Well, that’s pretty sorry. The Secretary of State’s office had to hire Santa to come to the State Capitol this year, to the tune of $400, since it fired the Santa who’d ho-ho-hoed for free for nearly a decade. Michael Cook of Talk Business is all over the latest development in this story, which we reported in September.
Santa Robert Newcomb, a jolly type, has played the role on the Capitol steps at the end of the Little Rock Christmas Parade for nine years (as well as squeezing down Children’s Hospital’s and other chimneys in his red suit). Newcomb, a lawyer the rest of the year, represents a woman who filed an Equal Opportunity Employment Commission complaint about her firing from the Capitol police force, which is under the aegis of the Secretary of State’s office. Hence, Mark Martin’s office had but a bag of coal for Newcomb this year. It stuffed the stocking of Santa Roger Armstrong, Cook reports, instead.
(The SOS office says Newcomb didn’t really work for free; he was given a $100 gift card to Wal-Mart for his troubles. Still, that’s $300 less than new Santa’s booty. But heck, when you’re irritated and it’s not your money anyway, why not cough up some paper bling for a new Kris Kringle?)