Hello again everyone.

Thanks for joining us for Arkansas Week.

A war undertaken by a president who had vowed to avoid the wars.

And the economic and political repercussions.

In a moment, we'll get an update from Washington on how the Arkansas delegation is reacting to the upheaval abroad and at home.

But first, politics closer to home.

It was primary season in Arkansas, and primary night had some significant implications for Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders legislative agenda and incumbency.

Some incumbents whirl up tests that sometimes incumbency doesn't work.

Not alone.

We're joined anyway by Hal Bass, emeritus professor of political science at Washington Baptist University, and independent journalist Steve Brawner.

Gents, thanks for coming aboard, Steve.

It was not a good night for Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Well, it was not.

Now, let's start off by by reiterating that she is still the governor.

She is still the most powerful statewide figure by far in Arkansas.

And she is was unopposed in her race.

And she also does not face much of a threat in the general election.

So it's not the worst time to be Governor Sanders, but she did not have a good night overall in that she had supported three, opponents of sitting incumbents.

I said she had supported three senators or three candidates in the races at the state Senate, including two who were opposing incumbents and the three that she was out front on the most that had donated $7,000 to her PAC, all lost and that was, that was Bobby Ballenger, her candidate, to try to throw in Senator Brian King.

That was a 6040 split.

And then Senator Arlen, a Caldwell, 7030 split easy victory.

And then Senator Blake Johnson was defeated in his race also.

So the three counties that she had supported at all lost in these competitive Senate primaries in the Republican Party, and two of those, they were strong opponents of the prisoners she's trying to build.

And so, you know, her legislative agenda is affected, somewhat.

And also just what happens for any kind of a chief executive over time.

Two things happen.

One is time just gets to you after a while, the where the welcome gets worn out a little bit.

So she may be ready.

Whether or not she's reaching that point, she's still not probably as strong as she was when she first came in.

The other is that people who are elected officials make mistakes.

And in at least one of those races, certainly the Ronald Calwell race, she bet on a horse that was deeply flawed and that will embolden, people who either want to oppose her occasionally or more than occasionally in the Senate and the House now.

Yeah.

How is it?

Is there any question that she's weaker than she was, you know, two weeks ago?

Well, I think certainly she's diminished in standing because she put her reputation on the line and it didn't pay off.

And just a couple of thoughts about, you know, putting this in broader, broader perspective.

If you look at nationally, there's not a great record for executives trying to purge fellow party members from legislative positions when primaries are the means of of election, the voters have not always respond well.

The most conspicuous example is Franklin Roosevelt.

He, at the height of his power in 1938, tried this and crashed and burned.

Now I will say that that her her former boss, President Trump, does seem to have a better record of, blocking, recalcitrant legislators.

A couple more quick points.

Building on what Steve said a minute ago, I think term limits have become a factor as of now, when an incumbent governor is seeking a second term and virtually assured us of success.

The clock is ticking for, being viewed as a lame duck.

This may well be the part of of that.

And the final point I would make is that a large legislative majority is always going to be fragile at the at the boundaries here, executive legislative conflict is normal here.

And we should not be surprised one when incumbents do win, but also when governors find themselves at odds with members of their own party.

And in the legislature.

Right, right.

And I just want to note that the candidates that she backed lost and they lost badly.

And they are candidates, as we noted of of her own party in a sense.

One wag mentioned yesterday, they called her bluff anyway and won anyway.

And that's what primaries do.

Yeah.

They allow incumbents to have a base of power independent of the party leader.

Yeah, Steve, there would also appear to be a schism building with it.

It was inevitable.

I mean, Republican, to start acting like Democrats.

You know, so there's kind of a schism within not only the Senate chamber, but possibly the House as well.

There's some people looking askance now at at the cost of the Lawns Act.

Well, some concerns the governor did present her budget yesterday, or at least beginning this beginning to present our budget added another 100 million, up to 300 million for loans.

There's going to be questions about that.

After there was a photo posted on Facebook of, Senator Caldwell, Senator Hickey and some others in red T shirts, kind of referring to Caldwell's opponent's, slow campaign slogan.

And Senator Hickey made a comment about how, we need to get elected officials that have been able to use some committees and dark money.

So this is this this is what happens.

The governor's budget was proposed.

She will almost certainly get virtually all of what she's asked for.

She's not at that point where she's completely, you know, a lame duck at all.

But there will, over time, be more, more conflict.

This is how the framers designed our system.

It's inevitable.

So this is just how it works.

And and we'll have a little bit more competitive situation.

And like Doctor Bassett said, it is almost easier for President Trump when his majorities are so small that he can hold everybody in line.

There's literally virtually it's almost a 5050 split in both the House and Senate in the in the Arkansas legislature.

It is very overwhelmingly Republican.

And so that gives the party members more room to oppose her.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We got to mention the governor's big ticket item.

We do not know yet whether she will attempt again to get the big prison project through the Senate.

Was her problem last time.

She felt what?

I think five consecutive votes and she failed to get it out.

Her position vis-a-vis the prison in the Senate would seem to have disintegrated since Tuesday night.

Yes.

It looks it looks weaker.

Now again, is she going to recalibrate or is she going to double down and keep the pressure going?

And I don't know.

We'll see.

There's already money appropriated for the prison at least for the earlier part I think is 75 million.

I think it's been that down for a while.

And after, you know, doing studies and eventually you can say you can.

The strategy could be, well, we'll spend a little bit here, a little bit there, and eventually you had to say, well, we've spent all this money.

We got to be nice.

We'll build it.

But we'll have to wait and see over the next two sessions over this fiscal session, which it doesn't seem likely.

The discussion is going to come up, I don't say.

It wasn't mentioned in her budget proposal yesterday.

Yeah.

And then we'll see what happens in the in the next general session next year.

Democrats are a little encouraged because they flipped one seat, yesterday.

So that brings them to what I think 20 members in the hell, you know, thankful for small favors.

I do think that, certainly nationally and to a lesser extent at the state level, the out party does tend to have a bit of an advantage in the midterm and in the special elections because their voters seem to have a little more energy, a little more commitment than the folks who won the previous time around.

So I think you're seeing, a little bit of that at this point, the wave of enthusiasm for the Democrats, particularly in bases like Pulaski County, is is stronger than it has been in recent recent years.

Yeah, it's an urban district in north Pulaski County.

I don't think the victory was unexpected.

The margin of good was.

Yeah, Hill won by a good margin.

Mayor Sanders did get a victory on the Supreme Court.

Her appointee now gets a full term.

Steve.

Right on Supreme Court.

Justice Nick brawny.

Moved over to a different position.

You can't succeed yourself.

But now he will have a full term.

She has a healthy majority in the Arkansas Supreme Court who are at least going to be friendly to her.

So that branch is is relatively friendly.

She also won several other legislative races.

Harkin is one.

She was a supporter of, cold gesture to be the land commissioner that she won there, too.

So in several ways, it was not the worst night possible for her, though.

Oh, and wait a minute.

Hell.

I'm sorry.

I was just going to observe that while we have, in theory, nonpartisan judicial elections, there's pretty clear signals that are going going out.

There's no and more working on both on on both sides.

And the voters clearly seem to understand the Partizan implications of their electoral decisions because they track very clearly, cleanly with the, overall, we should mention races.

Yeah, we should mention another statewide races in that Secretary of state, we have three Republican and they split it right down.

Well, each got a third in math.

I guess my observation there is that this particular race gave us a chance to see what the Republican coalition looks like in Arkansas at this particular point in time, because you had an incumbent legislator with some statewide recognition.

Mr.. Identified with the religious right.

You had a county judge from Texarkana, more in the, I guess, the classical good government, economic conservative mainstream.

And then you had a activist who is really, you know, focused on cleaning up the electoral process by going back to paper, paper ballots.

And, and he led the ticket.

And I think that that he led the race.

And it seems to me that that tells us something about where we are within the Republican coalition.

Yeah, some.

And now we'll have a runoff for that position.

Yeah.

And they will only they will be the only statewide race in the ballot.

So turnout will be extremely low.

And so much of it will determine not just who actually we'll be talking about, who actually just shows up to vote.

One thing Senator Hamer in his district does have a competitive sheriff's race in a runoff.

Would that be enough to help him?

Is only a 2000 vote difference separating the two in the in the primary?

So that will have to be remain to be seen.

What happens?

Yeah.

Okay.

And finally, Pulaski County, two incumbents ousted the county judge and the prosecuting attorney.

I don't know anybody who could definitively predict what was going to happen, but that no one else did that.

Certainly the conventional wisdom was not borne out.

Apparently.

And again, I don't live in Pulaski County, but there was some controversy over land use policies, that that Wendell Griffin was able to, build on.

Yeah.

As he sought to, replace Mary had as the Democratic nominee for county judge and, fairly high didn't generate much campaign energy focusing on getting out, getting out the vote.

But again, who's kind of on the radar for me?

And I wasn't paying a lot of attention to this.

I do think the prosecutor's race got a lot more attention because of the scandal, the spending and the engagement of the legal community in making clear its preference.

Sure.

Yeah.

Steve, any thoughts?

Well, Judge Griffin has a history of more civil rights activism rather than county administration.

But he also has, you know, he is well known in Arkansas and especially in Pasco County.

So that that was probably a part of it, too, is just his.

And he has an opponent and a member.

That's good.

And so yeah.

And so was that to see I guess the the his his his his his legacy and his history, was enough to, to really win decisively.

It was and it was a landslide victory.

We'll hear more about it.

And I predicted that in the weeks to come.

Thanks, guys, for coming in, as always.

And we'll be right back.

And we are back to Malta at home and abroad, enough to make some local politicians wish that all politics was again local.

Suffice it to say that the Arkansas delegation, all six Republicans have their hands full.

We're joined now by Alex Thomas, the Washington bureau chief of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

As always, Alex, thanks for coming aboard.

Thanks for having me, Steve.

With the the I guess, the place to start is since we just had a primary and, the marquee race, I think it's fair to say, at least on the federal level, is, Cotton Schaffner.

That promises to be a barn burner, even though Mr.

Cotton still has kind of heavily favored.

Right.

I think if Las Vegas were to put odds on that race, they would put all the chips towards cotton.

Just with how the state has been going more right politically.

But also think about this, Steve.

A year ago, Haley Schaffner, who's from the Newport area, was closing down her family farm.

Now she's a candidate for U.S.

Senate.

When I talked to her Tuesday night.

It was an emotional conversation.

It was a humbling experience for her.

That's what she told me, because a year ago, she didn't know what she was going to do.

So now comes the challenge of how do you go against Vegas?

How do you go against what people think this race is going to end up as to make this race as competitive as possible?

And she's going to have her hands full in trying to do that.

Well, she obviously had, you know, the Arkansas Democratic establishment, such as remains of it behind her.

I mean, it was an easy 8020 win for her.

So that gives her at least a little absolutely.

Yeah.

She's done great on social media, been great on trying to build that outreach.

What she needs to do if she wants to make this race competitive is go to those kitchen table issues.

What are the average Arkansans talking about right now?

And that's not a knock on Senator Cotton saying he's not doing that.

But cinder cotton strengths are on things like foreign policy intelligence.

Schaffner has an opportunity to really engage with voters on things they think about day in, day out.

And again, she has an agricultural background.

With the way that farming is right now in Arkansas, there has to be farmers in the state that feel uneasy about how this crop year is going to end up.

In fact, a few of them are in D.C.

this week asking Congress to do more because there's just so much uncertainty right now in the industry.

Yeah, you did not say the word, but I think I heard it anyway.

And that's affordability.

That's the one that's going to be driving in so many races across the country anyway.

On the Democratic side.

Absolutely.

That's what Trump and Republicans ran on back in 2024, saying that the Biden administration and congressional Democrats made things unaffordable in two years since the 2024 presidential election cycle.

It seems not much has changed, and for a lot of people, it may have even gotten worse.

Senator cotton, the Republican, have been touting the One Big Beautiful Bill act, keeping those tax cuts in place as well as the tax changes.

But will that be enough to convince voters that things are actually heading in the right direction economically?

Yeah.

Mrs.

Schaffner recently told a gathering of Democrats, I'm not trying to turn Arkansas blue again.

I just want Arkansas to return to normal.

That hey, what is normal in these in this day and time and be.

Can she pull that off?

Will that sell?

Well, I think a good comparison to that argument would be someone like John Tester, who was a Democratic senator from Montana.

He lost back in 2024.

But at the same time, tester wasn't one of the stereotypical Democratic figures.

He was a farmer, blue collar.

He understood the lay of the land, like a lot of people want Democrats to understand kind of a Joe Manchin.

We tap into that.

Yeah, exactly.

As someone who covered Joe Manchin for a good bit in his career, you know, the good thing about Manchin was that, yes, if you're a Democrat, he was annoying at times to deal with.

But at the same time, he could be votes that you needed to get right above that cut line to get legislation done.

When we were talking about permitting reform last year and this year, he mentioned, look, I would have been one of the guys who would have backed permitting reform, but now I'm not there.

And if Republicans want to get it done, they need to convince more Democrats than just the Joe Manchin is out there.

And those Joe Manchin in Congress right now are few and far between.

Yeah.

You mentioned a second ago you mentioned missioners, ag roots.

And certainly that can be important.

You know, we have the tariffs and the and the impact on the soybean market, soybean sales and the other uncertainties.

Now we have even greater uncertainty on petroleum prices.

Farmers use a lot of diesel.

So that's one more element.

That uncertainty that's hanging over the market now would seem would seem to work against the GOP in this in this season.

Is it cannon right.

Yeah.

And I talked to Representative Crawford yesterday about that actually.

And that was in the frame of the House Agriculture Committee working on a new farm bill, the farm Bill 2.0, mostly ag programs and nutrition programs that had been done in the previous year through the One Big Beautiful Bill act.

But right now they're trying to finish some other work with some other agricultural farm bill programs.

But even he realized Iran and the conflict that's happening right now in the Middle East is going to affect farmers here in the United States.

Agriculture is suffering a lot, Steve.

It's been a rough few years.

Party politics aside, people want to blame Joe Biden.

People want to blame Donald Trump.

The problems that exist in and right now surpass party politics.

And if we're going to help the water industry, lawmakers have to be willing to put up solutions to help farmers.

And that's going to mean compromise, or that's going to mean sticking your neck out a little bit further to help an industry that is very prominent in states like Arkansas.

All that said, Mr.

Cotton is loaded for bear, as is Senate Republicans across the country.

Right.

Senator cotton is not.

He doesn't have to worry about money anytime soon when it comes to his campaign.

I get fundraising emails from him and even I'm like, dude, you have like $9.7 million cash on hand.

You're doing okay right now.

And the thing is, also because he has been up here since January of 2013, first in the House and then in the Senate.

He has networks, he has people that he works with.

He has committees that his committees work with.

And so he understands how to run an effective campaign.

But as someone on the Republican side of things told me once, you always run like you're ten points behind.

That's very evident right now because the Senate Republicans campaign arm has been going after Schaffner since just about September.

They saw her as the nominee.

They didn't even look at Ethan Dunbar.

They saw her as the person who was going to run against cotton, and they're doing their best.

Despite her quick and early in this race.

Yeah, well, you mentioned the Mr.. Mr.

cotton has almost 10 million in the bank.

He could get another 10 million with a snap of the fingers, maybe even 20.

The stakes are that high for the GOP in Washington.

Right.

And keep in mind, Senator Con is an experienced lawmaker.

But when he became a House member back in 2013, he was right about how he was age.

I mean, he is somebody who is a senior member, but still in his late 40s, about to enter his 50s.

He's someone who could be in this town for a long time.

And he's still relatively young.

Considering the age of a lot of lawmakers out on Capitol Hill, right.

Well, we have yeah, we have some other House races at, too, but none of the Arkansas delegation I've got on the House, of course, would seem to face extremely tough opposition.

Right.

I think that was evident on Tuesday.

When you look at that GOP primary in the second Congressional District, French Hill easily won his primary over Chase McDowell.

And French is an interesting case.

The congressman leads the House Financial Services Committee, which has actually been probably the most active committee on the House side of the Capitol.

They have pushed legislation on cryptocurrencies.

It looks like push legislation on housing affordability.

And they've actually got legislation not just to the Senate, but also to the white House.

So if you're someone like Chris Jones, you have to figure out where has French come up short?

Where has Congressman Hill not been effective enough in addressing issues in central Arkansas?

Chris Jones obviously has the energy.

He has the passion, he has the enthusiasm.

But he needs to find those gaps to get people to understand he can be a difference maker here in Washington.

Yeah.

Is is there a path forward?

I mean, as a as an observer from the see anyway, is there a path forward?

Is it affordability.

Is it lunch bucket issues.

Well there's always a path forward.

You never count your chickens before they hatch.

But the hard part for any Democrat running in Arkansas, whether it's Schaffner, whether it's Chris Jones, whether it's James Russell, the third in the fourth district who won his primary, is the fact that one our guys are well networked to, our guys are, well senior.

And three, you are in a state that has gone more and more politically right.

How do you get people to ignore the R and D next to people's names and talk about the real issues that matter?

I think affordability is going to be a big issue.

I think we need to see what happens with Iran in the coming months.

Do Americans want to go to another Middle Eastern war with the memories of Iraq and Afghanistan still relatively fresh?

I remember when those operations began.

And so those are going to be things we're going to have to watch in the coming months.

And if Republicans and Democrats alike can address those issues on the campaign trail and bring out an effective message.

Yeah.

Well, and you mentioned it.

And that's the final deal here.

And that's where we are, again, at war thus far from any of the Arkansas six.

I have not heard a discouraging word, at least in terms of the administration.

So evidently at this stage, anyway, they're they're comfortable with where the administration is or if they're on top, if they're uncomfortable, they're not saying so.

Right.

And the thing we have we have to remember here, Steve, is the fact that Senator Cotton leads Senate Intel, representative Crawford leads House Intel.

They know things that we don't know.

And I'm not saying that because the, you know, they're acting like they're special or acting like they're different.

The Intel committees handle sensitive, classified information that if it were to get in the public, it could jeopardize national and international security.

They just have information that the average person doesn't.

And they're standing behind the president saying that this is the right way to do things, saying that Iran has been aggressive towards the United States and its allies over the last nearly five decades.

And it's time for that to be at an end.

But at the same time, how fresh do the memories of Iraq and Afghanistan remain that needs to be seen in the coming weeks and months?

Yeah, speaking of time, it's time for us to go because we're simply out of it.

Alex, always a pleasure.

Thanks for coming aboard again.

Yes, sir.

Thank you.

Steve.

Yeah, we'll see you next time.

And that goes for us as well.

As always.

Thank you for watching and we'll see you next time.