OPINION

JOHN BRUMMETT: Not cookie-cutter

The New York Times sent a reporter to central Arkansas earlier this week to look at the 2nd District Democratic congressional race.

The idea, at least two of the local candidates were told, was that an article might run this weekend.

One of those candidates, Paul Spencer, thought the article's hook might be something along this line: Is this race another possible example of broader tension in the Trump-era Democratic Party, specifically of a Washington-preferred, establishment-backed, conventionally commendable candidate--in our case Clarke Tucker--opposed by a grass-roots insurgent candidate like himself who rejects the unimpressive recent election performance of national Democratic campaign organizations?

Spencer told me: "It's important, whether I can defeat Clarke or not--and if Clarke's the nominee I certainly want him to win in November--that we understand the poor record of DCCC cookie-cutter campaigns."

The DCCC is the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, a campaign-funding and campaign-advising organization run by and for Democratic members of Congress. Its leader told a reporter for this newspaper a couple of weeks ago that, yeah, the organization is all for Tucker, pre-emptively. He liked Tucker's biography and legislative record. He didn't mention the three other candidates--Spencer, Gwen Combs and Jonathan Dunkley.

Spencer called my attention to the situation in Colorado's 6th Congressional District, a midterm battleground.

Democratic minority whip Steny Hoyer went to Denver to talk with the liberal challenger to the DCCC's previously announced and preferred and more-moderate candidate. The progressive challenger activated his phone as a recording device and captured Hoyer saying, yeah, we're raising money for the other guy, and will continue to do so, and we want you to drop out.

Nothing to that extent has happened here.

My ensuing call to Tucker found him sounding a tad weary, no doubt mostly because he was, at that moment, working on the funeral remarks he'd deliver the next day for former state Sen. Jim Argue, perhaps the most earnestly conscientious man I covered in the Arkansas Legislature.

Tucker told me the only person asking about the supposed perils of his being the "establishment" candidate preferred by Washington Democrats was--with all due respect, as he put it--me. And he said I seemed to him to be establishment myself.

Any young politician on the rise will endure a rite of passage when he finds himself complaining that the press is asking him about matters the voters don't care about. You do not yet have your political bona fides until you find yourself feeling that way and catch yourself saying it out loud.

It's what we do. We ask things others don't. Sometimes the things we ask about matter, or ought to matter. Sometimes they don't, so much, except in our imaginations.

It is quite true that the theme of my columns on this race has been as follows: Tucker is by far the best conventional political candidate in the field, and a young man I know and admire, and my preference. But Spencer, Combs and Dunkley are fine and worthy people, though not necessarily strong candidates, considering that none has emerged from also-running status to take on Tucker individually, mainly on the very basis being discussed here--that he's nationally anointed and local Democrats ought to make this choice, thank you.

Maybe Spencer is attempting that stretch-run narrative.

Tucker thinks it's all nonsense. He points out that he was born here and went to school here and works here and lives here and raises his kids here. He suggests it's possible that he is doing well in some of the polling not because the folks in D.C. like him, but because the folks at home like him.

It could be both. Perhaps he leads because people around here like him. Perhaps his lead is vast at 30 points because his Washington advantages helped him raise money to get on television with a very polished and effective health-care commercial.

Just because Tucker has raised more money from establishment sources doesn't mean that the health-care ad is not true and personal and relevant. It is all of that.

So, let me stipulate: Tucker is not cookie-cutter. He is a conventionally strong candidate. There is a difference.

But let me stipulate another thing, while I'm at it: A civic-minded teacher from Catholic High daring to run for Congress without much money, relying on his wife to produce online ads for him, spending what money he has on canvassers and phone banks and mailers, saying what he thinks about issues and declaring that this is a local race, not any D-triple-C's race ... I think he's entitled to make that case and that he makes a valid and fair point.

If I'm the only one around here thinking so, then bully for me.

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John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.

Editorial on 05/10/2018

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