LITTLE ROCK — CORRECTION: Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., did not attend a fundraising event for her that was held in Boston on Wednesday. A story in Thursday’s paper incorrectly reported that Lincoln had traveled to Boston after meeting Wednesday with members of the Mississippi Delta Grassroots Caucus.
The meeting was on neutral ground in Washington, but Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln held home-court advantage.
Lincoln and her Republican challenger in the November election, Rep. John Boozman, received dramatically different responses from members of the Mississippi Delta Grassroots Caucuswho gathered Wednesday in a Senate office building reception room to hear from their elected officials and to lobby for more government money.
Lincoln, who grew up in Helena and regularly attends caucus functions, was greeted enthusiastically by the crowd of about 40. She reeled off a litany of spending programs in the region she had supported, and promised to fight to shift more tax dollars from Washington to the region.
The crowd was tougher on the Republican from Northwest Arkansas, who was attending the annual meeting for the first time.
While Boozman leads the polls in the Senate race, many in the crowd greeted his appeal for a smaller government and a reduction in federal spending with skepticism.
Harvey Joe Sanner, executive vice president of the Arkansas Waterways Association and a caucus member, said he backs the Democrat.
“No one can be any closer to the Delta than Blanche Lincoln, and that’s no fault of Mr.Boozman. She’s a daughter of the Delta,” he said.
But Sanner isn’t burning any bridges. “We are determined to work with whoever’s elected,” he said.
The two candidates made their pitches to the Delta group in the midst of some intense campaign fundraising.
On Tuesday night, Boozman was on Broadway, at a New York City fundraiser held by members of the banking industry. Tickets were $500 per seat, according to an advertisement circulated by the Arkansas Democratic Party. After meeting with the Delta Caucus members Wednesday, Lincoln traveled to Boston for a fundraiser featuring Vice President Joe Biden.
Before Boozman could utter a word to the Delta Caucus, Lee Powell, the group’s president and a former Clinton administration staff member, had a few pointed questions: Why did Boozman oppose the health-care overhaul? Why did he oppose the economic stimulus package? Would Boozman support a major increase in funding for the Delta Regional Authority, a federal agency that gives out anti-poverty grants in the Delta region?
All of the programs, Powell claimed, are popular in the Delta.
He noted that Boozman, who represents the 3rd Congressional district, is from a “more prosperous part of the state,” than the Delta. “You’d probably have a different point of view.”
Powell then called on the crowd to give Boozman a “fair hearing.”
“If he’s the next senator, we’ll want to work with him in good faith.”
Boozman said he would “very much support” increased funding for roads and other infrastructure projects in the Delta.
But he slammed the 2009 federal stimulus plan and the health-care and banking overhauls passed this year with Lincoln’s support as “job killers.”
Boozman said Arkansas voters, faced with a troubled economy, “are seeing that there is so much more at stake” than just the survival of individual spending programs.
“If President [Barack] Obama bankrupts the country through all of this spending, there will be no money for farm bills,” he said in an interview, “there will be no money for the Delta.”
On the stimulus plan, he cited a Los Angeles Times article that reported an instance where it took $111 million to create 50 new jobs.
“You can’t create jobs where, when the money goes away, the job goes away,” he said, calling the recovery plan unsustainable. “That’s what the stimulus was all about.”
Arkansas’ regional politics were on full display at the meeting. The participants, many from eastern and southern Arkansas, gave Lincoln a warm greeting. Rather than ask questions after her 20-minute speech, many simply rose and thanked Lincoln for working to secure funding for a variety of health-care and agricultural programs.
Lincoln pledged to fight to increase the Delta Regional Authority’s $13 million annual budget, and she detailed rural energy subsidies and cost of living increases for senior citizens she had secured, largely based on her spot on the Senate Finance Committee and as chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee.
The agriculture panel, she said, “is a pipeline for jobs and opportunities.”
She said she would leave “no stone unturned,” in the hunt for federal cash for the region. Lincoln said she would inquire whether any unused stimulus funds could be redirected to the Delta and that she would press the Obama administration to increase its budget request for Delta programs.
“I make no apologies for what I’m asking for,” she said. “If we want to create jobs in some of the neediest areas of our country, these are programs we need to invest in.”
Boozman said that if elected, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has assured him of a spot on the Agriculture Committee.
In an interview, Lincoln said she didn’t think Boozman could “hit the ground running” on the committee.
“I don’t think he has the passion,” she said. “I don’t think he has the background for it.”
Desha County Judge Mark McElroy said that as a Democrat, he supports Lincoln. But before Boozman addressed the crowd, McElroy talked with the congressman in the Senate hallway, and McElroy said Boozman assured him that he would fight for funding for the Delta.
“He’ll work just as hard,” McElroy said.
He declined to predict who would win November’s election, but said the caucus will work with the victor.
“We are an organization that needs to adapt,” he said.
Pine Bluff Mayor Carl Redus agreed. Boozman’s “positions have followed the party line, to the detriment of a lot of Arkansans south of Northwest Arkansas and in the Delta in particular,” he said. “But the caucus recognizes that we must find common ground with whoever is elected to that position.”
Front Section, Pages 1 on 09/23/2010