By Steve Brawner
© 2017 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

A couple of thousand mostly Democratic-leaning participants gave Sen. Tom Cotton an earful last week during his rowdy town hall meeting in Springdale. While civic engagement is good (and civil discourse would be even better), most of those folks would accomplish more by voting in the Republican Party primary.

That’s because, for the foreseeable future, Arkansas is going to be a mirror image of what it’s been for much of its past, and that’s a reliably one-party state. After 150 years of being dominated by Democrats and a brief period from 2008-12 when it was competitive, the state will be ruled by Republicans for a while, if not the rest of most of our lives.

Cotton knows this, which is why he was willing to endure an uncomfortable couple of hours that will not change the way he votes. He knows the people who took their shots at him represent a fraction of the state’s voters and were not going to vote for him anyway.

Most parts of Arkansas are dominated by one party at the state and national level – mostly the Republicans except in urban areas and parts of eastern Arkansas with high minority populations, which are decidedly Democrat.

That reality means we don’t have competitive races hardly anywhere. In the 2016 elections, President Trump beat Hillary Clinton 61-34, none of the congressional races were close (and only one even featured a Democrat), and only seven of the 41 competitive state legislative races were decided by less than 10 points, five in the Republican candidate’s favor. Three of those seven involved a Democratic incumbent losing to a Republican challenger.

So each May, Democratic voters in a lot of places may have to make the same choice some Republicans used to have to make: Voting in the other party’s primary for the candidate they can live with, and then voting in the general election for the doomed candidate they want – assuming their party fields a candidate.

Moving forward, the most important divides in Arkansas politics often are not going to be between Republicans and Democrats but between Republicans and other Republicans on an issue by issue basis. To use one example, at the national level, there’s a very real difference between how Cotton sees trade with Cuba (continue the embargo) and how Sen. John Boozman and U.S. Rep. Rick Crawford from the agricultural 1st District see it (open it up some).

At the state level, a number of issues are determined not by what the two parties argue about, but by which Republicans occupy Republican-dominated seats. A big issue this legislative session has been a proposed tort reform constitutional amendment that would cap the amount of punitive and noneconomic damages awarded in lawsuits. Democratic legislators are completely against it, and presumably so would be most of the attendees at the Cotton rally. But the issue has also split Republican legislators, some of whom oppose the proposal. Health care is on the back burner while everyone waits to see what happens in Washington. Once there’s more clarity there (whenever that happens), there’s going to be a huge fight at the State Capitol, often pitting Republicans against other Republicans.

If this sounds like I’m offering unsolicited advice to Democrats – I’m not, although somebody surely should. This message is for anyone of any persuasion who wants their vote to matter most. Aside from very important ballot initiatives like medical marijuana and tort reform, the state’s political direction will be decided at least as much in May party primaries as in November general elections. In fact, in Arkansas, that’s pretty much the way it’s always been.

By the numbers, 645,000 Arkansans voted in the 2016 primaries while 1.1 million voted in the general election, a difference of 500,000 people.

No doubt much of that was driven by the presidential race, which was a foregone conclusion in Arkansas in November but still competitive in May. As a result, in a state with 1.7 million registered voters, Trump won the Republican Party primary (and inevitably its six electoral votes) because 134,744 voted for him then, while the rest were voting somewhere else, for someone else, or not at all.

Those 134,744 voters had a lot louder voice than anyone at a town hall, it turns out.

By Steve Brawner
© 2017 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

After signing executive orders regarding trade, abortion and Obamacare, President Trump has begun addressing the issue that propelled him to the presidency: illegal immigration. Specifically, he wants that wall on the border with Mexico built, and he still wants Mexico to pay for it.

Enforcing the border is a core responsibility of government. But is this the right kind of wall?

This is 2017. Everything about our lives that can move from the physical to the digital is doing so. You can deposit a check with your cell phone. The U.S. Postal Service is going broke because we’re all texting and emailing.

Walmart, king of retail, is focusing much of its efforts on online sales. Many products can be bought online and shipped to your doorstep, for free. In many cities in Arkansas, you can order groceries online and then have them brought to you in the parking lot, again for no extra cost.

This is happening because Amazon sells goods that way, and Walmart must compete. Just as Walmart started with one store in Rogers and then took over the country, Amazon started by selling books and now sells everything to everybody. Like Walmart, it’s constantly innovating. The latest news is that it’s been awarded a patent for a giant blimp that would dispatch package-carrying drones to households like bees buzzing from a hive. Meanwhile, the company is opening physical stores, including one that doesn’t have cashiers. Customers with smartphones just place their item in their physical cart, and it automatically registers in their virtual one.

Walmart has seen this script before. It knows that Amazon can do to it what Walmart did to Kmart and Sears. In business, you can be on top, and then you can be gone, and it can happen very quickly. Walmart doesn’t want Bentonville to be the next Detroit.

But bricks and mortar aren’t simply being replaced with the digital world. They’re supplementing each other in constantly changing ways. Walmart is meshing its online sales with its physical locations. Amazon, the digital company, is opening physical locations.

And that brings us back to the wall. The border between the United States and Mexico is about 2,000 miles long, and 700 miles are already fenced with a barrier that snakes across the frontier and through cities.

So what do you with that remaining 1,300 miles when you share it with a neighbor whose past and future are inseparably linked with yours?

If your only goal is to keep people out, then a physical wall is better than no wall. True, resourceful people will find a way over it, under it or through it. A ladder is an extremely effective tool for climbing things. But not everyone is so resourceful.

But building that wall would be extremely expensive – $15 billion is one estimate, and of course it would have to be maintained and guarded.

Moreover, this wall – along with Trump’s vow to make Mexico pay for it – does not exactly represent diplomacy at its highest. It’s kind of a slap in the face to the entire Western Hemisphere. So it’s not surprising that, on Thursday, Mexico’s president cancelled a meeting with Trump.

Keep in mind that Walmart isn’t going digital just because it’s more efficient. It’s also doing it because it must look like a 21st century company to younger generations, lest it become Sears or Kmart.

Branding is as important for countries as it is for companies. A 2,000-mile barrier between the United States and everything to the south sends a truly awful signal about what the United States is becoming. This is, after all, the country whose Statue of Liberty faces the open water and is inscribed with Emma Lazarus’ poem, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” I’d rather be known for that than a wall.

We’d be better off following Walmart’s and Amazon’s lead and mixing both the physical and the virtual, by innovating and being flexible. Along with the wall that already stands, and maybe some more, make greater use of drones and satellites and other technology along with a mobile and flexible border patrol force that’s allowed to do its job. Since we apparently must argue, let’s argue about the degree to which the model reflects Walmart (more physical) or Amazon (more virtual). Also part of the strategy: Don’t bully your neighbor.

Let’s not be Kmart. This is, after all, the era of smartphones. The country doesn’t need just a tough border policy, but a smart one.

Related: Out of the shadows

By Steve Brawner
© 2017 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

There was a moment this past week when the Arkansas Medical Marijuana Amendment, approved by 53 percent of the voters in November, looked like it might effectively die in the Arkansas House of Representatives.

On Tuesday, Rep. Doug House, R-North Little Rock, presented that chamber the first two of a number of bills meant to fix problems with the amendment, which the Legislature can do with a two-thirds vote.

One of the bills, House Bill 1058, modified a section of the amendment requiring physicians to certify that marijuana’s benefits would outweigh the harm to a particular patient, after which the Department of Health would give the patient a card letting them purchase the drug. That kind of language puts physicians in jeopardy of being sued because there’s no accepted national standard for the use of marijuana, which remains illegal in the United States. So under House’s bill, the physician would merely certify that a patient has one of the conditions that qualify for use of the drug under the amendment.

House told his fellow legislators that few doctors will be willing to qualify their patients for the drug unless this part of the amendment is changed.

Which is exactly what some representatives wanted to happen. A couple questioned House about whether or not federal law trumps state law (it does) and what would happen if the bill did not pass. A couple argued that people had voted for this particular amendment with this exact wording. House said they had voted for legalizing medical marijuana, and the Legislature ought to make this minor change to accommodate that.

Remember, the bill needed a two-thirds vote to pass. Watching from the press’s perch in the House gallery, I thought it might fail. If it did, voters might have voted for legalized medical marijuana, but patients would have a much harder time obtaining it.

It passed with three votes to spare, 70-23, and will be considered in the Senate next week.

I voted against the amendment in November but found myself rooting for the bill to pass. Arkansans voted for it, after all, so let’s move forward. At the same time, I don’t blame the legislators who voted against it, even though it could be argued they were trying to thwart the election’s results by not fixing the flaw.

All lawmakers must balance their constituents’ wishes with their own convictions; otherwise, they’d be merely pollsters. They should listen but also lead, keeping their eyes and ears on their districts without simply sticking their fingers in the wind. The Founding Fathers were right to create a model described by Benjamin Franklin not as a direct democracy but as “A republic, if you can keep it.”

For Rep. House, that tension is especially complicated because he opposed the amendment and even donated money to help defeat it. But he also believes the voters have made their will known, and so the Legislature must now ensure the drug is available to the people who might benefit from it – and only to them. Moreover, two months before the election, Speaker Jeremy Gillam, R-Judsonia, asked him to manage the Legislature’s response if the amendment passed. A retired National Guard colonel, House dutifully accepted the assignment and then, after the election, began looking for problems to solve, finding 135 of them. So he’s trying to solve them.

House argues in this case, legislators must enact the people’s will because the people won’t accept anything else. Marijuana is now legal in some form in 26 states and the District of Columbia. In 2012, Arkansas voters surprised the political establishment by almost passing another medical marijuana measure. When that happened, the establishment should have acted to address that rising demand, he said. When it didn’t act, the voters acted instead.

“If we sabotage the amendment where people are not able to get the product legally, I fully expect a petition to be generated among the people to enact a constitutional amendment which totally decriminalizes marijuana,” including for recreational purposes, he said in an interview.

In other words, he’s trying to ensure an amendment passed by the people works in the real world, lest those voters produce another that really violates his convictions. It’s not a perfect republic, but it’s one we can keep.

By Steve Brawner
© 2017 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

This may be true: Arkansans believe the state’s highways need work, and many are willing to pay to improve them, but not at the pump. And this definitely is true: They want to make that choice, not have it made for them.

That’s based on a recent poll of 800 Arkansans by the Arkansas Good Roads Foundation. Ninety percent said the state’s highways “are in need of repair,” but 62 percent said they opposed increasing fuel taxes, which are the primary source of road funding. Support increased when told those taxes haven’t been raised in 15 years, but even then only 48 percent supported increasing them just 1-3 cents per gallon. The numbers dropped dramatically for higher amounts so that only 5 percent supported an increase of 5-8 cents. We can’t fix the roads on 1-3 cents.

There’s just something about paying higher fuel taxes that a lot of people can’t abide. Fuel is seen as a necessity and the taxes are visible, which ought to be a selling point, but I guess we like to pretend we’re not paying them.

Fuel taxes actually are among the easiest and fairest ways to raise money for highways. Collection costs are low, and the taxes are paid by road users. The person receiving the government service actually pays for the service, so if you don’t want to pay higher taxes, you can drive less or drive more efficiently. The other plus is that some of the taxes are paid by travelers and truckers passing through our smack-dab-in-the-middle-of-the-country state, rather than by Arkansans.

Fuel taxes have their own problems however, in that they are destined to be a declining revenue source each time cars become more fuel efficient, which is often. (Because of that, and because of inflation, drivers basically receive a fuel tax cut every year.) Moreover, they aren’t completely fair, either. The laborer who gets to work in a duct-taped 1987 Oldsmobile that gets 12 miles per gallon pays more than someone who can afford a newer, more fuel-efficient vehicle. If you can pay the $33,220 starting price to buy a Chevy Volt electric car, then you can enjoy the government-funded highways almost for free.

But while poll respondents don’t want to pay higher fuel taxes, a surprising majority, 62 percent, were willing to continue an existing tax that was set to expire in a few years. That would be the 10-year half-cent sales tax passed by voters in 2012 that is funding the Connecting Arkansas Program. That tax specifically exempts fuel and food, meaning it’s not a user fee at all. The grandmother on a fixed income who never drives far is paying for highways every time she shops at the corner store. When asked the same question about extending the half-cent sales tax a second time at the end of the survey, support rose to 69 percent, suggesting some might be open to having their minds changed.

I guess it’s easier to keep paying the tax you’re already paying, and not let it expire, then it is to pay a new one.

Keep in mind that this was a poll, and polls, you may recall from recent history, don’t always get things exactly right. The order of the questions matters, too. If you tell a pollster that the roads are bad, you’re probably primed to later say you’d pay more to fix them. But based on the survey, Arkansans certainly might be willing to increase taxes for highways.

But they want to be in charge of making that choice. Eighty-one percent would be more likely to support a legislator who referred a highway tax increase to them for a vote, while 12 percent would be less likely. Meanwhile, 45 percent would be less likely to support a legislator who voted for a straight up tax increase, while only 38 percent would be more supportive.

That’s not news to legislators, who aren’t exactly lining up to introduce bills to raise taxes for highways. They knew how their constituents felt about it long before this survey.

The poll’s results might persuade some of them to refer the matter to voters, but that doesn’t mean it will happen. Yes, 81 percent might tell a pollster they would be more supportive of a legislator who referred a tax increase to them. But legislators know the 12 percent who say they wouldn’t be – they really mean it.