Icon (Close Menu)

Logout

Farewell to Democratic Tradition (Blake Rutherford On Politics)

7 min read

(Editor’s Note: This an opinion column, and the final Arkansas Business political column of the year by Blake Rutherford. You can revisit his previous work right here. Read Robert Coon’s take on this year’s midterms here.)

It was not too long ago that the Democratic Party was jubilant at its prospects in Arkansas.

It was 2006. Then-Attorney General Mike Beebe was leading the Democratic ticket to a sweep of constitutional offices in an election that, in the midst of the George W. Bush presidency, could have stemmed a rising Democratic tide. After all, the Republican Party had nominated Asa Hutchinson, who had served Bush as the administrator of the Drug Enforcement Agency and later as undersecretary at the Department of Homeland Security. But that year his campaign never gained traction, and Beebe won handily, 56 to 41 percent. Beebe took office with a Democratic coalition of constitutional officers and a majority in the state House and Senate.

Two years later, in 2008, former Arkansas first lady and then-U.S. Senator from New York Hillary Clinton announced that she was running for president.

It was a familiar moment for the thousands of people who remembered that warm, bright afternoon on the lawn of the Old State House when then-Gov. Bill Clinton launched his bid for the presidency against the incumbent George H.W. Bush. Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign was a blend of optimism and nostalgia; for Arkansas Democrats the possibility of reclaiming the White House was alluring and intoxicating. She defeated Barack Obama by 44 points in the Arkansas Democratic primary.

The prospects for state Republicans that year were so grim that Democratic incumbent U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor didn’t even field an opponent — an uncommon thing.

In the state Senate, Democrats ran unopposed for 12 of 18 seats on the ballot (the GOP ran unopposed for five), and Dems held the majority by a wide margin when the election was over. In the state House, the Democrats fielded a slate that resulted in a 71 to 29 seat majority.  

But nationally, Hillary Clinton lost the Democratic primary. While the young, dynamic torch bearer for “Hope and Change” won a resounding victory over Republican U.S. Sen. John McCain, Barack Obama lost Arkansas by 20 points. And as America experienced his rise, Arkansas succumbed to its pessimism and mistrust of the new president.

Despite a number of important accomplishments early in his tenure[1], Obama’s signature achievement, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, became his most controversial: it consumed the political psyche of the Arkansas electorate and dominated the discourse.

In 2010, Democratic incumbent U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln lost re-election by 20 points in significant part because of the ACA. The Republicans also won the offices of lieutenant governor, secretary of state, and land commissioner; and their presence grew by double digits in the state House and seven seats in the Senate.

Two years after that, in 2012 and amidst Obama’s re-election, the GOP won the majority in both houses of the General Assembly. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney beat Obama by 24 points in Arkansas, and if the state had been purple before then, it was a noticeable shade of pink by the time the 2014 elections began.

Still, the Democrats were optimistic, particularly about the Senate.

After all, Pryor was on the ballot and, to be sure, his campaign had a lot to glean from Lincoln’s anemic 2010 effort. That, and the Pryor name remained one of the strongest political brands in the history of Arkansas politics, as the late-Diane Blair explained in her 1995 article, “The Big Three of Late Twentieth-Century Arkansas Politics: Dale Bumpers, Bill Clinton and David Pryor.”

But the Democratic coalition and the traditions embodied by Bumpers, Clinton and Pryor had begun to erode.

As Blair observed, “By the last decade of the twentieth century it was clear that further changes were in process or on the horizon and that sooner rather than later a genuinely competitive Arkansas Republican party would emerge … As those with the deepest devotion to the Democratic party continued to be replaced by new generations not raised on tales of either the Civil War or the New Deal, Republican candidates all over the state became increasingly electable.”

Today

The age of Obama in Arkansas accelerated the viability and vitality of the Republican Party. When we consider the make-up of the state’s electorate today versus six years ago, we find that 35 percent self-identified as a Democrat, 33 were Independents and 24 percent were Republicans.

Today, the percentage of Independents remains the same, but Republicans now capture 28 percent of the electorate while the Democrats have 31 percent, an eight point swing. More telling, I think, is that among Independents, 43 percent of “very likely voters” are closer to the Republicans, while only 23 percent are closer to the Democrats.

Consider too the perception of both political parties. This year in Arkansas, the exit polls showed the Democratic Party with a meager favorability rating of 33 percent, 13 points behind the Republican Party, and an unfavorable rating of 62 percent, or 14 points higher than the Republicans. No one, not even Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe, had the personality and command of the voters to withstand that erosion despite a reasoned, balanced and bipartisan record. Beebe, it’s worth nothing, will leave office one of the most effective and popular governors in state history.[2]

In the end, there was little that Pryor could do. He ran a strong campaign but still lost by 17 points, a margin that surprised even the most ardent partisans. Perhaps once the data has been parsed, we will see circumstances beyond his control: the botched rollout of healthcare.gov, an IRS scandal, the advancement of ISIS into Iraq and the horrific beheadings that followed, and the lackadaisical response by the administration in the early days of the Ebola epidemic that affirmed the electorate’s pessimism and fueled their frustration.[3] In the final weeks, one-third of Arkansas voters made up their minds and broke for Cotton by a considerable margin, which is what happens in a wave election.

But that understates it, I think.

The Republicans won every constitutional office for the first time in history. Their brand was stronger, which is the simplest way to explain it. They defeated Democratic moderates Rep. James McLean of Batesville and Sen. Robert Thompson of Paragould in contested state Senate races, and will control 24 of 35 state senate seats. The GOP also amassed 64 of 100 seats in the state House, and in the process nearly eviscerated the Democrats’ presence in northeast Arkansas, once a stronghold. For the first time in history, all six federal offices will be occupied by Republicans.

The Republicans demanded change, and the voters acquiesced. It will be interesting to see if the factions within the state GOP align and, if not, how Gov.-elect Asa Hutchinson confronts the complexity of his caucus as the private option, tax reform, job creation, education, prison reform, tort reform and infrastructure crowd the agenda.

And Cotton, who is sure to be part of the national Republican discussion in 2016, now has an opportunity to prove the skeptics wrong by thwarting the obstructionist ambitions of his ally Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and focusing instead on the business of governing with Arkansans — and not just Obama — in mind.

As for the Democrats, Tuesday’s results mark the official end to an era that began 44 years ago when Dale Bumpers, then a lawyer from Charleston, burst onto the political scene to win the governorship. Together with the emergence and steady rise of David Pryor and Bill Clinton, they propelled and sustained the Democratic Party brand for more than four decades in Arkansas — a remarkable period in our political history.   

What happens next? It’s a challenging question considering that the Democrat with the largest political constituency in January will be Barry Hyde, the Pulaski County Judge-elect and former state representative from North Little Rock — surreal considering where the Democrats once were.

As I watched television late into the evening on Tuesday, I heard Howard Fineman of The Huffington Post declare on MSNBC, “The Dems have to reinvent themselves all over again. The Obama era is over.”

Fineman was speaking in a national context, but the point remains. If the Democrats hope to have a future statewide in Arkansas, are they willing to reinvent themselves? And, if so, who emerges to lead them?  



[1] The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which brought $2.9 billion into Arkansas and supported more than 1,200 projects and created more than 3,700 new jobs; expansion of the state Children’s Health Insurance Program, which provides funding for health care coverage to more than 64,000 low income children in Arkansas who are financially ineligible to receive coverage under Medicaid; and the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act are three examples of work completed in the first 100 days of the Obama administration.
[2] Across the country the Democrats suffered staggering losses, which suggests a broad repudiation of the president and his policies. It was, after all, Obama who said, “I am not on the ballot this fall … But make no mistake: these policies are on the ballot. Every single one of them.”
[3] Despite jobs and the economy being at the top of the list of voter concerns, these issues, which spoke to governmental competence, diminished Pryor’s ability to successfully market a broad economic message that demonstrated effectively the government’s success at addressing core issues like deficit reduction, unemployment and health care spending

(Blake Rutherford is vice president of The McLarty Companies and previously was chief of staff to the Arkansas attorney general. You can follow him on Twitter at BlakeRutherford.)

Send this to a friend