There are two big takeaways from the primaries yesterday, maybe three, starting with the stark contrast of Georgia and Arkansas.
Republicans in Georgia, a famous new swing state, solidly rejected Donald Trump and the idea that the presidential election was stolen from him in 2020. But Republicans in Arkansas overwhelmingly embraced the mad man and absurd notion, sweeping his endorsees and devotees Sarah Sanders and John Boozman to victories for Mar-a-Lago.
On that basis, meaning the Georgia example, Mike Pence is a bigger deal this morning than three days ago. The former vice president went all-in endorsing and campaigning beside Georgia's conservative Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who accepted the Georgia presidential returns in 2020, earning Trump's disdain. And Kemp won 4-to-1 over Trump's hand-picked endorsee, the spectacularly blundering David Perdue.
Pence thus has the makings of a presidential campaign message for 2024. It is that he offers the accomplishments of the Trump administration without the damaging style. I'm not sure he's wrong. I think he is a threat to block the lane Asa Hutchinson has been pondering.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis might be a bigger deal this morning as well. He is Trump without being Trump.
Also in Georgia, the beleaguered Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, had a healthy and growing lead for re-election over a Trump-embraced challenger. He's the backboned fellow who received, recorded and disregarded the call from Trump in December 2022 commanding him to find an additional 11,000 or so votes so that Trump could be the winner in Georgia. He was at 51.4 at this writing, at fading risk of a runoff with that Trump agent with another candidate in the field.
And, yes, Trump's man for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate in Georgia--football star and debate-avoiding Herschel Walker--won big. Things are not always crystal-clear or of a single signal in politics.
Except in Arkansas, that is, speaking of the second takeaway: The idea percolating in the mind of a few of us that independents and Democrats could vote in Republican legislative primaries in selected areas to defeat more extreme GOP legislators and make the Legislature still conservative but less destructively so ... that was about 60 percent wishful thinking and 40 percent naïve fantasy.
Common Ground Arkansas turned out to be a sweet idea. When you think about it, its message of passion in moderate politics was a long shot from the get-go. Passion in moderation is a tad oxymoronic, at least in terms of a broad movement. I've got it, but I'm odd.
When a few center-leaning Republicans, corporate board members, a center-left commentator or two and a few practical Democrats start talking about invading the Republican primary to vote for the less-extreme legislative candidate, the word goes out fairly vividly that the bad ol' liberals and RINOs and deep-staters are picking on the nice local extremist for whom Republican voters must rally.
That's perhaps a too-early conclusion based on incomplete returns mid-evening Tuesday. But, of 12 such Republican legislative races I'd picked to follow, the extremists were at mid-evening winning in seven, close in three, defeated in one (a challenger, not incumbent) and forced into a runoff in one.
Misty Orpin, executive director of Common Ground, told me Tuesday night that, in the end, the group encouraged moderate persons to run and encouraged a greater turnout that indeed occurred in Washington and Benton counties and gave people a choice they previously hadn't much had. She said the group is far from done, and that seeding a moderate politics is not a one-primary endeavor.
Finally, for that third takeaway, it should be mentioned that Mark Lowery, a Republican candidate for state treasurer, who has been the subject of front-page articles about his troubled personal financial history, appeared to be barreling to a smashing win over a perfectly respectable Republican legislator.
It's hard to figure, although an explanation was percolating on social media. The treasurer candidate in question, again, is Mark Lowery. There's a popular Christian singer named Mark Lowry. Arkansans have a history of voting for Mark Martin and Charlie Daniels for secretary of state, perhaps thinking they were getting a race-car driver and fiddler. Why not someone from the Gaithers?
Perhaps it's fortuitous. If the state does away with half its general revenue by eliminating incomes taxes, a goal of Trumpian winner Sarah Huckabee Sanders, it might be able to use some high-placed experience in bankruptcy matters.
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.