By Steve Brawner, © 2025 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Can the right independent candidate running for the right office in the right circumstance win in Arkansas? Or must a candidate have a party label by his or her name on the ballot? 

We’ll have another chance to find out March 3.

The candidate in this case is Adam Watson of Branch, who is running to replace the late Sen. Gary Stubblefield, also of Branch. The office is state Senate District 26, which Stubblefield, a Republican, represented until his death in September. 

And the circumstance is the fact that the district includes Franklin County, where Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders has proposed building a 3,000-bed prison.

That prison has generated what Watson called “overwhelming opposition,” and so far it is stalled in the Legislature. Many Franklin County residents don’t want to bring a big prison into their community. Furthermore, Watson said the area does not have enough workers to fill the projected 800 staff positions. At the moment, the site lacks an adequate water supply and other needed infrastructure. And there are some hard feelings about the lack of communication between the Sanders administration and local residents.

Watson, who co-owns a company that refines butane and propane, founded an opposition group, Gravel & Grit, and has testified before the Legislature against the prison.

He doesn’t want the prison to change the area he chose to call home. The Houston, Texas native and his wife, Taylor, were looking to leave the big city three years ago when they saw an old dairy farm for sale on Craig’s List one night and then signed the contract the next day.

They had owned land south of Houston that was four miles from a prison. He said a prison “kind of takes over the DNA of an area.” Industry becomes dependent on supplying it or purchasing from it. Kids are raised with the expectation that the prison will be one of their few options for finding a job in their hometown. People leave if they can.

“We kind of have some experience with what a town with a prison in it, especially in a rural setting, what that ends up looking like,” he said. “And it’s very clearly not the environment that we’ve made a conscious decision to raise our family in.”

Watson worked with Stubblefield, a neighbor, in opposing the prison. Stubblefield’s son-in-law is a farrier who shoes the Watson family’s four horses. 

When Stubblefield passed, the thought of running crossed Watson’s mind. He said both parties approached him. He said his politics are “more centrist (skewing right) than the Democrats and are more tolerant/laissez-faire than the Republicans.” 

The easy way to run would be to just do it as a Republican. President Trump last year won Franklin County with 80% of the vote. 

But Watson said he wasn’t willing to compromise his values to run as a member of either party. He couldn’t run as a Republican because the prison issue was emblematic of what he sees as a larger problem with the state party. He said there’s too much concentration of power in the executive branch and not enough transparency or accountability. He’s not just running to stop the prison but to address these larger problems, which he said are more about the establishment versus the people than they are the left versus the right.

The Democrats, meanwhile, have swung too far to the left and have been rejected by local voters, he said.

Watson submitted 249 signatures from District 26 voters to qualify for the ballot. He needed 75. 

Now he just has to wait to see who he’ll be running against. Five Republicans are campaigning in the Jan. 6 primary: former Rep. Mark Berry, R-Ozark; Wade Dunn; Stacie Smith; Ted Tritt; and Brad Simon. Stubblefield’s family has endorsed Dunn. All of them have said they oppose the prison’s location. No Democrats filed. 

It’s very difficult to win without a party label. In fact, it’s difficult to win without having the exact right one: Republican in most of the state; Democrat in pockets. It will be interesting to see if the circumstances behind this race – the prison, voter anger, the fact that it will be a two-person race – will give Watson a chance. Or, will this just be another race where the Republican wins 65%?

We’ll know March 3. In the meantime, there’s a campaign to run. 

“I’m going to do the work and put in the shoe leather and shake the hands and kiss the babies,” Watson said. “Look, I feel like I’ve got a story and a reason for running and a background that is appealable to people. They just need to see my face and hear it.”

Steve Brawner’s column is syndicated to 20 outlets in Arkansas. Email him at brawnersteve@mac.com.