Category Archives: Elections

Another Senate candidate – maybe

Elections, Independents and third parties, Politics, U.S. Congress
Ricky Harrington is the Libertarian nominee for Senate.

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

Sen. Tom Cotton has another opponent as of Saturday – maybe.

The Libertarian Party of Arkansas held its convention that day and nominated Ricky Harrington, 34, of Pine Bluff to run against Cotton and the only announced Democrat, Josh Mahony.

Libertarians support very limited government. They are to the right of Republicans on tax and spending issues. They are to the left of many Democrats on some other issues, such as opposing the drug war and the use of force in general.

Prison reform is one of Harrington’s biggest concerns. An employee of the prison system, he supports reducing the size of Arkansas’ inmate population, particularly with respect to nonviolent offenders. During a brief interview, he said he supports abolishing the Department of Homeland Security, repealing the Patriot Act, ending “endless” wars, and protecting gun rights.

He says he was inspired to enter the race by several events, including this year’s passage of Act 164. (More on that subject in a few paragraphs.) The Harding University graduate was working as a missionary in China in 2016 and was dismayed by what he saw happening in the U.S. presidential campaign. He’s African American, and when he returned to Arkansas, he said he was stopped by police for driving 35 miles per hour in a 40 mph zone. That was a frustrating moment for someone who had just spent two years in a communist country. Continue reading Another Senate candidate – maybe →

Debate questioners, please ask this

Debt and deficits, Elections, Politics

tax, taxes, debt, deficits, spending, trillion, State of the Union, deficit hawks, balanced budget amendment, Jonathan Bydlak, immigration, $98.8 trillion, $970 billionBy Steve Brawner, © 2019 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

“As president, what would you do to balance the federal budget and reduce the national debt?”

That’s a simple, straightforward question about an important issue affecting every American. So it’s odd it hasn’t been asked once in 14 hours of Democratic presidential debates this year.

The candidates have been asked 374 questions so far, according to Fix the Debt, a project of the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Not once have they been asked about the federal government spending $984 billion this past fiscal year that it did not have. That’s almost $3,000 for every American man, woman and child. Uncle Sam spent $4.446 trillion but only collected $3.462 trillion. The candidates have not been asked about the cumulative national debt, accrued over centuries, now being almost $23 trillion, or more than $69,500 for every American. They have not been asked about how to address the looming shortfalls in Social Security and Medicare.

The lack of questions is illustrative of the country’s collective blind eye regarding these inconvenient truths. The United States has been in debt since the Revolutionary War, except for a brief period in the 1830s when it paid everything off. But the debt has been growing exponentially in recent years. It took 210 years to reach $5.67 trillion by Sept. 20, 2000. The debt has grown $17.27 trillion since then. It was a little less than $20 trillion the day President Trump took office. It’s grown about $3 trillion in less than three years.

And yet the debt registers so little on the public consciousness that debate questioners haven’t felt compelled to ask a single question about it. It’s a problem but not a crisis – yet – and there’s always another crisis calling for immediate attention. We all know we can’t keep spending money we don’t have forever, but we also know we can probably keep doing it a while longer. So we’ll talk about something else for now. Continue reading Debate questioners, please ask this →

GOP will produce Arkansas’ first statewide minority official

Elections, Politics, State government

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

Arkansas has never elected an African-American statewide official, and when it finally does, he or she likely will be a Republican.

And he or she probably will be someone like Leon Jones.

The state has taken such a sharp turn red-ward in recent years that to be elected to a statewide office, a candidate almost must run as a Republican – much as the Democrats were the default party for a century and a half. That’s why the first African-American official probably will come from that party.

Jones, 47, Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s appointee as executive director of the Fair Housing Commission, is gauging support before making a final decision on running for attorney general in 2022. The current attorney general, Leslie Rutledge, is term-limited. Jones previously served as Hutchinson’s Labor Department director.

If he runs, he’d be Arkansas’ first elected African-American statewide official and also the only African-American Republican currently elected to any position at the state level – unless one is elected in 2020 or alongside him in 2022. The state’s seven constitutional officers and six members of Congress are white Republicans. As of Oct. 8, the 135-member Arkansas Legislature was composed of 102 white Republicans and 33 Democrats, 15 of whom are African-Americans including the recently elected Denise Ennett of Little Rock. Continue reading GOP will produce Arkansas’ first statewide minority official →

Arkansas gets more of a say for president. Is it worth it?

Elections, Legislature, Politics, State government

By Steve Brawner, vote, Mark Moore, 16-year-olds, Arkansas primaries, Goodson, photo ID© 2019 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Legislators this year permanently moved Arkansas’ presidential primary elections to March, and recently the state starting seeing the maybe-or-not-worth-it results: visits by two mid-tier Democratic presidential candidates.

Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke both talked guns.

In a press conference Aug. 15, Klobuchar touted universal background checks and barring guns from people convicted of domestic abuse against unmarried partners. As the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s John Moritz reported, she also expressed support for “red flag” laws creating a process for temporarily removing guns from people deemed a threat.

O’Rourke narrowly lost a high-profile Senate race in Texas last year. He entered this campaign with much promise but has yet to catch fire, so he’s trying to create a spark.

He spoke Aug. 17 at the state Democratic Party’s Clinton Dinner, spoke at a gun control rally at the state Capitol, and visited a gun show in Conway. O’Rourke has called for banning military-style assault rifles and instituting a mandatory government buyback program where owners of those weapons who don’t participate would be fined.

O’Rourke formerly represented El Paso, where a mass shooter killed 22 people Aug. 3. Continue reading Arkansas gets more of a say for president. Is it worth it? →