LITTLE ROCK — Arkansans will decide Tuesday whether to strip control of the Arkansas House of Representatives and Senate from the Democrats and, for the first time since Reconstruction, hand it to the Republicans.
The GOP seeks control of the Legislature for the first time in 138 years and to put its footprint on the state’s policies with Democrat Mike Beebe as governor for the next two years.
In addition to electing 35state senators and 100 state representatives, Arkansans will cast votes for president and vice president, four congressional seats, two circuit judges and a state Court of Appeals position, as well as on three ballot measures. Numerous local government offices are also on the ballot.
In 2010, Arkansas Republicans repeatedly linked Democrats to President Barack Obama and won the offices of lieutenant governor, secretary of state and land commissioner, 15 positions in the Senate and 44 in the House. Republicans also hold three of the state’s four U.S. House seats, and one of the two U.S. Senate seats.
The GOP is using a similar strategy this year as it seeks to gain control of the 4th Congressional District seat, now held by departing Democrat Mike Ross of Prescott.
Democrats in the state link themselves to Beebe, a generally popular governor who is the titular head of their party.
Beebe declined to predict which party will control the state House and Senate after the election.
“It is going to be close to 50/50, whatever happens one way or the other,” he said.
The Senate now has 20 Democrats and 15 Republicans. A majority is 18.
The House now has 53 Democrats and 46 Republicans. A majority is 51.
Term-limited state Sen. Gilbert Baker, a Republican from Conway who is a former chairman of the state Republican Party, said it appears that Republicans will have at least 20 seats in the 35-member Senate.
In 2010, Arkansas’ U.S. Rep. Tim Griffin of Little Rock, a former aide to President George W. Bush, became the second Republican elected to the 2nd Congressional District seat since Reconstruction. He projected that Republicans will win 25 seats in the state Senate and 60 in the House.
But term-limited state House Democratic leader Johnnie Roebuck of Arkadelphia said she doesn’t think “we’re in danger” of losing control of the House.
“All these numbers that [Republicans] are shouting around 62, 63[seats] in the House are totally false,” she said.
Senate Democratic leader Robert Thompson of Paragould - whose ouster Corning Republican Blake Johnson seeks - forecast that Democrats will keep “a slim majority” in the Senate.
“I am optimistic that the voters of Arkansas will look at the record for the last four to six years, and think we are on the right track,” he said.
State Sen. Larry Teague, a Nashville Democrat in line to be Senate leader in 2013 and 2014 if Democrats retain control, stopped short of forecasting which party will control the Senate.
“I count it 18-17 either way,” Teague said.
If Republicans gain control of the Senate, Teague said, he hopes the Senate elects Senate Republican Whip Michael Lamoureux of Russellville as its leader during its organizational session Thursday. Rep. Darrin Williams, a Little Rock Democrat who was elected as House speaker-designate earlier this year, said he expects the Democrats to retain control of the House.
If the Republicans gain control, Williams said, he’s “not going to abdicate” his responsibilities as speaker-designate and stop preparing to lead the chamber just “because someone may vote me out.” That could happen on Jan. 14, the first day of the session.
Rep. Terry Rice, a Waldron Republican who lost to Williams for speaker-designate, said he expects to be elected speaker on Jan. 14 after Republicans gain control of the House on Tuesday. But he declined to comment about how Republicans would handle the period between Tuesday and Jan. 14, if Williams doesn’t relinquish the position.
Asked about the differences between Democratic and Republican control of the Legislature, Beebe said there “could be some differences in what we favor in terms of tax relief” if they “bloc vote by party.
“If I understand the rhetoric right, the Republicans would favor income-tax changes, and the Democrats favor cutting the sales tax on food,” he said.
“On the things that take a three-fourth vote [such as most appropriation bills], it is not going to make any difference one way or the other. They have to work together because it is going to be close to 50/50 whatever happens,” he said. “But that all is presupposing that it is a bloc vote, which I hope it never comes down to.”
Beebe said his proposal to expand Medicaid by about 250,000 Arkansans “is in trouble with or without a Republican majority” because it would take 75 votes in the House and 27 votes in the Senate to pass an appropriation bill for it.
“If Republicans don’t agree to that in substantial numbers, it is not going to happen anyway,” he said.
Beebe said “there is a lot of rhetoric in the campaign.”
“But the Medicaid expansion is an issue ... where we pay our federal taxes, whether we participate or whether we don’t participate, and when the other states start spending our tax money and we don’t share in any of that to save rural hospitals or save UAMS [the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences], some of them might have a different attitude,” he said.
Lamoureux said the proposed expansion of the Medicaid program “for expansion’s sake is dead.”
He said “a small expansion could happen” as part of a broader agreement to make the program more efficient and possibly require Medicaid recipients to make co-payments.
Lamoureux said he doesn’t believe Republican legislative candidates, who have been opposing or reluctant to embrace the proposed Medicaid expansion, are ill-informed.
“If the assumption is they are a bunch of ignorant hicks who are going to be schooled by health-care lobbyists, that’s absolutely wrong,” Lamoureux said. The state projects that the current Medicaid program will have a shortfall of about $350 million in fiscal 2014.
If Republicans gain control of the Senate, he said, he expects them to work generally toward “more school choice,” a smaller state government and a different tax structure in the long-run, though the details have yet to be worked out.
For example, he said, charter-school supporters don’t believe that the current process for considering proposed charter schools is “very fair,” but he doesn’t know what “the exact solution would be.”
Lamoureux said he’s not sure whether Beebe would have a more difficult time further cutting the state’s sales tax on groceries with Republicans in control of the Senate, adding “I hope whatever we do is bipartisan.”
While some Republicans want to change the state’s income-tax structure, others want to cut the state’s capital gains tax, so “there is not one set of Republican answers,” he said.
Thompson said the Democrats in the Senate would continue to provide “responsible tax cuts” when state funds are available to do that, while adequately funding the public schools if Democrats remain in control.
Rice said House Republicans think that jobs aren’t created by a single tax cut, such as to the sales tax on groceries, and “if it was that simple, it would already be done.”
Williams said Democrats view such cuts as having a larger effect.
“We tend to believe that we ought to have targeted tax cuts, not these broad-based tax cuts that sometimes have more impact on the wealthier who may be able to afford paying a little bit more,” he said.
Senate Democratic Whip Joyce Elliott of Little Rock said she worries about the possibility of the state’s compliance with the Arkansas Supreme Court’s ruling in the Lake View school funding lawsuit “being compromised by vouchers and a less thoughtful expansion of charter schools” with Republicans in control of the Senate.
Lamoureux, an attorney, said Elliott’s “fear is not a valid fear” and that proposed changes in the public schools will be reviewed for compliance with the high court’s ruling in the Lake View case.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 11/04/2012