LITTLE ROCK — Editor’s note: Join John Brummett for live blogging and online chatting about today’s primary returns, beginning at or about 7:30 p.m., at brummett. arkansasonline.com.
One significant matter arising from the state’s mostly uninspiring primaries today will be the extent of our Republican metamorphosis.
I refer mainly to the 4th Congressional District across most of southern Arkansas. But I also refer to pockets elsewhere in regard to local races.
A second, generally significant matter is a state Senate race in central Little Rock with potentially broader statewide implications for public education.
A third is whether a Republican can survive in Northwest Arkansas merely by being a thorough conservative, but not an unreasonable one. That should provide a clue as to the tone and tenor of the partisan legislative culture that the state will confront in this new era.
So let us take those in order.
The 4th District is interesting because it has a conservative Democratic heritage and a retiring Blue Dog Democratic congressman, Mike Ross.
Most of the money, energy and attention regarding Ross’ succession has been on the Republican side. That race features, primarily, Tom Cotton of Dardanelle, a Harvard-educated lawyer and combat veteran, taking on Beth Anne Rankin of Magnolia. She is a former Miss Arkansas who is close to former Gov. Mike Huckabee, having served on his staff.
The great variable is the extent to which typical Democratic primary voters in southern Arkansas will abandon their usual primary and local races of interest on the Democratic side to vote for Cotton or Rankin.
The Democratic congressional primary in the 4th District is dreadful, featuring three nonserious candidates.
A relatively heavy Republican turnout of former Democratic voters would favor Cotton. That’s because he has had plenty of national neoconservative money for effective television advertising to build favorable name identification among swing voters. A relatively healthy turnout might even lift him to victory without a runoff in what, actually, is a three-candidate race.
A tamped-down Republican turnout would favor Rankin. She is stronger with the standard GOP base, considering that she hails from Republican nests in the southwestern corner of the district. She also ran against Ross two years ago. A small turnout could force an even smaller runoff three weeks hence, on June 12, which likely would be decided more on her terms, meaning by voter devotion.
Somewhat ironically, a strong turnout for Cotton could hold down the size of the protest vote against vastly unpopular President Barack Obama in the Democratic primary, which could achieve such size as to be newsworthy nationally.
In the meantime, keep an eye on the Republican primary in Faulkner County, where all the action for sheriff is on the GOP side with four candidates.
Early voting shows hundreds of first-time Republican primary voters in Conway and surrounding areas. It’s a dynamic that begins to take the state beyond the transitional culture in which it votes Republican on marquee races but still uses the Democratic primary for local bread-and-butter.
Meanwhile, the state Senate race on the Democratic side in central Little Rock that offers potentially broader educationpolicy implications pits embattled liberal lioness Joyce Elliott, the incumbent, against state Rep. Fred Allen.
Elliott is of a slightly declining traditional liberal variety, at least in regard to public education. A former public school teacher, she stands with teachers’ unions and against broad and emerging bipartisan movements for more charter schools for disadvantaged youth.
School-choice issues will be higher on the Republican legislative agenda next year even than taxes and spending. Elliott, if re-elected, would be in line to hold a prominent old-line position on the pivotal Senate Education Committee.
Finally, we confront today a vivid example of the state’s main internal Republican division, which is between hard conservatives and even harder conservatives.
In a state Senate race in Benton County, a perfectly conservative legislator with close Wal-Mart ties, Tim Summers of Bentonville, is opposed from the right by a more Tea Party-ish Republican, Bart Hester of Cave Springs.
Hester is running as a minion of the anti-government Koch brothers, whose ultra-right Americans for Prosperity wants to punish Summers. And for what?
It’s that Summers voted last year merely to let the voters decide for themselves in November whether to raise their sales tax for a road program.
That is a race that could take our political mainstream and move it closer to the right bank.
It would send the same signal to state Republican officeholders that has been sent so destructively to national Republican officeholders. The message is that compromise and pragmatism will not be tolerated.
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John Brummett is a regular columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com.
Editorial, Pages 13 on 05/22/2012