And hello again, everyone, and welcome back to Arkansas Week.

Believe it or not.

And you had best believe that primary Election day is just around the corner in Arkansas, just a couple of weeks away.

Both parties have candidates for statewide and district offices, and there are also some rather interesting campaigns underway for seats in the General Assembly, the Senate in particular.

And for the first time, a political party in Arkansas is permitting only its duly registered faithful or perhaps newly registered faithful to cast ballots on board.

And this edition is some old friends Hal Bass, emeritus professor of political science at Wash at All Baptist University, Republican consultant Richard Bearden, and dependent journalist Steve Bronner.

And with a bit of blue in his background, Jay Barth of the political science staff at Hendrix College.

And thanks to everybody for coming in.

Hal, Sir Hal of the Longview, where is Arkansas right now compared to the rest of the nation, or is it of a piece with the rest of the nation?

I think we are more in sync with the rest of the nation than we were certainly a generation ago.

I think one of the major effects of the party sorting and the polarization that has occurred over the last few decades has been to end traditional parochialism and exceptionalism around the country and give us much more, similar circumstances across the board.

Rural voters in north or south, east or west urban voters, north or south, east and west.

Educated and educated.

Seems like there's more uniformity across the categories and less in terms of location than was back in the day.

Yeah, Richard, totally agree.

I was in Virginia, two years ago for a trip to historic sites up there.

Virginia's a very purple state.

You would not have known that in rural Virginia.

Red as all get up.

No different than northeast Arkansas, northwest Arkansas.

You get to Richmond.

Different story.

So same here.

Pulaski County, little Rock, very, blue and variable and pockets.

Maybe you were a Springs, but the rest of the state pretty solid red.

So I totally agree that it's it's really a urban versus rural East coast versus the middle of America right now.

Yeah.

Steve.

And that makes the primary elections really, potentially more interesting than the general election, because the general election, when we know who's going to win, Republicans are going to win in most of the places that Republicans win, and Democrats are going to win in the few places that they still win.

And that's just that's well, let's be fair and balanced now.

That's just the way it is.

I don't think that's even you can look at the national trends that are occurring and how supposedly this is going to be a midterm election where the president's party loses vote, loses seats in the House, that that kind of thing is not going to happen in Arkansas.

You might see a small turnover in the state legislature, 1 or 2 seats, but not much that we can we can pretty much predict how we can game out, how this is going to happen for much of this of the season.

Yeah.

Jay Barth.

Yeah, I think that totally, of course, totally agree that we've become very nationalized.

But that's what makes party primaries super interesting because that's where, the real battles occur, right?

We've got really competitive, primaries on both sides, across the state, both in terms of county offices, as well as state legislative seats.

And I think that's really where the action is.

And so in many ways, you know, we're back to the 1970s in a lot of ways.

And the true action is, in terms of who wins or which party represents is going to be, be happening, in the next few weeks.

Yeah.

Really, really not in November, matter at all.

Well, let's stay with Jerry for just a second.

What, as you see it, Jay, you would not dispute.

I don't suppose that this rural urban split, in American politics, certainly in Arkansas politics, is, it seems ever more pronounced.

Yeah.

And it's, I think, reinforced in Arkansas because of the, the education, gap that exists in the state is the correlation between rurality and low, relatively low college going rates and urbanity and some suburban, little Arkansas where you have higher rates of education.

And so that really, locks in that, that urban rural split.

So I think it's both an urban rural mindset difference.

But then it's also some of these key demographic, differences that get reinforced, especially, in Arkansas, the little bit of an exception in terms of race, where race, voters of color, of course, show themselves both in urban and rural, Arkansas.

Yeah.

Well, in the Delta.

Yeah.

Of course, incumbency is an overwhelming factor.

So let's kind of run the races.

We have spirited primaries.

Excuse me.

And for the U.S.

Senate race, for example, Mr.

Cotton, plainly, Steve, the odds on favorite for renomination and, and despite a very spirited campaign thus far by Mr.

Schaffner, I would say he's still the favorite.

Right.

The action right now is in the the primary side of it.

Yeah.

He does not have a he has only token opposition.

In the primaries.

Same really for the other candidates, the other incumbents.

Interesting race over in the Democratic side for the Senate with between Ethan Dunbar and Haley Schaffner.

Haley Schaffner, has come to the place.

I mean, she is running a professional campaign with fundraising with with people she has apparent she has apparent, some national support, or at least she's raising money like she is.

Ethan Dunbar has not even filed a financial report that says something, but we still have to have the election, and that's.

We'll see who wins.

Who wins on March 3rd.

While she is plainly energized, the traditional Democratic base.

Certainly.

And I think one reason is a lot of what we say earlier, she does come from a rural background.

She's got a farming family, heritage there, and it seems to me she's trying to restore a democratic presence in the rural areas.

It's been a lot of European sort of thing, Richard.

Well, I just say it's uphill battle.

I looked up, I think Sarah Cotton's got $9.5 million.

She has raised $1 million, which is an impressive number.

We pulled some numbers from a race the other day.

And so this was in Clay County, Clay County, you know, a cornerstone at one time of of sort of Democrat politics up north and northeast Arkansas, Jonesborough again, long time, key piece for Democrat turnout and Michigan.

Eight registered voters in the state, only 300,000 registered specifically by party.

But in that area, when we pulled traditional primary voters, consistent primary voters, Republican versus Democrat, it was an 8 to 1 split, Republican to Democrat.

Again, this is, some of the counties that, Nick Wilson used to represent a very key, powerful member of the Senate.

So, you know, the one thing I would say is, again, it is just completely flipped the rural part of the state.

And when that flip took place, county judges, county sheriffs, county clerks, eventually, since the mid, 2000, teens have all become Republican.

All those primaries we're talking about, a local level are all in the Republican side.

So I think, while we're still.

That's right.

All the way down, city councils in some cases.

So there will be some spirited primaries.

I think in the end, I don't know that any of our federal delegation will change.

All right.

We'll looking down the road, the governor would seem to be in fairly good shape, at least in terms of of November.

But she has an interesting situation.

Let's go ahead and skip to the General Assembly's interesting situation.

Some of her choices governors have always, in my experience anyway, subtly made a preference known in primaries, for the last two administrations.

Well, actually, three the governors have made been pretty overtly, made overt endorsements in there.

And that's Richard, this case this time it is, I think, you know, let's let's maybe start on the river Valley.

You had, done, versus Simon.

The governor did not play as strong in that race.

You had, Wade done ran a strictly anti prison campaign.

That was really his only, issue out there.

Almost sort of an angry campaign, if you will.

He leads in the primary, loses nearly 2 to 1.

And the runoff, why is that?

I think part of it is Simon did run.

I really textbook campaign.

He had mail, he had radio, he had door to door campaigns.

But I also think he said there are disagreements.

I may have on this prison.

There are other things I find cause good common cause with the governor.

And so I think for her, that was probably a big win without being too deep into it.

Some of these other races, you know, she's a little more, open at her preference.

We'll see each of those races, the King race, the Caldwell race and the race up in Northeast Arkansas with Blake Johnson.

Each of those are very specific to those voters, too.

So, you know, I don't know that the governor is going to be the key factor in every one of those, but she certainly has a deep interest in where those races turn out.

Well, and, Steve, it's because parts of her legislative program in the next two sessions, or at least in the foreseeable future, are could be profoundly affected by the outcome of this, this season, the prison being the obvious one.

She's first one.

You failed five votes in the past session.

Senator King is obviously a major opponent and often contrarian anyway, so not surprising that she has poured $7,000 from her PAC into his opponent's campaign.

More surprising is probably her support of or her opposition to Senator Caldwell.

From when, not a bomb thrower, but against the prison.

And so she is throwing all of her another 7000 in support of his opponent, Trey Bohannan.

Senator Caldwell has announced his intention to run for Senate President pro tem, if he wins that, if he wins the election and then wins that position, that'll be interesting.

Dynamic.

In politics, you must have a short memory.

And so they would us, presumably, if that all works out that way, they would do fine.

But she has she definitely has thrown her her support against against two opponents of two incumbent Republican senators.

Well, her choice it would appear in Senator Johnson as Richard mentioned a moment ago that that race up there in Clay County and that surrounding area, the demographics would seem to help, would seem to favor, the senator, his opponent know, I think, the geography of the demographics, it strikes me that that the governor's goal appears to be to try to stack the deck for the policy agenda going going forward.

What remains to be seen, as Richard noted, was whether the voters in the primary are going to be motivated by that particular issue or more district specific issues in candidate specific issues.

No, I and I completely agree it.

Again, it's it's going to be three now very distinct races.

Like Johnson chairman of the Insurance and Commerce Commission, very powerful commission committee in the legislature.

Aldridge, of course, is a legacy.

His father was a state senator years before.

They've got deep ties.

But it could really come down to a Greene County versus Clay County.

Right now, more people live in Greene County.

So I think in that one, it might not be the deep, you know, who's going to be the president pro tem of the Senate?

It may be more do we want somebody from this county versus that county?

So I think some of these, again, will play subtly.

It'll really just come down to you like your state senator or do you not like your state geography over ideology?

In other words, yes.

Yeah.

J Barth.

Yeah.

I'm, I'm super interested in the I'm interested in all these, these races for different reasons.

But the the special election in district 26, the that was where the Republican, runoff just happened.

You know, I think clearly the Republican, you know, Brad Simon's going to win that race, but there is a little bit of an experiment going on in that, Adam Watson, who founded that that gravel and grit group that has been the the grassroots opposition.

The prison is running as an independent and, there's some indication, of course, that the the loser of that runoff is not supportive of a Brad.

He explicitly said so said he was not supporting his, the Brad Simon.

And it's kind of an interesting experiment in how much the Democratic brand is costing, candidates in rural Arkansas is if this independent candidate, you know, overperform significantly, we may start to see that experiment or other candidates in rural Arkansas who are more progressive on issues run as independents rather than as Republicans, as we've seen in some US Senate races, like in in Nebraska and South Dakota, where the Democratic brand, is a really challenged, brand at this stage of the game, downright toxic.

Let's go to how bass here because this is something we're all interested in and that is the close, the primary this year.

Sure.

What effect has this game?

We'll see.

In terms of why the change?

It's it's a normal response of a political party organization to want to have relative control over the most precious thing it has to bestow.

And that is the party, the party nomination.

I think there is a fear of crossover voting and, writing opportunities, but I think that fear is very much, overstated.

There are simply not enough registered Democrats.

Richard gave us statistics just a moment ago to be affected by by this, statewide at any rate, I think the really more interesting question is, the symbolic as opposed to the substantive significance of this, change.

And it strikes me, at least speculatively, that what we may see be seeing is the majority Republican Party comfortable with the magnitude of its electoral coalition and not particularly interested in conversion at the at the margins, more focusing on mobilization of voters as opposed to to converting and not seeing the advantage that they benefited from in recent decades in their rise in terms of allowing Democrats to participate.

Yeah.

Richard, turnout.

No.

To, completely agree.

And look, I was the executive director of the state party back in the late 1990s when, it was the exact opposite, as Jay mentioned in the 70s, you know, if you won the primary as a Democrat, you were more than likely going to win the general election.

In fact, you always won the joke back in the 90s.

In the 80s, even, you know, if you were chairman of the Republican Party and we didn't have a candidate, you had to run because especially for governor.

So Ken Coon and Lynn Blaylock, you know, were very token candidates for governor because you had to garner 3% of the vote.

I think, again, what has happened in rural Arkansas?

It's so not just Benton County in Washington County, but in, you know, Polk County and in severe county, those local elected officials, at some point in the mid, 2000, simply flipped party registration, sometimes right before the election, sometimes right after the election, they were elected as Democrats.

Which party?

And I think, you know, Republican, party officials at some point said, hey, we need to make sure that only ideological Republicans are voting in these races.

So, you know, I think this was the first election, which they sort of, followed, the state law that was passed to check which primary you'd voted in.

So, again, 1.8 million voters, only 300,000 actually have an R by their name.

The rest of them are really being, sort of, tagged out, if you will.

By which primary they voted in last.

So we'll see what the experiment.

Yeah.

Steve, you can vote in the Republican primary unless you are a registered Democrat.

Yeah.

That is the only group that's excluded whether members of other parties are 700 libertarians, they can vote in a Republican primary, no questions asked.

There's a couple of the Green Party members.

There is one other.

I don't know who it is, but one contrary in other in this entire state is on another party.

So 4.8% of the state is excluded from the Republican primaries.

Those were registered Democrats.

Everybody else, 87% of us are optional.

We aren't in any party, so.

Or at least technically so all that's that's who's excluded is the Democrats.

Yeah.

J bar should we look to, to this new rule to shape our politics much.

Yeah.

I'm, I'm a little worried about it.

Not because of the substantive outcomes I think is, as is was said, I think it's just going to lead to a lot of confusion, especially this first time out.

And I think just for me, for those of us who care deeply about civic engagement and people, having an open door to participate, I think it's it's in some signals about a door being, partially closed.

I think there's going to be some confusion, probably most likely in some of the rural counties where there are still some older, registered Democrats going back to the day before the 1990s, as Richard said, where the action was on the Democratic side.

So I think that's going to be the interesting story of the first week is how much of this confusion, there is.

Yeah.

We need to touch on a couple of congressional districts that have primaries, and that's the second on the fourth.

Steve, any thoughts on that?

Well, we've got incumbents, of course, in both it's second with reps in French here on the fourth with representative.

Bruce Westerman, as a Democratic primary.

Not much to, I mean, it would be hard to imagine, Representative Hill losing, in fact, I, I just had recently a big win in the House passing, banking, house home ownership reform.

Yeah.

So these are not competitive at this point.

And in the fourth district, that's, Democratic primary for the for the right to face a very difficult to beat opponent.

So hard to get excited about the congressional primaries.

The action is going to be, there's some state races.

The secretary of state would be kind of interesting in the Republican primary.

Land Commissioner.

And then, the state Senate races are really the most interesting races on the ballot.

Yeah.

Well, as mentioned, Secretary of State, because it's could be a very, very, very important office, more than just a caretaker, Richard.

Three, three candidates, probably to that, more than administrative, I should say.

Yes, absolutely.

Petition counting and, ballot access in a lot of ways, you know, of state senator, well-known longtime state senator, Kim Hammer.

And then you got a county judge down in Miller County.

They're running, but still a very low information race.

I don't think I've gotten much information on either of those candidates.

So we'll see in the last month going in, you know, again, one candidate's going to have county judge, you know, there's going to have state senator, the others just going to be blank name.

And some of those areas where there's not a lot of information is sometimes people eeny, meeny, miney, moe and they pick the first guy on the ballot.

So I actually think those are both flat.

So that's a wide open race that, you know, we may know on election night what the turnout depends where the turnout is.

Central Arkansas versus South Arkansas.

Who's the winner is.

But no clear winner right now.

Today our thoughts on that I think that Secretary of State's race in the Republican side does indicate kind of the factional divisions within the Arkansas Republican Party these days.

And it's you got more of an old traditional, economic based Republican than you've got the more office holding, element you've got, the more MAGA type.

I think the totals will give us some sense of where the balance of power is within the Republican Party.

There's any other race that's on the ballot this time around.

Going back to the congressional races, the issue there is, what kind of turnout does the Democrats get in their, primary?

What it can tell us about what to look forward to in the, fall.

It's not the outcome that's going to matter.

It's can the Democrats lower the margins here as an indication of a wave across the country?

Yeah.

And and this if we have for reverberate or at least for the foreseeable future, buried speaker O'Neill's admonition that all politics is local, if it's all national now j bar the, there would seem to be the the incumbent president and his administration have some pretty anemic ratings right now.

A lot of controversy out of Washington, a lot of disputatious, dialog up there.

Is any of this filtering down?

Could any of this have any measurable impact on the politics in Arkansas?

Jake, I think the, you know, in general, no, I think that we are seeing, Republican candidates talking about the president a little bit less this, this year than in previous, the last few cycles.

I think Democratic the Democratic base is, is pretty fired up.

Generally.

But it's a small base, as has already been said.

I think the one place where it might matter is this, district special election for district 70, house seat in North Little Rock.

It was the closest, House seat, out there, two years ago.

We have a repeat Democrat running against a new, a new a new, new Republican, because obviously that that seat is open.

And I do think that that's the one place where you might have some impact of some of these national patterns at the local level in Arkansas.

But that's a that's a maybe because I think that's going to also have personality and local issues, surrounding, it as well.

I do think the one thing that we're going to see, going back to turnout, we're going to see a little bit of a checkerboard story in terms of turnout.

We're going to see from counties where it's turnout is pretty relatively high, where there's just a lot of local action.

And then we're going to see counties, I think, where there's just abysmal turnout because there's so little going on at the at the local level.

Yeah, Richard Howell mentioned the second ago and that, that the tensions may be within the Republican Party as opposed to between the two parties.

You've got the, you know, the hard right MAGA base and, and the what has been the more mainstream Republican look, let's just use the state Senate as sort of a microcosm of where we are.

You may remember several years ago there was the Brotherhood, a combination of Republican and Democrat senators that sort of worked against, the power base, if you will, to create a new power base.

There are only six Democrat senators in the state Senate.

So really, the power struggle now is between, senators that are more supportive of the governor's policies and some senators that maybe don't agree as much on some key pieces to them that, that they don't want to be in solidarity with the governor, that that's really what these I think remaining, 3 or 4 Senate seats out there are going to be about it's really not going to be about whether, the President Trump's right or wrong on immigration or anything else.

It's going to be about, again, local issues and where maybe their senator stands on some of the governor's key points, the Lions Act and the prison.

I don't necessarily know if, you know, Ron Caldwell winds.

It's a rejection of everything the governor's for, but it will certainly solidify where the state is, I think.

And our party is, in terms of this coalition in the Senate and the legislature.

Yeah, Steve, we've got about 30s to on it.

And currently right now is if there's a power struggle, it's not a 5050 split right now.

The the legislature is mostly pro Sanders at this point.

Yeah.

So it depends on how big it gets the opposition and what it will be able to stop.

And also just how the fact that Governor Sanders will be in her second term the next time that they, they meet in the regular session, how what how that dynamic will change things.

Because every time a governor's power begins to wane, is there in there a longer a longer, long period?

Yeah, all of us.

All right, gentlemen, thank you for coming in.

That does it for us this week.

Bass, Bronner, Bearden and Bath LLC.

So come back soon.

Thank you for having me.

Thank you, as always for watching.

And we'll see you next week.