Super PAC Attacks Pryor in Democrat-Gazette Ad

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette "lean[s] very heavily toward commercial free speech," Vice President and General Manager Nat Lea said in responding to questions about a full-page ad suggesting an unproven cover-up by U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark.

Lea said the newspaper charged its usual rate for the ad on the back page of Tuesday’s B section, but as a rule would only reject an ad that is "false or misleading on its face or that harms readers or consumers."

The paper’s rate sheet indicates that the cost could have been as much as $13,100. It was paid for by a super PAC called RetirePryor.

The ad, titled "What Is Senator Mark Pryor Hiding," questions the financial connections between Pryor and his wife’s mother and stepfather, Bonnie and Ed Harvey, using sometimes sketchy public records.

The heart of the attack on Pryor has to do with unpaid payroll taxes at the Harvey’s defunct trucking company, Continental Express Inc. of Little Rock.

The Internal Revenue Service says $2 million was withheld from paychecks but not remitted to the government in 2008. As originally reported by Arkansas Business, the company’s former president, Ralph Bradbury, has been billed for $800,000 of the unpaid taxes. Bradbury subsequently filed suit in federal court to dispute the bill, which he says the Harveys should pay.

Carlton Saffa, chairman of RetirePryor, said he is founder, primary activist and face of the super PAC. He lives in Little Rock and works in the insurance business. 

Saffa set up the super PAC in January for the purpose of defeating Pryor should he seek re-election in 2014. Pryor announced Thursday that he would be running for re-election. 

In the past, Saffa has claimed that Pryor must have intervened on the Harveys’ behalf to shield them from the taxes.

"We believe that Sen. Pryor should retire. It’s an opportunity for him to leave without an election," Saffa told ArkansasBusiness.com.

The ad asks, "How long will the Arkansas media go without examining the public documents that confirm all these facts and start asking Mark Pryor the hard questions?" However, the documents it cites are the same used by Arkansas Business in its extensive reporting on Bradbury’s tax bill and on the collapse of Ed Harvey’s formerly sizeable business holdings.

Arkansas Business has repeatedly asked Pryor whether he intervened with the IRS on behalf of his in-laws.

"I don’t know how more clear I can be," Pryor’s spokesman, Michael Teague, told Arkansas Business in February. "We’ve had no dealings with the IRS, the Harveys or anyone else involved in this, including the Bradburys."

Pryor’s office might deny involvement, Saffa said, but public documents don’t exclude him so definitively from dealings with the Harveys’ companies. 

"Somebody should ask a few more follow-up questions. We’ve got a couple of things here that warrant more than ‘no,’" Saffa said.

Lea spoke generally on the newspaper’s policies on political ads.

"They have to be marked paid political ads and we lean very heavily toward commercial free speech, and that is that an advertiser has the right to express his ideas in the marketplace," he said. "We see our duty, as far as advertising goes, to not publish advertising that’s false or misleading on its face or that harms readers or consumers."

Lea said the Democrat-Gazette has reported on the lawsuits associated with the Harveys and Bradbury, but the paper does not contribute to the contents of advertisements.

"They are responsible for giving us the verbiage, and we accept or reject the ad. We don’t work with advertisers to craft language," Lea said.