BY JACOB QUINN SANDERS
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — There are two candidates for Pulaski County sheriff - one who expects to win and one who doesn’t.
Incumbent first-term Sheriff Doc Holladay has more endorsements, more money and has already been elected once to the job. Some of his money, he said, paid for internal polling. Asked about it, he said, “I feel good.” His challenger, Pat Mulligan, a former Pulaski County sheriff’s office supervisor under a previous administration, called himself a realist.
“The odds are against me ... winning,” he said. “But that’s why I’m in this for four years. This time, I’m getting my name out there, making connections. And if I don’t win, I’m running again in two years and won’t have to start from scratch.” Mulligan has made the Pulaski County jail the main issue in the campaign, saying Holladay has not done enough to open more beds and has set other priorities higher than keeping as many bad guys as possible off the street.
“He’s still in Step 1 of his plan he introduced 22 months ago and we’re still having the same problems with the jail,” Mulligan said.
Mulligan also said Holladay should not have leased new patrol cars upon taking office, and instead should have directed that money to staffing jail beds and fixing the older, uninhabitable portions of the facility on Roosevelt Road.
It’s a charge that makes Holladay smirk.
“It just shows he doesn’t know what he’s doing,” Holladay said. “Some of those vehicles had been so stressed that it was becoming a deputy-safety issue. Running a sheriff’s office is about more than running a jail.” Arkansas law demands that sheriffs operate a jail, a lawenforcement arm and provide certain judicial functions, such as serving legal paperwork. Holladay talks frequently about his statutory obligations.
Mulligan, however, is not a one-note candidate. He also talks about increasing volunteer programs for inmates while at the same time stripping away any perks he can find.
“Prison is meant to be a deterrent,” he said. “But once you’re in there, it’s meant to be a punishment.” But a sheriff is also an elected official. Asked twice about his relationships with County Judge Buddy Villines and the Quorum Court, which sets the sheriff’s office’s budget and can approve or deny major proposals, Holladay twice changed the subject.
The first time, he talked about the boards and community groups he’s involved with. The second time, he talked about the drug problem in the 580 square miles of unincorporated Pulaski County the sheriff’s office covers, an area about half the size of Rhode Island.
Mulligan, 44, began his law-enforcement career with the University of Arkansas at Little Rock’s police department, where he spent six years, eventually becoming a uniform commander. He worked another six years for the sheriff’s office, working largely as a patrol and narcotics unit supervisor.
He left the sheriff’s office, he said, because “the pay wasn’t quite where I needed it to be. Making in the mid-30s for a job like that wasn’t a good deal for me and my family.” For the last three years, he has worked as the manager of Youth Home Inc., a nonprofit treatment center for troubled adolescents and their families. According to Youth Home’s public federal tax return, Mulligan’s salary was less than $50,000 in 2006, the most recent year available.
Holladay, 58, worked for the Little Rock Police Department for 30 years, retiring in 2003 at the rank of captain. He served occasionally as acting assistant chief of police and served as commander of the patrol division and the special investigations division at different times. He also was the department’s public-information officer for several years in the 1990s.
After retiring from the Little Rock police, Holladay took a job in the professional standards unit of the sheriff’s office, taking a leave of absence when he ran for sheriff in 2006.
Copyright 2008 Little Rock Newspapers, Inc.