Why should voters care about school board elections?

By Steve Brawner, © 2025 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

School board races aren’t the highest profile ones in a particular election, but they are important. This year, all of the contested ones across Arkansas will occur in the March 3 primaries.

That’s a change from how it’s been previously, when school districts have had the option of holding their elections in either the party primaries or the November general election. Lawmakers removed that option during last year’s legislative session.

For many years before that, school board members were elected in September school elections. Voter turnouts then often were extremely low.

Why should voters care about school board elections? What do school board members do, and what are their powers and limitations? Continue reading →

A Pearl Harbor ceremony without Pearl Harbor survivors

By Steve Brawner, © 2025 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

This year’s commemoration of the attack on Pearl Harbor in Honolulu on Dec. 7 was missing one irreplaceable element: Pearl Harbor survivors. 

As reported by the Associated Press in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, none of the 12 living survivors, all now past 100 years old, were able to make the trip. It was the first time no survivors were present to mark the attack other than 2020 during COVID.

The news was another reminder that the World War II generation is now all but gone.  Continue reading →

Can Watson win as an independent?

By Steve Brawner, © 2025 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Can the right independent candidate running for the right office in the right circumstance win in Arkansas? Or must a candidate have a party label by his or her name on the ballot? 

We’ll have another chance to find out March 3.

The candidate in this case is Adam Watson of Branch, who is running to replace the late Sen. Gary Stubblefield, also of Branch. The office is state Senate District 26, which Stubblefield, a Republican, represented until his death in September. 

And the circumstance is the fact that the district includes Franklin County, where Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders has proposed building a 3,000-bed prison.

That prison has generated what Watson called “overwhelming opposition,” and so far it is stalled in the Legislature. Many Franklin County residents don’t want to bring a big prison into their community. Furthermore, Watson said the area does not have enough workers to fill the projected 800 staff positions. At the moment, the site lacks an adequate water supply and other needed infrastructure. And there are some hard feelings about the lack of communication between the Sanders administration and local residents. Continue reading →

Family finds community, ‘wholeness,’ ‘real life’

By Steve Brawner, © 2025 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Dylan and Lauran McMahan of Hot Springs weren’t looking for an alternative to the typical American culture in which they were living. But they found it. And when they saw it, as McMahan said, they couldn’t “unsee it.” 

That’s when they moved the family to Homestead Heritage, a Christian community near Waco, Texas, that emphasizes faith, personal relationships, and a simple, agrarian lifestyle.

At Homestead Heritage, members believe their church should be a body of people connected to every facet of life – not merely a place where a person attends services on Sunday morning. While Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt, members at Homestead are making what they call their own “exodus” away from modern America’s secular, fragmented culture, where rugged individualism and competition have left people isolated and lonely. 

“I mean, even the word ‘church’ means ‘called out ones,’” McMahan said. “So we’re called out of one community and culture into another community and culture, and that should be the community of Christ.” Continue reading →

Alice Walton, Walmart’s McMillon are Arkansans of the year

By Steve Brawner, © 2025 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Few entities have had a bigger effect on Arkansas than Walmart, and this year the effect was bigger than most. For that reason, philanthropist Alice Walton, daughter of founder Sam Walton, and retiring CEO Doug McMillon are the Arkansans of the year.

Every December, this column bestows that title on an individual or individuals who have most impacted the state. It is inspired by Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” designation for “the person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or ill, and embodied what was important about the year.”

The Arkansans of the year is a one-man decision. There is no award ceremony, and there are no cash prizes – not that Walton or McMilllon would need one.  Walton is the world’s richest woman, worth an estimated $122 billion, according to Forbes. Continue reading →