On Tuesday, voters will finally decide between Bill Halter and incumbent Sen. Blanche Lincoln as the Democratic nominee for one of Arkansas's Senate seats (some are already deciding, since early voting has started).
Lincoln, who's nearing the end of her second term, came under fire when she helped squander a Democratic supermajority that could have led to more progressive health-care legislation, among other things. So MoveOn.org and labor unions like the AFL-CIO backed Halter, who is the state's lieutenant governor. On May 18, when the first vote was held in the primary, Halter and a third candidate, conservative D.C. Morrison, siphoned off enough votes to keep Lincoln from getting an outright majority, forcing a runoff.
Halter, of course, will likely be just as centrist as Lincoln if he proceeds to the general election or on to the Senate. Arkansas is a socially conservative state that keeps electing Democrats despite the rest of the South's shift to the Republican Party for complicated reasons I wrote about last month. Also writing on TAP last month, Harold Meyerson argued that Halter's ability to force Lincoln into a runoff was a big victory for unions, which proved to Democrats like Lincoln that they could cause trouble for them even in an anti-Union state.
But a victory to what end? It seems pretty unlikely Arkansans will ever elect an outright pro-union Senator of any party. The state, like much of the rest of the South, is fairly anti-union, partly for reasons that go back to slavery and segregation (which is the explanation for a lot of the political peculiarities in the former Confederacy). It could be true that Lincoln was doomed anyway; she certainly is doing poorly in most polls right now.
But November is a long way away. And a lot of analysts from Arkansas believe the perceived influence of far-left forces would hurt Halter in the general against Republican Congressman John Boozman, who won his party's nomination outright, as much or more as Lincoln's incumbency would hurt her. "The risk is that he wins the primary, and I think that guarantees a Republican victory," Janine Parry, a political science professor at the University of Arkansas and director of the Arkansas poll, said when I interviewed her last month. "If MoveOn.org doesn't like Blanche Lincoln, wait till they try to lobby John Boozman."
Turnout is expected to be low on Tuesday (it was just under 30 percent for the May 18 vote), and Halter might have the momentum, since the unions will likely have a huge get-out-the-vote drive. What's less clear is what that will mean for progressives in Arkansas and nationwide.
-- Monica Potts
