U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton was unopposed for re-election even when he had an opponent to his re-election.
That's why Josh Mahony's curious withdrawal from the race Tuesday failed to make front-page news.
Mahony was but a nominal Democratic challenger fresh from getting all of 32.6 percent two years ago in the 3rd District congressional race against Steve Womack.
That is to say that Mahony was the guy willing to make the perfunctory race against Cotton, until he wasn't.
He apparently had enjoyed campaigning and, lacking full-time work, had the time to be a Democratic senatorial nominee in a state with no serious use for a Democratic senatorial nominee.
There always is the distant chance, one supposes, that the impeachment matter or something else might erode the prevailing adoration of Trump and confirmed Republican affinity in our Democrat-fearing white rural conservative culture.
By distant chance, I mean intergalactic or perhaps if Trump shot two people on Fifth Avenue.
Our state's prevailing political attitude hasn't wavered and almost assuredly will not, no matter what Trump did on Ukraine and no matter what comes out. That's because Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Little Rock teacher strikes are political pariahs in Lonoke, Sheridan, Camden, Hot Springs, Russellville, Searcy, Mountain View and Mountain Home, indeed every town in Arkansas save Little Rock, Fayetteville and Eureka Springs.
No one has been more openly disdainful than I've been in this space of the ultra-right politics and the resentment-driven personal style of Cotton. But facts are facts. It's his place and his time.
He may even be the Republican presidential nominee after Trump is gone. It depends on whether the subterranean Trumpian descent of Republican politics persists beyond the boorish reign of the preposterous one. If it remains as deeply descended, Cotton is a logical heir.
I do not know the story of Mahony's terse withdrawal from the race two hours after the ticket had closed.
He blamed family health concerns and pleaded for privacy. I'm prepared to accept the non-explanation and, after today's postmortem, extend the privacy.
There are Democrats who are aghast and insistent that he owes a fuller explanation. That's between them. These are higher-minded types who see nobility in nominal and loyal opposition where I fast-forward to futility.
Naturally, there always will be a conspiracy theory. This one is that Mahony engaged in a cynical scheme to withdraw and spare Cotton any opposition at all.
But that would have been the most superfluous conspiracy in history. A good conspiracy to keep something from happening--meaning bothersome opposition to Cotton--needs a valid concern that the said something might happen.
Anyway, we'll now endure a legal spat over whether the Democrats may legally choose a new nominee. Whoever Democrats come up with, if courts allow, will be precisely as strong as Mahony, meaning not. He or she will provide a ballot name to check for 35 percent of the more thoughtful voters of the state.
Ever opportunistic and self-congratulatory, the Cotton campaign sent out a memo Wednesday to "top supporters" seeming to take credit for lying in wait to scare Mahony out of the race with a Republican Party-filed FEC complaint against Mahony's veracity in personal financial filings.
But this newspaper had broken the news of Mahony's filing irregularities months ago--of his identifying himself in filings as a small-business owner when he wasn't. It makes no sense that Mahony would have suddenly freaked about that minutes after the official pairing was set, and only because Republicans had fired an opening shot.
It is possible, I guess, absent Mahony's elaboration, that he hadn't expected Cotton's campaign to take him as seriously as it appeared ready to take him.
That memo to big donors from the Cotton campaign also boasted of fortifying French Hill's win over Clarke Tucker two years ago in the 2nd District.
The memo stated, "In 2018 the Democrats ran a strong candidate in the 2nd Congressional District in hopes of setting him up for a run against Tom in 2020 ... . Senator Cotton's Leadership PAC engaged in the race by targeting Trump voters unlikely to turn out in a midterm year, tracking the Democrat and exploiting his statements, and driving the Democrat's disapproval from 18 percent to 41 percent. The Democrat lost, leaving the Democrats with a depleted bench to run against Tom."
It's mildly pitiable for French Hill to need Cotton to be his daddy like that. And Tucker tells me he never intended to run for the Senate, which is a statewide undertaking far less do-able than a congressional district with Pulaski County in it. And, by the way, Cotton's PAC drove up Tucker's negatives by direct mail to Trump voters accusing Tucker of being supportive of criminal Mexican gangs.
"Where is the decency?" Tucker asked in his closing campaign commercial.
We're still looking. It has to be around here somewhere. Doesn't it?
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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 11/17/2019