OPINION
Bogeyman
W
hat do Nancy Pelosi, Charles and David Koch, Barack Obama and Harry Reid have in common besides causing loathing at the mere mention of their names? Answer: None is on the ballot in Arkansas or anywhere else outside San Francisco, but they dominate political races across the South and the Great Plains. In the case of the shadowy billionaire Koch brothers, that may be only the wishful thinking of Democrats. Despite their deep financial interest in polluting industries in Arkansas and their huge investments in Arkansas Republicans, the Kochs are largely unknown, but Democrats hope to change that by November. Bête noires — no, let’s use a good Southern word for them, bogeymen — are not a novelty of modern elections, but this is the decade where they have become almost the whole election. In Arkansas they are at least 75 percent of the election. Since the first midterm of his presidency, Barack Obama has been the bogeyman of every congressional election in the South. Every Democrat who
has run for the U. S. Senate or House of Representative and often for state legislative seats has had to run with the ERNEST specter of Obama DUMAS beside him or her. Obama’s image or the signature achievement of his presidency, “Obamacare,” appears alongside the Democrat in attack commercials. You can quarrel over the degree to which the color of his skin and his uncommon name make Obama a hobgoblin in Arkansas and the rest of the South, but when his approval ratings are barely above 30 percent you know it is the case. Arkansas Democrats have run from Obama since 2010 in every way they can. The two senators voted early that year for the Affordable Care Act, although the electorate had already been poisoned on it. Once the president’s name had been successfully attached by the media to health reform that formerly had been widely popular, it became deadly in the South. Two of the Arkansas Democrats
Mainstreaming the GOP
P
erhaps the greatest threat to the Arkansas Republican Party’s continued growth in Arkansas is the selection of nominees unable to appeal to Arkansas’s independent voters who are increasingly comfortable voting Republican but with a strong predilection for candidates with a veneer of moderation. In 2012, the loss of three state House races by the GOP resulted from the extremist writings by Republican candidates like Jonesboro Rep. Jon Hubbard, who had declared in a selfpublished work that “the institution of slavery ... may actually have been a blessing in disguise” for African Americans. Just as problematic U.S. Senate candidates such as Missouri’s Todd Akin in 2012 have cost the GOP control of that body, the selection of not-ready-for-prime-time GOP nominees could cost the party races in the high-stakes 2014 election cycle in Arkansas. The latest round of polling of probable GOP primary participants by Talk Business and Hendrix College, however, shows a very different trend. In race after race, candidates from the establishment wing of the Republican Party are fending off threats from insurgent candidates who would face significantly longer odds against
Democratic opponents because of their issue stances and their fundraising challenges. Establishment JAY candidates appear BARTH to be on their way to convincing primary victories from the top of the state ballot on down to lower profile posts. This pattern is most emphatic in the gubernatorial race, where former Congressman Asa Hutchinson leads Tea Partier Curtis Coleman 70 percent to 20 percent, but is replicated across the ballot: • In the battle for lieutenant governor where retiring Second District Congressman Tim Griffin is leading two state representatives with grassroots support with 53.5 percent of the vote. • In the race for Griffin’s seat where Little Rock banker French Hill is, to date, holding a lead that would prevent a runoff against two candidates coming at Hill from the right on issues such as abortion and the 2008 financial bailout. • In the primary contest for auditor where private option supporter state Rep. Andrea Lea comfortably leads Family
in the House, including Mike Ross, voted against it as well as Sen. Blanche Lincoln, who cast a meaningless vote against it on reconciliation after helping write the bill. Only Sen. Mark Pryor, although more conservative than Lincoln, did not flee the president entirely, and he has paid a heavy price. Last week, to the dismay of many Democratic candidates and the unrestrained glee of Republicans, Pryor invited the president to come see the destruction of the tornadoes in Central Arkansas. Ordinarily, a visit by even an unpopular president to a scene of suffering is a bonanza for his party’s candidates. That may not be the case with Barack Obama. Republicans will be scouring the coverage for photos of a schmoozing Obama and Pryor without the destruction in the background. His foes have a photographer following Pryor wherever he goes. The backup bête noire, to return to the French label that she might use, is Pelosi, the Democratic leader and former speaker. Asa Hutchinson’s ads make, Mike Ross, his gubernatorial opponent, Nancy Pelosi’s close friend and subject. “Arkansas deserves better than Congressman Ross putting the interests of Nancy Pelosi, President Obama and union bosses ahead of Arkansas workers,” a
Hutchinson commercial said last week about Ross’ vote years ago for a failed bill that would have put unions on a par with management in union elections. This works. Every big commercial buy linking Ross with Pelosi drives him down a couple of points in the polls, although Ross cast one of the few votes against her as Democratic leader at the beginning of his last term. Democrats running for other congressional seats have to announce that if they are elected they will oppose Pelosi for minority leader or for speaker. The commercials typically run carefully selected photos of Pelosi with drooping eyelids, to fortify the narrative that she is a party girl and a drunk. Pelosi, 74, the mother of five and grandmother of eight, actually doesn’t drink alcohol and is a fitness addict. Republicans have made bogeymen of Democratic speakers since Tip O’Neill (who did imbibe). Soon after her election as speaker, a right-wing group circulated a story that Speaker Pelosi threw lavish and drunken parties on the Air Force jet that flew her and her friends and fellow Democrats across the country and around the world. It turned out that Pelosi’s congressional travels cost
Council staffer Ken Yang 32 percent to 12.5 percent. In addition to the Fourth Congressional District where both GOP candidates are emphasizing their outsider status, there are two apparent exceptions to this establishment dominance. In the race for state treasurer, state Rep. Duncan Baird (the choice of party insiders) is trailing Saline County Clerk Dennis Milligan 15.5 percent to 10 percent, primarily because Milligan has built a lead among private option opponents (Baird was a visible advocate for the innovative Medicaid expansion program.). And, in the race for Attorney General, the closest thing to an establishment candidate — Leslie Rutledge, the former counsel to Gov. Mike Huckabee and the Republican National Committee — finds herself third in a race which is being led by outsider David Sterling and where each candidate is jolting to the right ideologically on a variety of issues. Assuming victories by Milligan and Sterling, these races would provide the state’s Democrats their best shots outside of the governor’s race to win statewide races. (A different Public Policy Polling survey of the land commissioner’s race does show that a large vote for the Libertarian candidate with the golden name of Elvis Presley may also create an unex-
pected opportunity for Democrats in that low-profile race.) Finally, in the much-watched battle for control of the state House, the GOP does have the potential to nominate insurgent candidates, like Jim Sorvillo in a west Little Rock district, who could create struggles for the party in the fall because of his previous comments and votes. One must offer caveats to all these polling results. First, low-turnout Republican primaries are notoriously difficult to survey because accurately ascertaining exactly who will participate is challenging in a state where the open primary laws mean that voters could vote in either primary on May 20, and where primary participation is dropping in general. Second, the fact that several races show that a plurality of voters has yet to focus on the race means that one effective television ad or welltargeted mailer could shift the outcomes significantly. At this point, however, it appears that Democratic dreams for a flurry of GOP nominees who would damage the party’s brand with the nonaffiliated voters who will decide the 2014 elections seem not to be coming true. There will be no shortcuts for the Democrats in an election cycle that will determine so much about Arkansas’s political future.
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MAY 8, 2014
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