Arkansas Blog: Batesville says: Si puede

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Batesville says: Si puede

An interesting little story has been playing out in the print edition of the Times. Leslie Peacock stumbled recently across a Batesville Chamber of Commerce Twitter page, in which chamber director Jonah Shumate distributed links to an "I Want Obama to Fail" page and other Republican-oriented messaging.

Turns out there are quite a few Democrats in Batesville who weren't the least bit happy about this bit of news. Some resigned from the Chamber. We went to press with an Insider on that for this week's edition and also reported that the Chamber board was meeting on the matter last night.

The Insider is already out of date.

Shumate resigned this morning as chamber director. My Batesville correspondent says Eddie Mabry, a retired John Deere executive, will serve as acting director.

Also: The Twitter site is defunct.

Posted by Max Brantley on March 18, 2009 11:27 AM | Permalink

Comments

Chambers of Commerce are Republican groups. I've never understood why Democrats join them. They should start their own groups.

Posted by: eark | March 18, 2009 12:00 PM

I wonder why taxpayers are required to fund Chambers of commerce? At least they do in my
neck of the woods.

I cannot find a decent thing the Chickenopolis Chamber has done. It pushed the the taxpayer
funded minor league baseball stadium 3 years ago. Now that's been shown to not even be a break-even for the city. They let Jesus Jim Holt drive off Sam's Wholesale Club a few years back
without a squeak of protest..Sam's was the city's largest sales tax generator because it served several counties.

Posted by: eLwood | March 18, 2009 12:17 PM

Shumate idolizes Reagan, Limbaugh, Rove, and Bush. He loved Bush's bail out plan but lobbied against Obama's stimulus plan. He found out the hard way that his radical right wing views do not represent Batesville.

Posted by: kizzy | March 18, 2009 05:48 PM

The local paper mentions nothing of the reason why he resigned. Just that he's the third in five years. Guess we don't want the truth out there!

Posted by: Roger | March 18, 2009 06:28 PM

Maybe the local paper is embarrassed to be scooped by the AT, Roger. They should have picked up on this days ago

Posted by: kizzy | March 18, 2009 08:52 PM

eLwood - The Batesville Chamber receives no public money.

Posted by: Pioneer | March 19, 2009 07:39 AM

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