Pakko begins ‘longshot’ campaign

Steve Brawner Arkansas Commentary

As chairman of the Libertarian Party of Arkansas since 2015, Dr. Michael Pakko has helped a lot of candidates run long-shot campaigns. This election season, for the first time, he’s the long shot.

Pakko is a candidate for state treasurer, the only statewide office on the Arkansas ballot this year.

“Well, I figured it was time,” he said. “The circumstances of this particular race, it just felt almost like a calling to me.”

The treasurer’s office basically serves as Arkansas state government’s “bank.” According to its website, it accepts more than $70 million each day from various sources and credits them to the appropriate accounts. It also is responsible for a $9 billion investment portfolio, though it does so under strict oversight by the state Board of Finance chaired by the governor.

The office requires a special election because the elected treasurer, Mark Lowery, died last year at age 66. Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders appointed former Department of Finance and Administration Director Larry Walther to serve as the interim treasurer. He will serve until the upcoming special election, which coincides with the general election Nov. 5. The winner will finish out the last two years of Lowery’s term.

Also running for the office are Republican Secretary of State John Thurston, who previously served as land commissioner, and former Democratic legislator John Pagan.

Pakko is a heavy underdog (as is Pagan). The Libertarians aren’t just a third party but a dis-

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tant third party. They have yet to crack the 3% in the governor’s or presidential race that would qualify them for the Arkansas ballot without their having to collect signatures each election.

Libertarians occupy a space not between Republicans and Democrats, but outside of them. They want to shrink government spending significantly while also reducing the role of government in Americans’ private lives. Some Libertarians are anarchists. I wouldn’t put Pakko in that space, but he’s definitely a Libertarian.

Pakko’s candidacy is notable because he is somewhat well known and has some influence. He is chief economist and state economic forecaster at the Arkansas Economic Development Institute at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, which means he’s a researcher and adjunct professor. He makes public appearances, gets interviewed by reporters and annually co-hosts the Arkansas Economic Forecast Conference. There he explains what’s happening with the state’s economy and where he thinks it will go. Before coming to Arkansas, he spent 16 years as a research economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

He said that while he would not use the office to push his Libertarian philosophy, he would spotlight how state government spends taxpayer dollars. Pakko noted that when lawmakers gather at the Capitol this month for their fiscal session, they’ll pass Sanders’ $6 billion general revenue budget. But when you count all the money coming into and out of state government, total spending is actually four times as much, he said.

He said he’ll talk about that reality if he is elected state treasurer. He said it would be good if someone outside the establishment kept an eye on those billions.

As mentioned earlier, Pakko faces an uphill climb. He’s hoping the race can attract more attention than it normally would as the only statewide one.

Why be a Libertarian when he could just be a Republican? Pakko said the Libertarians come closest to his views.

Twenty-five years ago, he was watching the party’s convention on C-SPAN and saw it wasn’t stage-managed. He believes democracy would be well served by having more diversity, and not just Libertarians.

That requires candidates willing to run outside the two-party structure.

“I’m at a point in my life where I could coast my way to retirement doing what I’m doing, or I could seek new challenges, new horizons. And it seemed like this was an opportunity that basically just fell in my lap,” he said. “It’s an elected position that I think I’m arguably very well qualified to fill, so I’m going to give it a shot.”

It’s a long shot, for sure, but it’s a shot nonetheless. And giving people a shot is one reason we still have elections.

Steve Brawner is a syndicated columnist published in 16 outlets in Arkansas.

Email him at brawnersteve@ mac. com.