2 Democrats seek House seat

In District 38, education a key issue for Leigh, Walker

 Kent Walker
Kent Walker

Two candidates who cite the need for improved pre-kindergarten offerings are vying for the Democratic nomination to represent parts of North Little Rock and Sherwood in the state House of Representatives.

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Arkansas Secretary Of State

Victoria Leigh

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Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

A map showing the location of House District 38.

Kent Walker and Victoria Leigh, both practicing attorneys from North Little Rock, face each other in the March 1 primary for House District 38. The winner will face Republican Carlton Wing in the Nov. 8 general election.

House District 38, once regularly held by Democrats, is now held by a Republican, Donnie Copeland of North Little Rock. Copeland is challenging a fellow Republican, Sen. Jane English, in her re-election bid for Senate District 34. The winner of that race will face Democrat Joe Woodson in the fall.

The growth of the Republican Party in recent years culminated with a 2014 sweep of the state's seven constitutional offices, its congressional delegation and large majorities both in the state House and Senate.

Walker, 5̶1̶ 48*, said the Democratic Party, even with a lessened hold on elected offices, is still relevant. More importantly, the Stuttgart native said, Arkansas voters are fiercely independent and evaluate potential lawmakers by their character and not their party label.

"Historically in Arkansas, the last four have flip-flopped," he said, referring to recent governors being either Democrat or Republican. "Arkansans don't look at the party. They look at the person. It comes down to a quality candidate."

Before starting his law practice, which specializes in real estate and working with small businesses, Walker worked for the party's coordinated campaign. He then served as the state House Majority Caucus director in 2001, a position he held for three legislative sessions, working with Democratic leadership.

There, he said, he had to master policy but also work with personalities who sometimes were antagonistic, like then-Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Republican.

Leigh, 28, spent much of her childhood in California but finished high school at Mount St. Mary Academy, a private Catholic girls' school in Little Rock. Her private practice handles family law and clients facing debt or foreclosure.

Walker said one of the key issues he would push if elected to the House would be expanding pre-kindergarten opportunities. Many of the troubles in the state's higher and secondary education systems, he said, are due to a lack of access to early childhood education.

"If you have a student who starts kindergarten, day one, who's had a pre-k program versus one who hasn't, it's night and day. They're already behind. If you start out behind, you're playing catch-up," Walker said. "We need to look at [expanding pre-k] not as a solution but as an investment. Any public policy issue is complex, but unless you start to invest pennies on the dollar early on, as opposed to doing remedial education once they graduate ... then you're losing the game."

He also advocates greater funding for more public school nurses. Nurses, he said, can be the front line not just in handling a student's medicine or medical needs, but as a type of teacher.

"We are the bottom 20 percent of every single health category imaginable in the state of Arkansas," Walker said. "If we don't invest in an educational system that empowers children to take care of themselves ... we will always be in the bottom 20 percent of every single health category."

Like her opponent, Leigh is driven to run in order to help improve educational opportunities in the state. She wants universal pre-kindergarten classes for Arkansas children.

To Leigh, the state's problems, ranging from economic opportunity to crime and prison crowding, come back to the issue of education.

"I'm personally invested. I've got a 2-year-old and a 2-week-old. I'm invested as a citizen," she said. "Just throwing money at a problem just by itself doesn't necessarily fix it."

Walker said he is interested in finding ways to increase job opportunities through economic development and believes state government should work with companies through tax incentives. But he cautioned that state officials should set expectations for those companies so that aid is an investment and not a handout.

Walker supports the state's private option, which uses Medicaid money to pay for private insurance for about 200,000 low-income Arkansans through a federal exchange, and opposes allowing "open carry" of firearms, although he owns many.

The business community, he said, prefers continuity. A shakeup of the state's health coverage or allowing consumers to openly flaunt weapons would endanger that stability, Walker said.

Leigh said she has a concealed handgun license and carries. But she said she is leery of claims by some that Arkansas law allows residents to openly carry weapons.

"I'm an attorney. I support all of our constitutional rights," Leigh said. "But we can't have the OK Corral. ... In the long run, for society, I think [open carry] will do more harm than good."

Whereas Walker thinks that state leaders are missing an opportunity to stabilize road funding by raising a tax on diesel fuel -- which some in the trucking industry said would be acceptable -- Leigh said she is leery of any tax increase that could affect her district's working-class families.

When asked about abortion, Walker said that abortion rights are protected by decades of court decisions and that he is frustrated when lawmakers waste time and tax money enacting laws that are ultimately killed in the courts as unconstitutional.

Leigh went further, saying she was "staunchly pro-choice" and thinks Arkansans shouldn't waste time debating a settled issue.

"It's something that a state Legislature can't change," she said. "It's unreasonable to keep trying."

Leigh was pregnant with her second child when she decided to run for the seat being vacated by Copeland. The pregnancy, and now a baby girl, hasn't stopped her from going door to door campaigning.

It's part of her "driven" personality, she said, one that is bent on helping people.

"The party establishment seems to have made a choice on which candidate it's going to support. And in the past, that hasn't gone well for this district," she said. "But I'm just like [the voters]. I'm a mom, I'm a wife, I'm a lawyer. ... I get up and go to work every day. We're all trying to do the best we can. ... I want to help and serve them."

Metro on 02/08/2016

*CORRECTION: Kent Walker of North Little Rock, a candidate for state House District 38, is 48. Walker's age was incorrect in this article.

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