LITTLE ROCK — U.S. Rep. John Boozman said Wednesday that for weeks he felt confident he would win but never expected to unseat U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln by 21 percentage points, despite most polls showing him winning big.
“I’m not a guy that places a lot of confidence in polls,” Boozman said. “Traditionally, it’s so hard to win a statewide race as a Republican. When you look at past successes [by Republicans], the margins are pretty narrow.”
Boozman became only the second Republican to win a U.S. Senate popular election in Arkansas when he beat Lincoln. With 97 percent of the precincts reporting, Boozman had 436,310 votes to 281,287 for Lincoln. That amounted to 58 percent to 37 percent. Two other candidates took the remaining 5 percent.
When the first Republican elected to the Senate, Tim Hutchinson, won in 1996, the margin was 52 percent to 48 percent.
Boozman didn’t display much emotion during his victory speech Tuesday as “I Feel Good” by James Brown blared on speakers.
He said Wednesday that he was fatigued from a 10-day bus tour of the state.
“But you’re excited and really feeling almost a tremendous sense of responsibility,” Boozman said. “It’s a little overwhelming.”
Lincoln wasn’t giving interviews Wednesday.
During her concession speech Tuesday, she told her supporters she was glad they “ didn’t make it about anger or fear [or] ugly attitudes.” She added, “The only regret I might have is that I hope I haven’t disappointed you all.”
She said she had always worked to find the “middle ground. I still don’t believe the answer can be in the extreme.”
In the weeks leading up to the election, she said, she believed that predictions of her losing were premature and that people were starting to seriously consider the options in the race. She said she felt confident that if she won the 1st District of eastern Arkansas, which she previously represented in Congress, she would win a third term in the Senate.
But she won only nine of the 26 counties in the district.
In the state as a whole, she carried only 14 counties to Boozman’s 61.
She carried only two counties that were won by Lt. Gov. Bill Halter in the Democratic primary, St. Francis and Lawrence.
Lincoln carried four counties in the 4th District and one in the 2nd, Pulaski County, the state’s most populous.
Boozman won counties all across the state with the largest margins coming in his home of Benton County and his boyhood home of Sebastian County. He received more than 70 percent in each.
He said he started feeling sure of victory about six weeks ago.
“As time went by, I got a very good reception in areas where traditionally Republicans did not get a good reception,” Boozman said. “That was encouraging. The vibes we were feeling on the street were good.”
Most of the counties Lincoln won have large black populations. She got her largest margin in Phillips County, with 66 percent of the vote.
Boozman discounted race as a factor.
“Those are areas that probably the voters didn’t know me as well,” he said. “Right now the voters are just concerned about the direction of the country. They are concerned with legislation they don’t like. They don’t feel like they are being listened to.”
He pledged that when he’s in the Senate, he’ll help the counties he lost.
“We’ll be working hard to introduce ourselves and support those counties in every way we can,” he said. “Those are some of the poorest counties.”
Boozman has voted against numerous federally funded projects that are in or are sought by counties across the state because he has said the federal government needs to stop spending as much. Lincoln criticized him for that stance, saying he couldn’t help Arkansans that way.
How will he help low-income counties, such as the ones Lincoln carried?
Boozman said he plans to “use the power of the office. Certainly when grants are available, we will work as hard as anyone to obtain those grants. All federal spending isn’t bad. We do need to prioritize things that truly create job opportunities. The federal government has been ineffective in many ways with many of these programs.”
He said he wants to do things similar to what he did in Rogers in 2006 by helping start a World Trade Center to improve trade in Northwest Arkansas. The center is affiliated with the University of Arkansas and received a one-time federal appropriation of $450,000, according to the UA and to a Boozman spokesman.
Boozman said he plans to spend the next few weeks on the transition out of his congressional office and into the Senate office. He said Lincoln has been “very kind,” and her staff is already helping his staff make that change. He said he’ll take some vacation time at Thanksgiving.
In 2004, Lincoln won 56 percent to 44 percent over Republican Jim Holt of Springdale. She carried 56 counties to Holt’s 19.
She won Pulaski County by 48,000 that year. This year, she carried it by only 7,000 votes.
She carried Washington County in 2004 by 3,000 votes but lost it by 12,000 this year.
When first elected to the Senate in 1998, she beat Boozman’s late brother, Fay Boozman of Rogers, 55 percent to 42 percent. She carried 61 counties to his 14.
What’s changed since those elections?
Lincoln has been viewed by some as being out of touch because she didn’t come home as often as some would have liked, partly because she maintained a home with her family in northern Virginia.
Over the years, she upset people on each side of the political spectrum by sometimes taking the liberal side and other times taking the conservative side. She also came across to some as indecisive.
But state legislators from both parties that follow politics said Wednesday that the large margin of her defeat is rooted in the nationwide unease with Democrats in Washington, D.C.
“In a broader sense, I know there is some racial overtone in all this,” said Sen. Steve Bryles, D-Blytheville, referring to some people who are opposed to President Barack Obama, a Democrat, who is black. Obama didn’t carry Arkansas in 2008.
Likewise, Bryles expected that a lot of Obama supporters who voted in the 2008 presidential election stayed home this year, which hurt Democrats.
The preliminary voter turnout estimate of Tuesday’s election was 46 percent, said secretary of state spokesman Sandra McGrew. That compares with 65 percent in 2008 and 48 percent in 2006.
“Voters are p*****, and they may not know why,” Bryles said. “People were ready for a change. It’s so disheartening because Blanche, I think, has a voting record very much in tune with Arkansas. But she equivocated a lot with health care. That was the last nail in the coffin.”
“There was just so much anger,” said state Rep. Bill Abernathy, D-Mena.
He said it was “wishful thinking” by Lincoln when she said she was confident of victory because she felt voters were starting to analyze the candidates and the issues. “People had their minds made up. They never changed,” he said.
Jeremy Hutchinson of Little Rock, who won his race for state Senate District 22, said he didn’t initially think Lincoln would lose by such a wide margin.
“But as time went by, when I was out knocking on doors, I sensed it was going to be big,” said Hutchinson, son of Tim Hutchinson. “There was a degree of anger I just had never seen before. They were just very tired of the policies she supported under Barack Obama. It was a very policy driven election. They were angry at the policies being pursued.”
Front Section, Pages 1 on 11/04/2010