his back pocket just in case the GOBs’ plans go sideways in November.

The three candidates who would actually make decent mayors are likely to split the reform-minded vote and allow the favored son to coast in -- the same dynamic that sank the last mayoral election in New York City (Thanks, Curtis Sliwa.)

Vote however you like. If the fix isn’t already in for November, the entire process simply starts over again on January 1, 2027.

As Yakov Smirnoff used to say: "What a country!".