By Steve Brawner, © 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.
Things get crazy when 135 legislators gather at the Capitol to consider thousands of bills in three months’ time. Sometimes something happens that makes things crazier.
This upcoming legislative session, it could be the same issue that’s caused much of the craziness the past almost six years: Arkansas Works. This time, there’s a special reason why. Continue reading This could make the legislative session even crazier
By Steve Brawner, © 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.
Arkansas is now thoroughly Republican at the state and national levels, as evidenced by the party controlling all six congressional offices, all seven statewide offices and three-fourths of the Legislature, as well as winning the presidential election here every year since 1996.
At the county level? Not yet.
According to data crunched by the Republican Party of Arkansas, Democrats still control 839 the state’s 1,524 partisan offices at all levels, not including constables. That’s about 55 percent. Republicans control 663, or 43.5 percent. The other 22 offices are held by officials who are neither Republican nor Democrat. Continue reading Arkansas GOP still doesn’t hold majority of offices – yet
By Steve Brawner, © 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.
Rep. Mark McElroy of Tillar says he’s “too conservative really to be a Democrat, but I’m too poor to be a Republican.” Earlier this year, he decided he didn’t want either label, and now he’s campaigning to see if his district’s voters will send him back to the Capitol as an independent.
McElroy spent 20 years as Desha County judge before winning election to the Arkansas House of Representatives in 2012. He represents District 11 in Arkansas’ southeastern corner along the Mississippi River. He’s always been elected as a Democrat, but he didn’t really fit into either party. He didn’t like the national Democrats’ stand on social issues like abortion, but he believed the Republican Party’s policies favored the top 1 percent. He chafed at morning caucus meetings where he felt he was being told how to vote, regardless of his district’s wishes. He drew a primary opponent from his own party in the last election and did again this year.
Faced with all that, this spring he decided to leave the party and become an independent. He’s the only one in the Legislature.
“I don’t see why you have to fit in,” he said Tuesday after attending a meeting of the House and Senate Education Committees. “I don’t know why you have to be a label to represent your people.” Continue reading The legislator without a party label
By Steve Brawner, © 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.
What two historical Arkansans are most deserving of one of the state’s highest honors and would best represent it before the nation and world?
I’ll give you a second.
You may have said Walmart founder Sam Walton, singer Johnny Cash, civil rights pioneer Daisy Bates, or Sen. Hattie Caraway, the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate.
You probably didn’t mention Uriah Rose, founder of the Rose Law Firm, or James Paul Clarke, who served one term as Arkansas’ 18th governor from 1895-96 and later two terms in the U.S. Senate. But those are the two figures who have been memorialized in Congress’ National Statuary Hall Collection for about the past 100 years – Rose since 1917, and Clarke since 1921.
That might change. Continue reading Who should represent Arkansas for the next 100 years?