In his bid to oust state Sen. Bobby Pierce of Sheridan, Trent Garner says he wants to work on creating more jobs to reduce unemployment in south Arkansas and he’s jabbing at a handful of the Democratic incumbent’s votes and comments.
Pierce and Garner are dueling for the Senate District 27 seat in the Nov. 8 general election.
The El Dorado Republican declined to say whether he would vote to reauthorize the use of federal and state funds for Arkansas’ version of Medicaid expansion in next year’s regular session — a program for which Pierce has voted to authorize funding. The Medicaid expansion now covers more than 300,000 Arkansans.
“I want to serve my state the same way I served my country overseas,” said Garner, a 32-year-old field representative for U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, a Republican from Dardanelle. Garner served two tours in Afghanistan with the U.S. Army Special Forces.
“The state of Arkansas is doing well under Gov. [Asa] Hutchinson’s leadership and the Republican leadership in the House and in the Senate, but south Arkansas is getting left behind. Look at our unemployment — it is almost twice the rate of the rest of the state,” he said in an interview in an El Dorado coffee shop.
“Sen. Pierce is a nice guy. I have nothing against him personally. But his policies are wrong for south Arkansas. We need new leadership down here to make sure things happen,” Garner said.
In the campaign, Pierce is touting his experience, support for increased vocational training benefiting workers and private industry, and his working-class roots.
Pierce, 65, has been in the Senate since 2013. He served in the state House of Representatives from 2007-2013 and was on the Sheridan School Board for 26 years. He owns the utility contracting company Telebooth Inc. and Sheridan Hardware and Supplies.
“I owe a lot to the state of Arkansas because if you come out of poverty, as bad I was, and grew up on commodities — not food stamps — you just respect the rewards you get in life,” Pierce said in an interview in a Sheridan fast-food restaurant.
“I have got six grandkids. I want to make sure they have a good Arkansas because Arkansas is going in the right direction now,” he said.
Senate District 27 encompasses Calhoun and Union counties and parts of Cleveland, Grant, Jefferson and Ouachita counties.
In the 2012 election, Pierce defeated El Dorado Republican Henry Frisby to win the District 27 seat, even as Republicans in Arkansas gained control of the Legislature for the first time since Reconstruction. Pierce won with 15,805 votes to Frisby’s 15,506. The Senate is now comprised of 24 Republicans and 11 Democrats.
Garner said he wants to reduce the size of state government, its regulations and its taxes to be more competitive with other states. He said he also favors properly funding pre-kindergarten programs, the public schools and higher education institutions, and he’s “open” to considering creating vouchers to help parents pay for children to attend private schools.
Pierce said he favors expanded vocational training to increase the pool of skilled employees for private industry and to help reduce unemployment in south Arkansas, and increased funding for pre-kindergarten programs. He also wants to ensure the state can afford further tax cuts. He said the public schools “do a good job,” and he opposes creating a voucher program at this point because “we need to see how it is going to affect our overall county or state schools.”
Among the comments made by the Republican challenger of the Democratic incumbent:
Garner criticized Pierce for saying in 2012, “We’re not going to get companies that employ multi-thousands of employees.”
“With that kind of attitude that we can’t create thousands of jobs down here, we are never going to get that next superproject in south Arkansas,” Garner said.
Pierce said his point is that south Arkansas isn’t going to attract an automobile factory, and he wants to “make sure our small businesses get taken care of, and that’s why we need to watch the tax rate on small businesses.”
Last year, Pierce and Rep. Matthew Shepherd, R-El Dorado, won the Legislature’s approval for identical bills authorizing an $87.1 million state bond issue to benefit Lockheed Martin, which was bidding on a federal contract to build joint light tactical vehicles near east Camden. Lockheed Martin lost.
Garner criticized Pierce for voting against overriding Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe’s 2013 veto of legislation to ban most abortions from the 12th week of pregnancy onward. Pierce said at that time that he voted against the override as a courtesy to the governor. Pierce had voted for the bill itself.
“My opponent, while claiming to be pro-life, put party loyalty over principle by supporting a veto of that bill,” Garner said. “While I am disappointed by the courts overriding the will of the people, I will work every day when elected to pass legislation that strengthens the rights of the unborn.”
Pierce said he voted against overriding Beebe’s veto because the bill “was unconstitutional” — which Beebe said in justifying his veto of the bill. “Why would I want to vote for something that is going to get [the state] in a lawsuit?” the senator asked.
Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to revisit a federal judge’s 2014 ruling striking down the abortion ban.
Garner said Pierce voted to raise the severance tax on natural gas in 2008, but he would have voted against the tax increase because “I support our energy industry in Arkansas and do not believe higher taxes is the path to economic growth.” The increase was proposed by Beebe to raise money for highways.
Pierce said he voted for the severance-tax increase because the natural-gas companies favored it. Natural-gas producers said they preferred Beebe’s plan over one suggested by Sheffield Nelson, a former natural-gas utility executive and former Republican gubernatorial nominee. Nelson proposed an initiated act to raise the tax if the Legislature didn’t, which the producers felt was more punitive toward their industry.
Garner said Pierce received a C grade from the National Rifle Association in 2012.
Pierce said that he is a lifelong member of the NRA. He said the NRA — without telling him why — changed his grade from an A to a C a few weeks before the 2012 general election.
An NRA spokesman said the group doesn’t disclose the votes on which it rates lawmakers.
On his campaign website, Garner says he wants to work on “replacing the Private Option, aka ‘the Obamacare of Arkansas.’”
First approved by the Republican-controlled Legislature and Beebe in 2013, the expansion of the state’s Medicaid program extended coverage to adults with incomes of up to 138 percent of the poverty level: $16,394 for an individual, for instance, or $33,534 for a family of four.
Most of those covered under the expanded part of the program receive the coverage through what is known as the private option, which uses Medicaid funds to buy coverage through private insurance plans.
Hutchinson’s Arkansas Works program would continue the coverage while making changes that the governor has said would encourage enrollees to stay employed and take responsibility for their health care. The state is seeking a waiver from the federal government for the Arkansas Works program to start next year.
The federally financed program provides health insurance for more than 300,000 Arkansans. But the state will have to pay 5 percent of the cost of the program starting in 2017, and its share gradually will increase to 10 percent by 2020.
Garner said, “I didn’t agree with everything about Arkansas Works, as far as I understood it.” He said the projected cost of the program has increased since the Legislature approved it in the spring.
“I think there [are] major flaws with the Medicaid expansion. But it is the law of the land and my duty to the people of Arkansas is to make it the most efficient program I can. We’ll see what it looks like this time next year,” he said.
Garner said he has “strong doubts about Arkansas Works, but when it comes to the DHS [Department of Human Services] budget I would be very cautious about voting against that because that is such a vital program for Arkansas.”
“I am not going to agree to vote yes or no for a budget I haven’t seen yet for next year,” he added. The funding authority for the Medicaid expansion has been in the appropriation bill for the department’s Medical Services Division in the past four years.
Pierce said he supports Arkansas’ version of Medicaid expansion “because it has helped Arkansas.
“Without it, we couldn’t have done a $100 million [income] tax cut that the governor wanted [in the 2015 regular session],” he said.
“It has helped the people of Arkansas and it has saved my small hospitals in my district because they weren’t getting paid for the emergency rooms, which everybody is going to. [When] they didn’t have insurance, the hospitals just had to eat it,” Pierce said.
Pierce said Hutchinson asked the Legislature to approve the Arkansas Works legislation in a special session last spring and he voted for the Republican governor’s bill.
He said he intends to vote to reauthorize funding for Arkansas Works next year, and then he added, “I have to look at a bill to make sure what the bill is.”
Hutchinson said he has contributed to Garner’s campaign through his political action committee called ASA PAC.
“I am the leader of the party, and so he’s a good candidate, and he is running, and I was delighted to be able to contribute to his campaign,” the governor said in a recent interview.
“I don’t intend to be heavily engaged in a lot of legislative races. I don’t intend to be engaged in that one. I have got a lot of respect for Bobby Pierce. He votes for me in the Legislature as well,” Hutchinson said.
“I don’t intend to engage in a lot of the campaigns this year because I have got a state to run,” he said.
ASA PAC “ran a poll and provided some of the data to reach a value $2,700,” in an in-kind contribution to Garner’s campaign on Aug. 3, said Jon Gilmore, president of the Gilmore Group and Hutchinson’s former deputy chief of staff. Gilmore declined to reveal the poll’s results.