Tim Griffin

Tim Griffin

Summary

Current Position: Lt. Governor since 2014
Affiliation: Republican
Candidate: 2022 Attorney General

John Timothy Griffin (born August 21, 1968) is an American lawyer and politician serving as the 20th Lieutenant Governor of Arkansas since 2015. A member of the Republican Party, he previously was the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas between 2006 and 2007 and U.S. Representative for Arkansas’s 2nd congressional district from 2011 to 2015.

Griffin defeated Democrat John Burkhalter in 2014 and has served under Governor Asa Hutchinson since holding the lieutenant governorship. In summer 2020, Griffin announced his candidacy for the 2022 Arkansas gubernatorial election,[1] but withdrew from the race in February 2021 to run for Arkansas Attorney General instead.

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About

Source: Lt. Governor page

Tim Griffin grew up in Magnolia, a fifth-generation Arkansan and the youngest son of a minister and teacher. He was elected lieutenant governor of Arkansas on November 4, 2014, and was re-elected for his second four-year term on November 6, 2018. He is focused on growing jobs through aggressively pursuing economic development, more parental choice in education and boldly reforming state government. In 2019, he served as Chairman of the Republican Lieutenant Governors Association (RLGA).

From 2011-2015, Griffin served as the 24th representative of Arkansas’s Second Congressional District. For the 113th Congress, he was a member of the House Committee on Ways and Means while also serving as a Deputy Whip for the Majority.  In the 112th Congress, he served as a member of the House Armed Services Committee, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, the House Committee on Ethics and the House Committee on the Judiciary. He also served as an Assistant Whip for the Majority.  In Congress, he advocated for bold tax reform and entitlement reform to grow jobs and reduce the national debt.

During the Bush Administration, in 2006-2007, Griffin served as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas and previously as Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Director of Political Affairs for President George W. Bush at the White House.

Griffin has served as an officer in the U.S. Army Reserve, Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps, for 26 years and currently holds the rank of colonel. In 2005, Griffin was mobilized to active duty as an Army prosecutor at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and served with the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) in Mosul, Iraq, for which he was awarded the Combat Action Badge. He is currently serving as the Staff Judge Advocate (SJA) for the 81st Readiness Division at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. His previous assignments include serving as the Commander of the 134th Legal Operations Detachment (LOD) at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and as a senior legislative advisor to the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness at the Pentagon. In July 2018, Lieutenant Governor Griffin, in his capacity as a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army Reserve, received his master’s degree in strategic studies as a Distinguished Graduate from the United States Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania.

Tim is active in the community. He has served on the boards of Pathway to Freedom, a faith-based prison ministry focused on reducing recidivism; Our House shelter for the working homeless; the Florence Crittenton Home for unwed mothers and Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Arkansas.

He graduated from Magnolia High School, Hendrix College in Conway and Tulane Law School in New Orleans and attended graduate school at Oxford University in England. His wife Elizabeth is from Camden, and they currently live in Little Rock with their three children, Mary Katherine, John, and Charlotte Anne. They are members of Immanuel Baptist Church of Little Rock.

Web

Campaign Site, Wikipedia, Twitter

Politics

Source: none

Wikipedia

John Timothy Griffin (born August 21, 1968) is an American lawyer and politician serving as the 57th attorney general of Arkansas. He served as the 20th lieutenant governor of Arkansas from 2015 to 2023. A member of the Republican Party, he previously was the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas between 2006 and 2007 and U.S. Representative for Arkansas's 2nd congressional district from 2011 to 2015.

Griffin defeated Democrat John Burkhalter for lieutenant governor in 2014 and served under Governor Asa Hutchinson. In summer 2020, Griffin announced his candidacy for the 2022 Arkansas gubernatorial election[1] but withdrew from the race in February 2021 to run for Arkansas Attorney General instead.[2]

Early life and education

Griffin was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, and reared in Magnolia in Columbia County in southern Arkansas. He graduated from Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas, and in 1994 from Tulane Law School in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Early political career

Prior to 2004

Griffin worked from September 1995 to January 1997 with Special Prosecutor David Barrett in the investigation of former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Henry Cisneros. For two years after that, he was the Senior Investigative Counsel for the House Committee on Government Reform.

In September 1999, he became Deputy Research Director for the Republican National Committee (for George W. Bush's election campaign); while in that position, he was a legal advisor for the "Bush-Cheney 2000 Florida Recount Team" (see Bush v. Gore). From March 2001 through June 2002, he was a special assistant to the Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff.[3]

2004 presidential election

From June 2002 to December 2004, Griffin was Research Director and Deputy Communications Director for Bush's 2004 reelection campaign, a high-ranking position within the RNC.

In June 2007, Senators Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island asked the U.S. Justice Department to investigate whether Griffin led an RNC effort to suppress the African-American vote in Jacksonville, Florida, through caging during the 2004 election. Griffin called the allegations of voter suppression "absolutely, positively false," and there was no finding of any wrongdoing.[4][5]

White House (2005–2006)

In April 2005, Griffin began working in the George W. Bush administration as Karl Rove's aide, with the title of Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Director in the Office of Political Affairs.[6]

U.S. Attorney (2006–2007)

U.S. Attorney Tim Griffin

In September 2006, after ending a one-year military mobilization assignment, Griffin began working as a special assistant to U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins in the Eastern District of Arkansas.[7]

On December 15, 2006, the Justice Department announced that Griffin would be appointed interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas, effective December 20, 2006, the date when the resignation of Cummins took effect.[8][9][10][11]

Before a March 2006 revision to the Patriot Act, interim U.S. Attorneys had a 120-day term limit, pending confirmation by the Senate of a presidential nominee. The Attorney General makes interim appointments; after the revision, the Attorney General's interim appointees had no term limit, effectively bypassing the Senate confirmation process if the President declined to put forward a nomination. Griffin was among the first group of interim attorneys appointed by the Attorney General without a term limit.[12] Gonzales's decision to bypass confirmation for Griffin particularly angered Arkansas's then Democratic senators, Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor, who both stated that Gonzales promised them Griffin would go before the Senate for confirmation. Gonzales's decision not to do so prompted Lincoln and Pryor to join many of their Democratic colleagues in demanding Gonzales's resignation or firing.[13]

On May 30, 2007, Griffin resigned from his position effective June 1, 2007,[14] with a tearful speech declaring that public service "not worth it. I'm married now and have a kid. I'm sorry I put my wife through this and I'm trying to move on."[15]

Documents released by a subsequent congressional investigation showed that, in the summer of 2006, White House officials wanted a vacant slot in the U.S. Attorney's office in Little Rock so that Griffin could fill it. Before this, he was a top Republican researcher and aide to Rove.[16] On February 16, 2007, ten days after McNulty testified that Cummins was dismissed and resigned under duress to create a vacancy for Griffin's appointment, Griffin announced he would not seek the presidential nomination to be U.S. attorney in Little Rock.[17]

In September 2008, the Office of the Inspector General in the Department of Justice issued a report concluding that Cummins had not been removed for any reasons related to his performance, but rather to make a place for Griffin.[18][19]

On August 11, 2009, The New York Times reported that previously classified White House emails showed that Karl Rove had lobbied for Griffin to be appointed Cummins's successor.[20]

2008 presidential election

On May 31, 2007, The Washington Post reported speculation that Griffin was in discussions with the then-nascent presidential campaign of Fred Thompson for a top-level post.[21] Instead, Griffin set up an office in Little Rock for Mercury Public Affairs, a New York City-based firm, part of the Omnicom Group, at which Griffin had worked as general counsel and managing director. (The Thompson campaign paid Mercury Public Affairs to have Griffin as an advisor.[22]) Then, after a short period with Mercury, he started Griffin Public Affairs and the Griffin Law Firm.[23]

In late May 2008, columnist Robert Novak reported that Griffin had been named as the RNC's director of research for the presidential campaign of Senator John McCain of Arizona. Griffin was assigned to direct opposition research, "although final arrangements have not been pinned down," Novak said.[24] But Griffin said he was not going back to the Republican National Committee (RNC), and that he had not talked to anyone in the GOP's leadership structure or with the McCain campaign about that role.[23]

U.S. House of Representatives

Elections

2010

On September 21, 2009, Griffin announced that he was running for Congress, to replace Democrat Vic Snyder who stepped down after fourteen years in Arkansas' 2nd congressional district.[25] He defeated the Democratic nominee Joyce Elliott, then the outgoing Majority Leader of the Arkansas Senate. Elliott's campaign highlighted Griffin's past controversies such as the Bush campaign's voter caging efforts and his being named one of the "Crooked Candidates of 2010" by the liberal-leaning Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.[26]

Griffin won with 58% of the vote.[27]

2012

Griffin won re-election with 55% of the vote, over former state representative Herb Rule.[28]

Tenure

In 2009, Griffin signed a pledge sponsored by Americans for Prosperity promising to vote against any Global warming legislation that would raise taxes.[29]

Legislation sponsored

In response to the Obama Administration's decision, then House Majority Leader Eric Cantor announced that Congress would need to approve any delay.[30] When he explained why he had introduced the bill, Griffin argued that, although he believed the Obama Administration's unilateral decision to delay the mandate was illegal, he still believed delaying the mandate was a good way to save jobs and protect workers.[30]

  • Griffin, along with Rep. Ander Crenshaw and Rep. Candice Miller, introduced the Save Our Military Shopping Benefits Act in 2014. The bill would prohibit the military from closing or cutting commissary stores and exchanges on bases in the United States.[33]

Committee assignments

Griffin served on the following committees and subcommittees:

On January 16, 2014, House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Social Security held a hearing with the head of Social Security and the Social Security inspector general. During the hearing, Griffin challenged statistics presented by Carolyn Colvin, the acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration. In her testimony, Colvin said that 99 percent of Social Security disability payments are correctly made without fraud.[34]

Lieutenant governor

2014 election

Griffin was the Republican nominee for Lieutenant Governor of Arkansas in the 2014 elections. He defeated two Republican challengers in the primary election, both outgoing members of the Arkansas House of Representatives, Andy Mayberry and Debra Hobbs, taking 63 percent of the vote to Mayberry's 21 percent and Hobbs' 16 percent.[35]

In the general election on November 4, 2014, Griffin defeated Democrat John Burkhalter in the lieutenant governor's race.[36]

2018 election

Griffin speaks at an event in the capitol

Griffin won re-election in the 2018 general election.

Personal life

Griffin attended Immanuel Baptist Church, a Southern Baptist congregation in Little Rock.[37]

Electoral history

Arkansas's 2nd Congressional District Republican Primary Election, 2010
PartyCandidateVotes%
RepublicanTim Griffin24,61061.69
RepublicanScott Wallace15,28538.31
Arkansas's 2nd Congressional District Election, 2010
PartyCandidateVotes%
RepublicanTim Griffin122,09157.90
DemocraticJoyce Elliott80,68738.27
IndependentLance Levi4,4212.10
GreenLewis Kennedy3,5991.71
Write-insWrite-ins540.03
Arkansas's 2nd Congressional District Election, 2012
PartyCandidateVotes%
RepublicanTim Griffin (inc.)158,17555.19
DemocraticHerb Rule113,15639.48
GreenBarbara Ward8,5662.99
LibertarianChris Hayes6,7012.34
Arkansas Lieutenant Governor Republican Primary Election, 2014
PartyCandidateVotes%
RepublicanTim Griffin109,85163.37
RepublicanAndy Mayberry35,70320.60
RepublicanDebra Hobbs27,80316.04
Arkansas Lieutenant Governor Election, 2014
PartyCandidateVotes%
RepublicanTim Griffin479,67357.16
DemocraticJohn Burkhalter324,62038.64
LibertarianChristopher Olson32,2574.20

References

  1. ^ "Who is running for governor of Arkansas in 2022? Meet the candidates". Southwest Times Record. January 25, 2021. Retrieved January 25, 2021.
  2. ^ Brantley, Max (February 8, 2021). "Tim Griffin abandons race for governor, to run for attorney general instead". Arkansas Times. Retrieved February 8, 2021.
  3. ^ "Griffin returns to Hendrix". Hendrix College.
  4. ^ Rushing, J. Taylor (June 20, 2007). "Senators seek inquiry into GOP's Duval acts". The Florida Times-Union. Retrieved January 2, 2013.
  5. ^ Marisa Taylor; Margaret Talev (June 18, 2007). "Politics weakens Justice Dept. independence". McClatchy Newspapers. Retrieved January 2, 2013.
  6. ^ Griffin's resume, DOJ emails released to the Senate Judiciary Committee Archived 2007-03-28 at the Wayback Machine, judiciary.house.gov, p. 15; accessed November 5, 2014.
  7. ^ Sabin, Warwick. "End around: Senators question U.S. attorney appointment", Arkansas Times, December 28, 2007; retrieved July 19, 2007.
  8. ^ "Justice Department Announces Appointment of J. Timothy Griffin as Interim United States Attorney" (PDF). Press Release. Department of Justice. December 15, 2006. Archived from the original (PDF) on August 9, 2007. Retrieved May 28, 2007.
  9. ^ Waas, Murray (May 10, 2007). "Administration Withheld E-Mails About Rove". National Journal. National Journal Group. Archived from the original on May 22, 2007. Retrieved May 28, 2007.
  10. ^ Q & A from Committee for Bud Cummins Archived 2008-06-26 at the Wayback Machine (no date). United States House Committee on the Judiciary; retrieved May 18, 2007 (written responses by Bud Cummins to committee interrogatories, post-hearing).
  11. ^ "J. Timothy Griffin was sworn in as Interim United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas" (PDF). Press Release. Department of Justice. December 20, 2006. Archived from the original (PDF) on August 9, 2007. Retrieved May 28, 2007.
  12. ^ Satter, Linda (December 16, 2006). "Prosecutor post is filled in recess". Arkansas Democrat Gazette. Archived from the original on September 27, 2007. Retrieved April 4, 2007.
  13. ^ Lincoln, Pryor say Gonzales should be replaced, FOX16.com; accessed November 5, 2014.
  14. ^ Brantley, Max (May 30, 2007). "It's official". Arkansas Blog. The Arkansas Times. Archived from the original on June 3, 2007. Retrieved May 31, 2007.
  15. ^ Jon Gambrell, Associated Press, "Griffin, wiping away tears, says public service is 'not worth it' after flap", June 14, 2007
  16. ^ "E-mails lay out plan to dismiss U.S. attorneys". CNN. March 14, 2007. Retrieved March 12, 2007.
  17. ^ Dan Eggen (April 17, 2007). "Interim Ark. U.S. Attorney Won't Seek Job: Former Rove Aide Says Senate Democrats Would Block Permanent Nomination". The Washington Post. p. A10.
  18. ^ "An Investigation into the Removal of Nine U.S. Attorneys in 2006". United States Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General. September 2008. Retrieved January 6, 2011.
  19. ^ Roth, Zachary (October 1, 2008). "Report Shows White House Engineered U.S. Attorney Firings". Talking Points Memo. Retrieved January 6, 2011.
  20. ^ Eric Lichtblau, Eric Lipton (August 11, 2009). "E-Mail Reveals Rove's Key Role in '06 Dismissals". New York Times. Retrieved August 14, 2009.
  21. ^ Shear, Michael D. and Dan Balz (May 31, 2007). "Thompson Bid Would Stir Up GOP Race". The Washington Post. Retrieved June 1, 2007.
  22. ^ Andrew Zajac, "McCain aide: DOJ scandal 'nonsense'", Chicago Tribune, July 8, 2008.
  23. ^ a b David J. Sanders, "Tim Griffin's proximity attracts lots of attention" Archived 2008-06-06 at the Wayback Machine, Arkansas News Bureau, May 28, 2008.
  24. ^ Robert Novak, "McCain Won't Play by Obama's Rules", May 22, 2008
  25. ^ "Ark. Business online media newspaper Arkansas News ebusiness research journal". ArkansasBusiness.com. Retrieved August 22, 2010.
  26. ^ "Why George W. Bush's record matters less than Democrats would like it to". Slate Magazine. November 8, 2010. Retrieved January 23, 2015.
  27. ^ "Arkansas Election Results". The New York Times.
  28. ^ Griffin v Rule, thegreenpapers.com; accessed November 5, 2014.
  29. ^ Profile, americansforprosperity.org, October 2009; accessed November 5, 2014.
  30. ^ a b c Kasperowicz, Pete (July 12, 2013). "House releases texts of health insurance mandate delays". The Hill. Retrieved July 16, 2013.
  31. ^ Cannon, Michael F. "Yes, Delaying Obamacare's Employer Mandate Is Illegal". Cato Institute. Retrieved July 16, 2013.
  32. ^ McConnell, Michael W. (July 8, 2013). "Michael McConnell: Obama Suspends the Law". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved July 16, 2013.
  33. ^ "Measure introduced to prevent military commissary closures" Archived 2014-02-11 at archive.today. Ripon Advance. February 10, 2014. (Retrieved 02-11-2014).
  34. ^ Martin, Aaron (2014-17-20). "Griffin probes Social Security disability program". Ripon Advance. Retrieved January 21, 2014.
  35. ^ "Arkansas Primary Election Results, May 20, 2014". KATV. Retrieved May 21, 2014.
  36. ^ "Election results". results.enr.clarityelections.com. Retrieved December 24, 2019.
  37. ^ Staff (January 5, 2011). "Ten Southern Baptists sworn in as new reps". Baptist Press. Archived from the original on December 26, 2014. Retrieved December 25, 2014.
U.S. House of Representatives
Preceded by Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from Arkansas's 2nd congressional district

2011–2015
Succeeded by
Party political offices
Preceded by Republican nominee for Lieutenant Governor of Arkansas
2014, 2018
Succeeded by
Preceded by
Leslie Rutledge
Republican nominee for Attorney General of Arkansas
2022
Most recent
Political offices
Preceded by Lieutenant Governor of Arkansas
2015–2023
Succeeded by
Legal offices
Preceded by Attorney General of Arkansas
2023–present
Incumbent
U.S. order of precedence (ceremonial)
Preceded byas Former US Representative Order of precedence of the United States
as Former US Representative
Succeeded byas Former US Representative

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