In the final debate before today's Democratic primary in Arkansas, Sen. Blanche Lincoln and her main challenger, Lt. Gov. Bill Halter, played tug-of-war on a lot of issues, one of the most personal of which was money -- who had more from outside groups and who spent more attacking the other. (The race's third candidate, conservative businessman D.C. Morrison, got the only laughs when he said too much money was a good problem: "My campaign, as many people have pointed out, is poorly financed.")
While Arkansans are paying attention to the race, many view the rush of outside money and attention as befuddling and believe it is sullying the race. Lincoln is still the favorite, but the challengers are pulling her support below 50 percent. She needs an outright majority to avoid a runoff, which would push the race into June.
The most recent polls showed Halter 12 points behind Lincoln, and Morrison pulling about 7 percent of the votes. Democrats fear that a protracted, increasingly ugly primary race could hurt the Democratic candidate in the general election this fall, but it could also help Lincoln appear stronger if she wins. Either way, the internal politics of the race belie the notion that the state is shifting to the Republican Party. The Centrist Democratic brand in Arkansas remains solid, and the primary could bolster it.
While it is socially conservative, this red state has remained reliably blue: The governor, Halter, the state attorney general, and both senators are all Democrats. "There are very few statehouses in this country that are as lopsided as Arkansas," says Janine Parry, a political science professor at the University of Arkansas. Though the poll numbers show that almost any Republican could beat Lincoln, many suspect Lincoln will get a third term, both despite and because of the attention and excitement around Halter's strong challenge.
Halter, who entered the race in March, is backed by MoveOn.org and national unions, who are frustrated with Lincoln's centrist votes, which many believe helped squander the Democratic supermajority. Ilyse Hogue, director of political advocacy for MoveOn, said it was Arkansas' 22,000 members who were most eager to replace their Democrat-in-name-only senator.
Halter looks good on paper: a graduate of Stanford and Oxford, he returned to his home state and studied at the feet of Bill Clinton. He looks good in person: perfectly parted salt-and-pepper hair, a square jaw, and just the right Southern twang. On Friday, he passed out free apple pie at an Arkansas Travelers baseball game with his wife, one of his two daughters, and campaign staffers in tow.
While outside groups and the national media describe, in shorthand, his challenge to Lincoln as a challenge from the left, Halter doesn't play it that way in the state. Despite support from national unions, Halter doesn't support card-check and evaded a question during the debate about whether he'd vote for it by saying it was a non-issue and that he favored streamlined secret-ballot elections. During a brief interview with the Prospect, he responded to a question about whether being perceived as from the left would hurt him in the general by saying it's not about right or left: "It's about who's on the side of working class families." He slammed Lincoln for contributing to the national deficit, adding that he's more fiscally responsible than she is.
The support, and perceived influence, of outside liberal organizations could hurt him in the general election. If Arkansas isn't exactly anti-union, it certainly has a small union presence. It's a right-to-work state that still is, fundamentally, a state of farmers, ranchers, and small-business owners. It's so socially conservative that analysts expect it to go red, like the rest of the South, in every election. That's the biggest fear Halter inspires. Local Democrats worry he would hurt the Democratic Party's image. "I think that the damage would be tremendous for a Democratic general-election nominee to have been so actively recruited and so directly tied to MoveOn.org and the AFL-CIO, in particular," Parry says. "It strikes me as strange, or somewhat impolitic -- the proverbial shooting yourself in the foot -- that they would come in and try to unseat her with someone so, perceived at least, to be to her left."
For many local voters, especially Democrats, the outside attention amounts to meddling, akin to the national Tea Party's efforts in the Massachusetts special election that seated Scott Brown. "At the end we know what happens; they all disperse and go back to their little cubby holes," says Margaret Robinson, a member of the Pulaski County Democratic Women. Observers see the money from outside groups as opportunistic -- it is a race where national issues come into play, and it's an inexpensive media market. "National political forces are trying to flex their muscles whenever, wherever, and however," says Hal Bass, dean of the social-sciences department at Ouachita Baptist University.
Moreover, Halter's best talking point, perhaps his only concrete one, is championing the creation of a statewide lottery system the proceeds of which will fund college scholarships for every high school senior who graduates with a 2.5 grade-point average and an average college-entrance exam score. For conservative-leaning independents, though, it's state-sanctioned gambling; for liberal voters, it is a tax on the poor, who are, after all, the ones who buy lottery tickets.
While Halter's challenge might be a moon shot that looks exciting from the outside -- it is, after all, the first primary challenge to a sitting Arkansas incumbent of any party in 36 years -- from those on the inside, it looks like just the kind of thing Lincoln needs. Bass says it will insulate her from charges of leftism and generate sympathy, among other things. "If she wins, and I think she will, I think the major benefit of the primary challenge for her is going to be kind of getting her campaign stride," he says.
Not only could it neutralize criticism from the right that Lincoln is too liberal, it could also stir up the Democratic base, which would be fired up after a tough primary battle. Her message -- that she has the experience and works on these issues every day -- resonates even more now that the tough derivatives bill she introduced is on the floor.
Her likely Republican challenger, John Boozman, a congressman from Northwestern Arkansas, is an incumbent who voted for TARP as well. A soft-spoken optician, he will find it tough to compete against a fifth-generation farm girl who became the first woman, and the first Arkansan, to serve as chair of the Senate Agricultural Committee. Agriculture is the state's biggest industry. Arkansas is the largest rice producer and one of the largest soybean, cotton, and poultry producers in the U.S. Those crops don't get as much attention as Midwestern corn, precisely because they've never had the champion Lincoln is poised to become. And after a recent series of floods, Lincoln helped get eastern Arkansas farmers disaster relief in a short three months. It's hard to imagine farmers giving that up. Lincoln has almost run this race before: She defeated Boozman's late brother, Fay, in her first Senate race in 1998.
The state's demographics also go a long way to explain why Arkansas, even today, hasn't gone Republican. It was always a farm state more than a plantation state, so lines of race and class fractured differently than they did elsewhere in the South. The state's relative poverty -- it's the third poorest state in the country -- means most Arkansans rely on their communities and local and state governments, and they know it. Even former Gov. Mike Huckabee, who's tacked to the right in his national career, raised taxes to continue to support some programs. It's hard to remember after 2008, in which the state went for John McCain with 59 percent of the vote, that in the previous two presidential elections, Bush only won by slimmer margins. Where Southern states have gone Republican, there have been long-term suburbanization trends, and larger African American populations--both of which make whites flee to the Republican Party. (The possibility of a black president helped drive support to John McCain in 2008 and Obama's support for Lincoln is being played up largely in districts with large African American populations.)
Arkansans are mad about the health-care reform bill, the bailouts, and the economy, and they're mad at Lincoln for votes as far back as No Child Left Behind. They blame her for supporting NAFTA and not bringing jobs back to the state. But Bill Clinton, still a favorite state son, has already taken to the airwaves to remind voters that some of those policies were his, and Lincoln supported him. Whether time or effort will neutralize the hatred for Washington and everyone associated with it by November is hard to predict. Political scientists there think the state is simply Democratic and will likely remain so.
It's possible this will be the election Arkansas goes Republican, but Arkansans have heard that before. "Every election cycle is The One capital T, capital O, and I just haven't seen it," Parry says. Or there could be another reason, put in more straight-forward terms by Steven Warner, a 53-year-old retired teacher who said he would vote for Halter in the primary but would vote for whoever is the Democratic nominee in the end: "Cause we're not stupid."
