By Steve Brawner, © 2019 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

If you had no other metric by which to measure Arkansas’ U.S. Senate race, this one might tell you something: One campaign had enough money to cater its kickoff event with Chick-fil-A.

That would be the campaign of U.S. Senator Tom Cotton, the Republican incumbent in an increasingly Republican state.

Cotton has $3.5 million cash on hand, according to the Federal Election Commission. That’s more than enough to feed the hundreds at his campaign kickoff at the Republican Party of Arkansas’ headquarters Saturday.

There, Cotton signaled his campaign themes, as if there were any doubt about what those would be: national security, his natural passion, along with appointing conservative judges, the economy, cutting government, immigration, border security and trade.

Those last three are issues President Trump has brought to the forefront. Republican candidates cannot ignore them; Cotton has fully embraced them.

Cotton criticized President Obama and Obamacare and said Democrats have “lost their minds.” Sen. John Boozman, who spoke prior to Cotton, also made a crack about Speaker Nancy Pelosi now being “the most moderate Democrat on the Hill.”

One name that did not come up was Josh Mahony, Cotton’s Democratic opponent.

Mahony had gotten his name in the Democrat-Gazette that morning by criticizing Cotton’s support of Trump’s tariffs and saying Cotton is more focused on his own ambitions than on Arkansas. In that article, the Cotton campaign declined to respond.

Cotton probably will treat Mahony as a nonentity unless something happens to make him a threat, which is hard to imagine happening. Mahony has a little more than $51,000 cash on hand, according to the FEC. He won 32.6% running for the 3rd District congressional seat last year against U.S. Rep. Steve Womack.

Mahony kicked off his campaign last weekend in El Dorado, Fayetteville and Little Rock. The Little Rock event on Saturday drew several dozen supporters and some media to the front yard of Curran Hall, a city visitor center originally built as a home in 1842.

There, Mahony signaled his own campaign issues. He talked about access to health care for people with pre-existing conditions. He criticized Trump’s border detention policies and called for a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants brought to America as children. He said Cotton is working for corporate interests like Charles and David Koch, who own Georgia-Pacific facilities in Crossett and Hope that are cutting about 650 jobs.

Beating an incumbent is always difficult. In Arkansas, running statewide as a Democrat has become as challenging as it once was for a Republican.

How tough is it? Here’s how Democrats have fared in recent statewide races.

– 2018, Jared Henderson for governor, 32%

– 2016, Conner Eldridge for U.S. Senate, 36%; Hillary Clinton for president, 34%

– 2014, Sen. Mark Pryor for Senate, 39%; Mike Ross for Governor, 41.5%

– 2012, President Obama for president, 37%

– 2010, Sen. Blanche Lincoln for Senate, 37%

That’s an average of 36.6%. You don’t flip seats with numbers like that by changing voters’ minds – especially these days when few minds are open to change – or even by successfully getting your voters to the polls.

The exception might be something like the 2017 Alabama Senate special election, where Democrat Doug Jones beat Roy Moore because Moore had a history of pursuing underage women. But Cotton, the combat veteran, has no such embarrassing personal history.

The way to flip seats is through patience. Democrats will have to do what Republicans had to do for many years: Keep trying while waiting for changes in the national parties and national mood, and while waiting for the state’s demographics to change. Republican voters will have to die, and Democratic voters will have to move to the state, or be born and become old enough to vote. It could take a while.

Michael John Gray, the Democrats’ chairman, told me recently that some Democrats are waiting for things to change before running for office. But he said the party will not wait for them, not when candidates like Mahony are putting their names out there now, while it’s really hard.

As for Cotton, this is his first time to run for re-election, having moved from the U.S. House of Representatives to the Senate after one term. This term would end in 2026, when he could run for re-election.

That’s two years after a presidential election year, when he might be seeking another promotion.