By Steve Brawner
© 2016 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

They say it’s always darkest before dawn. After this year’s election, and the days afterwards, Democrats in Arkansas have to be wondering if they’ve reached that point, or if it’s still only about 3 a.m.

Republicans, of course, won the presidential election in Arkansas, easily won the U.S. Senate race, and were re-elected in all four congressional races, three of which didn’t even produce a Democratic opponent.

As of the morning after the election, Republicans had picked up nine seats in the state House of Representatives, giving them 73 out of 100, and two seats in the Senate, giving them 26 out of 35. In 2008, Democrats controlled 102 of the 135 seats.

For Democrats, that was pretty dark. Then, the day after the election, one of their own, Rep. Jeff Wardlaw of Hermitage, switched parties, and on Nov. 22, another Democrat, Rep. David Hillman of Almyra, switched as well. Republicans now have 75 of the 100 House members – a three-fourths supermajority allowing them to pass all appropriations bills without having to worry about Democratic objections, and they’re one short of having that same majority in the Senate. Another Democratic legislator is seriously considering switching.

Bluntly speaking, what’s happening in Arkansas is what’s already happened throughout the South: Rural white Democrats are disappearing at the state and national levels. With a dwindling number of exceptions, the Democrats remaining in the Legislature increasingly represent urban areas, or they are minorities representing districts with large minority populations.

Those remaining rural white Democratic legislators know they are faced with three choices, which sometimes are spelled out explicitly to them by Republicans in power: Switch parties so they can stay in office; decline to run again and leave office gracefully; or stick with their party and probably lose if they have a decent Republican opponent. Six Democratic incumbents chose that last option this year, and they lost.

The vestiges of 150 years of Democratic dominance will take a while to reverse. Democrats still control a majority of all partisan elected offices thanks to their strength at the county level. Those offices will turn over more slowly because they aren’t term-limited and because county officials have staying power. Democrats are pouring resources into their county committees because they know it’s where they are still strong.

But Republicans are making gains at the county level, too. According to numbers supplied by the Republican Party of Arkansas, this election Republicans picked up seven county judges’ seats to reach 25 out of 75, and nine sheriff’s offices to reach 21, with another candidate in Hot Spring County still to face an independent in a runoff. The party increased its number of justices of the peace from 248 to 295. Republicans now control almost 39 percent of all partisan offices in Arkansas, excluding surveyors and constables. In 2010, they controlled 11 percent.

For Republicans, this might be too much of a good thing. They’re not going to turn anybody away, of course, but party discipline is easier to enforce with a small majority of party loyalists than with an overwhelming majority that includes ex-Democrats.

Democrats, meanwhile, must figure out some way to appeal to culturally conservative Arkansans despite their national party moving in the other direction. Rep. Michael John Gray of Augusta, who says he’s running for the party chairmanship in March, said Democrats must focus on “kitchen table” issues, rather than more controversial “coffee shop” ones, and reclaim the spirit that existed when Roosevelt Democrats were seen as offering hope to the common man.

In the meantime, let’s all hope both parties expand their bases – certainly past geography and most certainly past race. One hopeful sign is that the newly elected county judge in Washington County, home to Fayetteville and Springdale, is Joseph Wood, a Republican and an African-American.

For much of Arkansas’ post-Civil War history, Democrats weren’t just a majority party but practically the only one. During those years, Arkansas was less a one-party state than a no-party state.

Republicans will not reach that point, but at the state and national levels, they are dominant and becoming more so. Democrats ran things for a century and a half. How long will this realignment last? Hard to tell, because the Republican era is just now dawning.