Category Archives: Elections

Webb-Gorsuch vs. Welch-Roberts

By Steve Brawner
© 2020 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Feb. 11, 2020

The Arkansas Supreme Court justice race is the only one that will be on every voter’s ballot March 3. The candidates can’t tell voters how they would rule on specific issues because they’re supposed to judge each case on the merits. But they can send signals, if the right question is asked.

Judge Morgan “Chip” Welch and Workers’ Compensation Commission Chief Law Judge Barbara Webb spoke at the Arkansas Bar Association’s midyear meeting Feb. 6. They are competing for the seat held by the retiring Justice Josephine Hart.

When they talked to reporters afterwards, they were asked to name the U.S. Supreme Court justice with whom they most align. The question originally had been asked by the Family Council for its Voters Guide.

The Family Council had asked only about current justices. Welch named Chief Justice John Roberts, a President George W. Bush nominee who has emerged as the Court’s moderate and swing vote. Welch noted that Roberts, last seen presiding over President Trump’s Senate impeachment trial, has described himself as an umpire whose job is simply to call balls and strikes.

Continue reading →

What can 2004 tell us about 2020?

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

The country had a first-term Republican president elected after losing the popular vote whom Democrats desperately wanted to defeat. The party’s early frontrunner was the party’s previous choice for vice president. A fiery liberal insurgent gained support even as there were questions about electability. Ultimately, Democrats chose the candidate they thought gave them the best chance to win in November.

That paragraph describes the 2020 campaign up until the last sentence, which still remains to be written this year. But it also describes the last time Democrats were trying to unseat a first-term Republican president in 2004.

Can that election provide a roadmap for 2020? It’s worth a quick study. Continue reading →

Hutchinson sticks his neck out for highways

Democrats, Alabama, blue wave, school boards, Hixson, Breanne, red tide, judicial electionsBy Steve Brawner, © 2019 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Let’s say you’re headed into your second midterm election before being term-limited out of office, and you really don’t have much to campaign for. Your party controls Arkansas’ entire congressional delegation and three-fourths of the state Legislature now, which won’t change much regardless of what you do.

How do you spend your time? If you’re Gov. Asa Hutchinson, you try to persuade Arkansans to extend a half-cent sales tax to pay for highways.

Speaking last week to the Arkansas Good Roads Foundation, Hutchinson said, “This is my number one priority in terms of a state campaign here in Arkansas. Not anything gonna distract me from it. This is a focus because it is so critical to the future of our state.”

He later told a couple of reporters he might support the effort with money from his political action committee, ASA PAC. Continue reading →

Filing, and unfiling, for the Senate race

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

The Democratic Party of Arkansas Monday announced it won’t field a candidate in next year’s U.S. Senate race, because it probably can’t.

That’s because the party’s only announced candidate, Josh Mahony, announced two hours after filing had closed Nov. 12 that he was quitting the race because of unspecified “family health concerns.” He had no communication with the party before the announcement and little afterwards until he hired an attorney who basically said only that Mahony is not the one who is sick.

That means that, under Arkansas law, the Democrats probably can’t replace him. If they tried, the Republicans have said they would sue, and they’re probably right and, besides, they can better afford to pay for the lawyers. Plus, no Democrat is going to beat Sen. Tom Cotton next year, anyway.

The timing of Mahony’s exit from the race raised a lot of eyebrows. It could be that someone in the family got some bad news at 12:49 p.m. Nov. 12 after the filing period closed. But that’s also the time I received a press release from the Republicans saying they were filing a Federal Election Commission complaint against Mahony for falsifying his campaign finance reports. Mahoney had listed himself as a “small business owner” despite actually being unemployed and relying on his wife’s income.

The only real news there was that the Republican Party had filed the complaint. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette had already reported about Mahony’s lack of employment and FEC reporting inconsistencies. In fact, he had told the newspaper he couldn’t remember the last time he had a full-time job. Continue reading →

Watch Little Rock school elections because of this

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

School board elections rarely attract much attention because board members are unpaid (in Arkansas) and nonpartisan, and because they serve a policymaking, oversight role that usually involves deferring to paid staff. Many races don’t even produce a yard sign, much less an attack ad. Voter interest is often low.

The 2020 Little Rock School Board races could be different. And they’re worth watching even if you don’t live in Little Rock.

As you probably know, the Little Rock School District has been under state control since 2015. With a five-year deadline looming, the State Board of Education recently voted to put the district on a path to local control, with school board elections set for next November.

This occurred after the State Board first considered giving the district control over many schools while the state maintained control over the worst ones, which happen to be in areas with high minority populations. Opponents responded with overheated but effective national attention-getting comparisons to Little Rock’s segregationist past. Continue reading →