Category Archives: Elections

Return of the Democrats?

Conner Eldridge is running as a Democrat for the U.S. Senate seat held by Republican Sen. John Boozman.

Conner Eldridge is running as a Democrat for the U.S. Senate seat held by Republican Sen. John Boozman.

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

The last eight years have been really bad for Arkansas Democrats. The last few months have been a little better.

Democrats controlled Arkansas politics for 140 years. As late as 2008, the party controlled five of the state’s six congressional offices, all seven statewide constitutional offices, 27 of the 35 state Senate seats, and 75 of the 100 state House seats.

But they have fallen far, fast. After President Obama’s election, Arkansas did what much of the rest of the South had already done and became a Republican state.

Now, Republicans occupy all the state’s congressional offices, all seven statewide constitutional offices, 64 state House seats and 24 state Senate seats. In the last two U.S. Senate races, Democratic incumbents won only 37 percent of the vote in 2010 and 39 percent in 2014. Almost twice as many Arkansans voted in the March 1 Republican presidential primary (410,920) as voted in the Democratic primary (221,010). Democrats could not field a candidate in three of the four congressional races and do not have enough candidates in state legislative races to win back a majority, even if they win every race they are contesting.

In 1960, New York transplant Winthrop Rockefeller hosted a “Party for Two Parties” at Winrock Farms in hopes of building the almost nonexistent Republican Party into a viable contender. At times these past eight years, I’ve wondered if we’re going to need another one of those parties.

But Arkansas Democrats have had at least three bright spots lately.

One, they’ve got a young, energetic U.S. Senate candidate, former U.S. Attorney Conner Eldridge. He’ll have a tough time unseating the Republican, Sen. John Boozman. But he’s running an aggressive campaign.

Second, the presidential race is shaping up about as well as Democrats could hope: former Arkansas first lady Hillary Clinton versus Donald Trump. He’s brought new people to the Republicans but also split the party, which will not completely unite behind him. President Obama won 37 percent of the vote in Arkansas in 2012. That’s consistent with the percentages those incumbent senators won in 2010 and 2014, so it’s not certain Clinton will do better. But at least Trump gives Democrats a target.

Finally, Democrats at the state level, who sometimes have been behaving as if they hope things will just get back to “normal,” have been acting a little more like a vigorous minority lately.

I’ll try to make this brief. In the fiscal session that just ended at the State Capitol, the big issue was Arkansas Works, the program that uses federal Medicaid dollars to purchase private health insurance for a quarter of a million Arkansans. It had passed by large majorities in a recent special session, but it fell just short of the three-fourths needed in both the House and Senate for funding during the fiscal session. Under the Arkansas Constitution, nine senators can kill funding for any program, and this time, 10 Republicans were determined to stop Arkansas Works.

However, the Arkansas Constitution also contains a provision requiring that the first item that must be passed in a session is the general appropriations, which funds expenditures such as legislators’ reimbursements. Democrats in the House decided to hold that up until Arkansas Works was passed.

After much maneuvering by Gov. Asa Hutchinson, Arkansas Works was funded. Because he practically staked his governorship on it, it’s debatable how much of an effect the Democrats’ effort had. But at the very least, it was a reminder that 35 House Democrats can throw as much of a monkey wrench in the proceedings as 10 Republican senators can.

As a party, Democrats tend to support more government activity to help lower income people, so Arkansas Works would seem to be an appropriate issue for them to fight for, or at least stand with the big guy doing the fighting. Now they are coalescing behind another issue they think is a good fit, more funding for pre-K education.

That’s a better strategy than waiting for their majority to return, which isn’t going to happen any time soon. Two parties are better than one, and if you’re going to be a minority, you might as well be a vigorous one, Rockefeller would say.

Related: How Conner Eldridge thinks he can win.

Schools: Local control without local voters?

Education Commissioner Johnny Key, left, and Little Rock School District Superintendent Baker Kurrus speak to reporters after Key did not renew Kurrus' contract. Because of the state takeover of the LRSD, Key, who entered office after the takeover, effectively serves as the district's school board.

Education Commissioner Johnny Key, left, and Little Rock School District Superintendent Baker Kurrus speak to reporters after Key did not renew Kurrus’ contract. Because of the state takeover of the LRSD, Key, who entered office after the takeover, effectively serves as the district’s school board.

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

There’s a lot of talk in Little Rock about ending the state takeover of the school district and returning it to local control. If that’s to happen, these numbers must be improved: 2.78; .71; 4.51; and .51.

Those are the percentages of registered voters who voted in school elections in Pulaski County from 2014 back to 2011.

To be fair, those numbers encompass the entire county, not just Little Rock, and reflect elections where at most two of the seven positions were contested.

Still, the last time Little Rock held competitive school elections, a city with a population of 200,000 elected one school board member with 485 votes, and another with 379.

With that kind of turnout, a school election can be decided by one active civic club, business organization, union – or just a small group with an axe to grind.

One wonders how significant these public demonstrations about the school district really are. Did these people vote in those elections as the district was nearing a state takeover, or have they been newly energized? And are there enough of them to matter once the district is returned to local control?

It’s probably harder to engage voters in a school election in a big city than it is in a town of 8,000, where candidates know a lot of the voters personally. Many of Little Rock’s voters are completely disconnected from their school district. Most everything west of I-430 is Privateschoolville.

But extremely low voter turnout is a problem in many school districts. A decent minority of voters go to the polls if they are asked to decide a school millage increase, but school board elections attract little attention. A few years ago, I interviewed a Fayetteville School Board member who lamented that he had recently been re-elected by a count of 115-113 in a zone with 8,000 voters.

Why such low turnouts? School elections occur in September, when no one else is on the ballot. Unlike in some states, school board members aren’t paid for their service, so they have no financial incentive to invest seed money in their campaigns or advertise much. They don’t run with party labels and don’t attract big donations, yet.

Each legislative session, a lawmaker runs a bill to try to move school elections to November. Last year a bill passed that made November elections a voluntary option for districts. No doubt lawmakers will try to make it mandatory in 2017, or at least move the elections to the party primaries in the spring.

School board members don’t want to run on those crowded ballots. They’re afraid they’ll get lost in the shuffle, leaving school policies dependent on the decisions of voters guessing among a list of unfamiliar names. They’re afraid their positions will become politicized. They don’t want to run as Republicans or Democrats, or make the kind of campaign promises other elected officials make.

I must disclose that I publish a magazine, Report Card, in partnership with the Arkansas School Boards Association. It’s entirely supported by ads that I sell. ASBA doesn’t pay me for it, although I am paid a fee for one small project I do every year.

That relationship has probably helped bias me against moving school elections to November – that and the fact that the ballot is already too crowded then. Why am I voting on the county coroner? At the same time, the turnout issue should become a higher priority for everyone.

If Donald Trump has shown us anything, it’s that you don’t have to have a big organization or even spend that much money to win an election. He’s won the Republican Party’s nomination through his skillful use of the media and Twitter, all of which is free. That doesn’t mean school board members should campaign like Trump, but surely local media outlets could more aggressively cover the candidates, while candidates could make better use of Facebook.

Citizens must play their part, too. September comes every year, and it should not be a surprise that school elections occur then. School districts are many communities’ largest employer and, more importantly, the entity that educates and takes care of children all day. It matters who makes policy there.

A democracy doesn’t require massive voter turnout, but surely it must do better than 1 percent. After all, can you have local control without local voters?

Related: Why did Key replace Kurrus?

Trump played checkers and they played chess – in a checkers year

Hand with ballot and boxBy Steve Brawner
© 2016 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

If this presidential election were a chess match, somebody like Sen. Ted Cruz would be calling checkmate on the Republican Party nomination about now. Instead, it’s checkers this year, and Donald Trump is winning because he knew that was the game being played.

What’s the difference? Chess is a game of strategy and subtlety and patience, and it takes a lifetime to master. Many people don’t understand it. Checkers is a simple, straightforward game that moves quickly and can be played decently by everyone. Republican voters this year didn’t want a practiced political master; they wanted someone who spoke their language and played their game. While Cruz and the other Republican candidates were staring at the chessboard and plotting their next moves, Trump was bouncing state to state around the checkerboard, reaching the back row, and shouting, “King me!”

The result is that he just kept winning states until, one by one, the others were forced to leave the board. He saw that Republican-leaning voters, particularly those who don’t usually vote, aren’t necessarily interested in typical Republican policies, so he didn’t offer them. Instead, he focused on issues those people talk about: immigration, political correctness, trade, and the failure of the political class to solve problems. His opponents followed a script while he was ad libbing, sometimes irresponsibly and sometimes by appealing to less than Americans’ best. Time and again, he said and did things that would have forced other candidates to offer a trembling apology. He didn’t bother. He had the good fortune of being the most outsider candidate in an outsider’s year, until his only remaining competition was the one candidate much of the party establishment dislikes more than he.

Cruz and most of the other 17 candidates who started this race looked at the wrong board from the beginning, starting with their early strategy of leaving Trump alone and attacking each other while they waited for him to fizzle. Cruz in particular played nice with Trump in hopes he would win over his voters later. He didn’t.

Still, despite Trump’s winning state after state, it looked for a while that he would not collect the required 1,237 delegates to sew up the nomination, resulting in a brokered Republican National Convention in Cleveland. The thinking was that at that point, party insiders would band against him, certain he would lose badly to Hillary Clinton and bring down the party with him.

So at the end, Cruz tried to play the delegate game, taking advantage of the party’s complicated rules to ensure delegates loyal to him attended the convention. If the race had gone to a second ballot, then those delegates could have switched to Cruz. Yes, he knocked over a few of Trump’s pieces. But again, wrong game.

The brokered convention scenario is now a memory. Trump dominated his home state of New York April 19. Then Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich announced they were forming an awkward alliance where Kasich wouldn’t compete in Indiana, where Cruz was stronger, while Cruz would stay out of Oregon and New Mexico, where Kasich seemed to have a chance. The move looked desperate, which is what Trump called it, and it played right into his hands at a time he already was telling voters the game is rigged. He went on to dominate five states April 26, bringing his total to 27, including Arkansas, compared to nine for Cruz and one for Kasich. Meanwhile, an NBC News poll showed Trump had reached the support of 50 percent of Republican and Republican-leaning voters, a major milestone. Now that Trump has won Indiana, it’s over.

Trump is not my candidate – at all. But Republicans would have made a huge mistake if they had tried to keep him off the ticket at a contested convention. For all of their fears of a Trump candidacy, they could not afford an ugly convention that permanently alienates the voters he has energized.

In other words, he’s reached the back row, and they’re going to have to king him.

Related: Kasich – What should have been

Disorder in the court

Uncle Sam hangs on for webBy Steve Brawner
© 2016 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Apparently we’ll spend the rest of the year with a 4-4 split on the Supreme Court, with the current vacancy left unfilled after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. So here’s a scenario. Hillary Clinton beats Donald Trump in the election. Democrats take back the Senate. And then Clinton fills the vacancy by nominating President Obama.

Of all the facets of that scenario, the only one that’s completely unlikely is the last, and it’s not unthinkable. Obama is an attorney who appointed Clinton as secretary of state, so she kind of owes him. When asked earlier this year, she called his being a Supreme Court justice “a great idea.” Democrats would love it if she stuck her thumb in Republicans’ eyes that way. And Obama wouldn’t be the first to move from the White House to the Court. President William Howard Taft has already done it.

The rest is more likely but hardly certain. The latest average of polls by Real Clear Politics has Clinton beating Trump by nine points, and that’s before a potentially nasty fight at the Republican National Convention. In Senate races this year, 24 incumbent Republicans are up for re-election while Democrats are defending only 10 seats, so Democrats have an advantage on those numbers alone.

If Clinton wins and the Democrats retake the Senate, Republican senators might have to make some difficult decisions. They’ve been saying the voters should help pick the next justice through their choices in the election, but what would happen if Republicans are voted completely out of power? Would they give Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, or another nominee a second look while they still control the Senate between November and January, rather than take their chances with a Clinton nominee?

Arkansas’ two senators are taking different approaches. Sen. John Boozman says the next president should nominate the next justice, period. In a statement, he said, “Our country is very split and we are in the midst of a highly contested presidential election. My colleagues and I are committed to giving the American people a voice in the direction the court will take for generations to come.” His spokesman, Patrick Creamer, said Boozman’s position would not change even if Democrats win everything in November.

Sen. Tom Cotton, however, left himself some wiggle room. In his statement, he said, “In a few short months, we will have a new president and new senators who can consider the next justice with the full faith of the people. … The nomination should not be considered by the Senate at this time.” His spokesperson, Caroline Rabbitt, pointed to the “at this time” part and did not rule out Cotton considering Obama’s nominee after the November election.

At the very least, the Supreme Court sometimes will look like Congress in these coming months: divided and paralyzed. A 4-4 decision means the lower court’s ruling in that particular case will stand. Let’s hope those positions get filled if they come open.

This kind of standoff was bound to happen, I guess. The country, like the Supreme Court, is so divided that nation-changing court decisions will come down to one Supreme Court justice. In some ways, choosing that justice is more important than choosing the next president.

One other issue at play is the Founding Fathers’ really bad idea to give Supreme Court justices a lifetime appointment – to insulate them from politics, ha ha. Because of that lifetime appointment, presidents tend to pick someone as young as they can get away with. To Obama’s credit, Garland is 63, unlike the early-50-something-year-olds who have been nominated lately, or Justice Clarence Thomas, who was in his early 40s. Still, Garland could rule from the bench for at least two decades.

One good thing about this controversy is that it has reminded voters of the importance of this presidential duty. The next president could nominate at least four justices. In addition to Scalia’s replacement, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 83, Justice Anthony Kennedy is 79, and Justice Stephen Breyer is 77.

What happens if, after November, one party still controls the White House and the other the Senate? Will the two branches ever be able to agree on a pick before more vacancies occur?

Let’s hope so. Somebody has to do this job, and no one lives forever.

Kasich: What should have been

Hand with ballot and boxBy Steve Brawner
© 2016 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

“For all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been!’” wrote the poet John Greenleaf Whittier.

I’m thinking that line is appropriate regarding the presidential campaign of Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Perhaps some Republican party types are thinking that as well. If not, they may be after November.

After winning his home state of Ohio, Kasich is now the last candidate standing between the nomination and Donald Trump or Sen. Ted Cruz – candidates many Republicans, particularly those in the establishment, can’t accept (Trump) or don’t like personally (Cruz).

Despite that victory, Kasich is now mathematically eliminated from winning the nomination. At best, he can win enough delegates to deny Trump a majority, leading to a contested convention when Republicans gather in Cleveland in July. And then, the theory is, maybe he can emerge as a consensus candidate. It’s possible, but it’s a long shot.

Yeah, I voted for Kasich – I and 15,304 other Arkansans, or 3.72 percent of Republican primary voters.

I did that because I believed he’s the most experienced, qualified candidate with the best record. He was chairman of the House Budget Committee in the 1990s, the last time Congress came close to balancing the budget, and then he became governor of Ohio and led the state in turning that state’s deficit into a surplus. No other candidate, Republican or Democrat, can say anything like that.

I also voted for him because of his common decency, a quality that has been unfortunately uncommon in this ugly election year. More than any other candidate, he has avoided disparaging others and has offered a positive, unifying vision for the country.

If Republicans really want to win the election and deny Hillary Clinton the presidency, Kasich should be their first choice. An average of polls by the website Real Clear Politics shows, in hypothetical match-ups, Clinton beating Trump by more than six points, while Cruz is leading Clinton by .8 of a point, a statistical tie. Sen. Marco Rubio, who dropped out of the race after losing his home state of Florida, was leading her by four points. Kasich, however, is beating her by more than seven points.

Those are national averages, but the United States does not actually have national elections. Instead, it has 51 state ones counting the District of Columbia, and of those, only a few are competitive, including Ohio, which has 18 of the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win. No Republican has ever been elected president without winning Ohio. Kasich is beating Clinton there by an average of almost 18 points.

Also really important is Pennsylvania, with 20 electoral votes. It’s voted Democratic in each of the last six elections, but some have been close. According to a recent Mercyhurst University poll, Kasich was trouncing Clinton 49-36 there. Meanwhile, she was beating Cruz 45-42 and Trump 43-35.

A Republican who wins both Ohio and Pennsylvania would be your next president.

Unfortunately, leading Arkansas Republicans did not bet on this horse. Thirty legislators endorsed Rubio. Gov. Asa Hutchinson did, too, during that brief period after Jeb Bush dropped out and Rubio became the darling of the establishment.

Hutchinson chose the candidate who seemed to have the best chance of beating Trump, despite Hutchinson’s having a lot in common with Kasich, including serving together in the U.S. House of Representatives and both accepting Medicaid expansion dollars under Obamacare as governors. Rather than refuse the money, Arkansas created the private option, which Hutchinson wants to continue as a program he is calling Arkansas Works.

Another 18 legislators and Secretary of State Mark Martin publicly endorsed Cruz Feb. 24.

If Hutchinson or anybody else instead had come out swinging for Kasich, it wouldn’t have made much difference. Voters don’t base their decisions on endorsements by elected officials – or newspaper columnists, thank goodness. Still, no Republican legislators or state officials endorsed the candidate who balances budgets, reaches across the aisle, and has the best chance of winning the general election. That’s notable, I guess.

Kasich and some of his supporters are still holding out hope that something crazy will happen at the convention. Maybe something will, but more than likely, they and some other Republicans will be left wondering what might have been. Actually, what should have been.

Related: For president, governors no longer need apply.