Gov. Mike Beebe got his start in Arkansas politics the way many candidates in the state do, at the Gillett Coon Supper, an annual feast on an animal that is plentiful in the state's marshes and not all that flavorful. Any savvy politician knows to grab the boniest chunk of raccoon on the table, since it will make for the best photo and have the least amount of meat.
It is one of many folkways that Beebe, a Democrat, embraced. In his 1982 state Senate race, friend and fellow Democrat Rep. Marion Berry hosted a party for the political elite in Gillett and kept out anyone who would not wear a Beebe button. When Beebe's opponent walked in, he took one look at the crowd and shortly after dropped out of the race.
Most people in Arkansas agree that few politicians have played so well for so long to so many, perhaps not even Bill Clinton. But the governor must leave office in January because of term limits.
Beebe has received support from Wal-Mart millionaires in the northwest part of the state and poor row-crop farmworkers in the state's southeast. He has won among those who hunt elk or alligator, and Arkansans like to brag that they can do both thanks to the state's biodiversity. And he has won among those for whom President Barack Obama's name is an epithet.
In 2010, as the Tea Party pummeled Democrats in congressional elections and the state Legislature in Arkansas, Beebe won re-election, taking all 75 counties. While Obama's approval rating in the state is 29 percent, Beebe's is 72 percent, making him the most popular Democratic governor in the nation, according to an NBC News/Marist poll conducted in September.
What is his philosophy? Centrist. "You could fall on your sword, but if it kills you, what good are you going to do?" Beebe often says.
His considerable footprint has helped Democrats compete in the state. Yet his throwback style of personal politicking is under assault as Arkansans feel the crush of modern political campaigns. Independent groups with almost no ties to the state are spending millions of dollars in a race that may determine control of the U.S. Senate. That race is between the incumbent, Sen. Mark Pryor, a Democrat, and his challenger, U.S. Rep. Tom Cotton, a Republican.
But Arkansas voters still expect to rub shoulders with their candidates.
"This is a state that has forever been spoon-fed retail politics, and as a result of that, people come to expect it," Beebe said.
A Dose of Texas Confidence
Arkansas is a place of deep contrasts that has bred self-made billionaires, including Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart; Donald J. Tyson, the tycoon behind Tyson Foods; and trucking magnate J.B. Hunt. But it is also a state where the median household income of $40,511 is the second-lowest in the nation, and about 20 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. Arkansas is the fourth-poorest state in the nation.
Beebe and his predecessor, Republican Mike Huckabee, emphasized improving the state's education system, and 84 percent of high school seniors in 2011-12 graduated, 4 percentage points better than the national average, according to the U.S. Department of Education. But just 21.2 percent of its population have bachelor's degrees; only Mississippi and West Virginia have a smaller portion of college-educated people.
Beebe, a man whose critics call cocky, said he would like his legacy to the state to be one of enhanced confidence. "I hope that we have, to a large extent dispelled a bit of a chip on our shoulder," he said. "I don't want to get a Texas arrogant swagger, but I like a Texas confidence."
In his decades in state government, Beebe -- tall and gray-haired with bright blue eyes and weathered skin -- developed a reputation as a roll-up-your-sleeves pragmatist. He's been called the "anti-Clinton," since, unlike Bill Clinton, Beebe insists on being punctual and says he has no ambitions to hold office outside Arkansas. "You can actually get more done and have a greater impact on what the heck you're trying to do," Beebe said. "Washington is so poisoned now."
Born to a single, teenage mother in a tar-paper shack on a remote, swampy stretch of the Arkansas Delta, Beebe became a successful lawyer before running for the state Senate and had the kind of rags-to-riches story that resonated. The shack is gone, and a sign marking the Beebe's birthplace is full of holes.
Beebe's knack for knowing what his political opponent needed in order to get a compromise in the Legislature has served him well since he took office as governor in 2007. He has been able to get past the kind of partisan impasses that plague Washington. No one tries to lump Beebe with Obama.
Beebe worked with Republican legislators to put together and pass, with the required three-fourths majority, the private-option health insurance program that has helped more than 200,000 poor residents get coverage.
The program allowed the state to take federal money under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to expand Medicaid and use that money to buy private insurance for the poor, instead of adding poor people directly to the Medicaid rolls. Also, it drew the state national attention for its bipartisan collaboration.
Over chicken-fried steak at Homer's, a popular Little Rock lunch spot, Beebe pushed back at criticism that Republicans work with him because he is a transactional, rather than transformational, Democrat. "I can be a firebrand. I can give you a speech that'll make Huey Long look like he couldn't rally the troops in Louisiana," he said. He took a bite of a butter-soaked yeast roll and added: "I can appeal to base instincts. I just don't, normally."
Politics and hush puppies
In a shaded pecan grove just past the railroad tracks and up the road from the state's largest prison farm, Wayne Isaacs is in charge of the hush puppies at the annual Lions Club catfish fry in Grady, a task he proudly took over 26 years ago after his father-in-law retired.
The homemade hush puppy machine, a noisy silver contraption cobbled together from old tractor parts and a hydraulic engine, is said to churn out Lincoln County's finest deep-fried cornmeal batter, 500 pounds of it this year, that is cooked and served by the prisoners.
A few years ago, this rural town in the Arkansas Delta that, as one Little Rock resident put it, "doesn't even have a Wal-Mart," would not have been a campaign battleground because its residents had for decades been devoted to Democrats.
But this year, Pryor and Cotton both showed up to shake hands, fill their plates with catfish and watermelon, and listen to bluegrass music played by the Cummins Prison Band. After all, the votes in Grady (population 434) and its surrounding towns may be enough to sway the race.
"It'd be political suicide not to be here this year," said Isaacs, on a break from overseeing the fryer.
That may not be true in future election years as the quaintness of the fish fry collides with a post-Citizens United era. An estimated $2 billion in outside money will be spent on advertising in congressional races across the country this election cycle, more $17 million of which has already been spent on the Senate race in Arkansas.
Pryor, 51, is the only remaining Democrat in the Arkansas congressional delegation. The Republican National Committee sees Pryor's race against Cotton, 37, as an opportunity to stake full claim to the state.
Even supporters of Pryor and Cotton say neither man has the gift for retail politics that so many of their predecessors had. So while the coon suppers and festivals hosted by the local Lions Clubs are still must-stops for both men, the several thousand political TV spots in Arkansas this cycle, largely paid for by donors in California and New York, carry more weight than ever.
The list of donors tilts so heavily out of state that "you have to get a magnifying glass to find the Arkansas contributors," said Pryor's father, former U.S. Sen. David Pryor.
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