State Republican leaders stumped by Trump

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

I tried to write about something besides the presidential campaign, and just can’t. I apologize. I’ve covered other things this past week but can’t look away from this train wreck, even when I want to.

Arkansas’ top Republican elected officials probably feel the same way.

After Donald Trump’s 2005 recordings were made public, a number of them made their strongest statements yet against the candidate whom none of them wanted to be the nominee. But so far, they have not joined others across the country who withdrew their support, including both senators from the states of Alaska, Nebraska and Arizona, including Sen. John McCain. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has all but disowned Trump.

Well, Rep. Bruce Westerman did say after the recordings that he would support letting the party’s vice presidential nominee, Gov. Mike Pence, take the top spot. However, on Monday, he told reporters that Trump did OK in Sunday’s debate and still has his support.

Sen. Tom Cotton made a strong statement while in the middle of a four-day trip to Iowa, where his appearances included the main address at the big-deal Reagan Dinner in Des Moines. Yes, that’s the same Iowa that hosts the nation’s first presidential caucus three-and-a-half years from now, so Cotton may be spending a lot more time there soon. According to his prepared remarks, Cotton said Trump had to ask for forgiveness in the debate and make the case that he was better than Hillary Clinton. If not, he should step aside. After the debate, Cotton said Trump had successfully made that case, but it’s a safe bet he won’t be walking door to door on Trump’s behalf. He’s got other doors to knock.

Sen. John Boozman released a statement saying that if anyone ever spoke about his wife, daughters or granddaughters the way Trump had spoken about women in that video, “they would be shopping for a new set of teeth.” He deplored the state of the campaign but did not rescind his previous support of Trump.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson said Trump’s conduct in 2005 was “reprehensible and cannot be justified” but he said the election should be about national security, the economy and the Supreme Court. Asked if still supports Trump, Hutchinson said his statement stood as it was, which means yes.

The rest of Arkansas’ Republican leadership released similar statements condemning Trump’s remarks but not calling for him to leave the race. Those included Rep. Rick Crawford, Rep. French Hill, Rep. Steve Womack, Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin and Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, who had begun making national TV appearances on Trump’s behalf before the recordings were released.

The highest profile state Republican to call on Trump to withdraw was the Speaker of the Arkansas House of Representatives, Jeremy Gillam, who said in a statement, ”Although I have not been a supporter of Mr. Trump in the past, I have remained hopeful that he would give me a reason to vote for my party’s nominee. I no longer have that hope. I believe he should withdraw from the race immediately.”

Gillam is a huge “Star Wars” fan, which may not be a coincidence. The saga’s most important characters are imperfect individuals who overcome their personal flaws and eventually triumph in a galactic confrontation of good versus evil. Even the villain, Darth Vader, becomes the hero in the end. But some characters never redeem themselves and never earn the audience’s support.

This presidential election has been a tough one for many in the state party’s leadership. None of them endorsed Trump initially. Most first supported Gov. Mike Huckabee, who never had any traction, and then many transferred their support to Sen. Marco Rubio, who was steamrolled by the Trump juggernaut. Trump’s lifestyle, personality, and personal history aren’t good fits for them, nor are his policies. He’s not really a conservative, and they are.

But they made the rational calculation that Trump was their party’s nominee, he’s better than the alternative, and he has the support of a lot of Republican primary voters. He will win Arkansas in November, big.

It looks like he will lose the election, though. If that happens, Republican elected officials will try to return to the days of nominating candidates they can fully support, like Cotton or Pence or Ryan. We’ll see if Republican primary voters will let them.

Related: Trump played checkers and they played chess – in a checkers year.

A husband first, and then a candidate

Frank Gilbert

Frank Gilbert

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

Frank Gilbert looked kind of sheepish last Friday when I asked for his new phone number and instead he gave me his old one. I told him that when I had tried to call that one earlier, the recording had said it had been disconnected.

“The truth is, I let it lapse for a few days,” he said to the best of my recollection. “Teresa always took care of the bills.”

Frank is the jovial Libertarian candidate for U.S. Senate and the former mayor of Tull. Teresa, until Aug. 15, was his wife of 45 years.

The two were not exactly the classic political power couple. She registered to vote only once – in the 1990s in order to vote for him – and then de-registered after she was called for jury duty. As a Libertarian, Frank believes in as little government as possible. Teresa was socially conservative and not afraid of government enforcing traditional behavior. She called politics Frank’s “expensive hobby.”

Yeah, there were arguments in the early years, and then they put those aside. They were too busy raising three sons and later having four grandchildren, who called her “Moomaw,” to let politics get in the way.

“You know, it’s one of those things that you figure out it’s not going to change, and it’s so unimportant in the scope of what you’re doing as a family that it became a running joke,” he said.

One other thing about Teresa was she was kind of stubborn about going to the doctor, right up until June 5 when the pain in her stomach became so unbearable that she let Frank drive her to the hospital. A CT scan at 10 p.m. that night revealed she had a golf ball-sized mass at the base of her pancreas that had metastasized to 20-30 spots on her liver. The doctor didn’t offer a prognosis, but they understood.

“Of course we all Googled it, and when you Google pancreatic cancer, you know you’re praying for a miracle,” he said.

After further tests, Frank and Teresa were told she had six months to two years to live. She actually had 10 weeks. During that time, Frank dropped off the campaign trail. About a week after she died, he was back at work at the Bauxite School District, where he’s an in-school suspension officer, and he restarted his campaign.

“That week in between made me understand that I needed some normalcy. … I’ve heard people talk about compartmentalizing, and I can’t do it,” he said. “She’s on my mind all the time.”

He and the Democratic candidate for Senate, Conner Eldridge, have debated twice. On Tuesday, Frank will take off work to participate in a third debate that will be televised that night on AETN – the only one that will include the incumbent, Republican Sen. John Boozman.

At one time, Frank was actually a Republican himself – the party’s second vice chairman. But he does not fit into that party, and he’s not a Democrat.

“The difference I saw when Republicans started winning elections was that we ran those Democrat Hogs away from the public trough and ran those Republican Hogs up there to replace them,” he said.

At the AETN debate, he’ll argue positions from a Libertarian perspective that wouldn’t always be an easy sale with voters. Because he believes in limited government, he favors privatizing Social Security and Medicare some time in the long-term future. He’d fight no drug war and very few overseas ones. In a debate with Eldridge, he asked how Americans would feel if their child were killed in a drone strike and said the United States had engaged in imperialism, adding, “When you sow the wind, you reap the whirlwind.”

Running for governor in 2014, Frank won less than 2 percent of the vote. He knows the best he can hope for is 3-5 percent this year. He’s running because he believes in the cause and because he’s hopeful Libertarians may have an impact on state and national politics in his grandchildren’s day.

So he’s either Abraham Lincoln helping start a movement, or he’s Don Quixote tilting at windmills. Still, he doesn’t plan to quit running for office.

“I may grab my heart and go see Teresa, but until that happened it’s physically impossible,” he said. “I enjoy it enough that I’ll keep doing it and hopefully not spend quite as much money in the future.”

Related: Libertarians, Greens better choice than death.

School work to be finished early

Bruce Cozart is chairman of the House Education Committee.

Bruce Cozart is chairman of the House Education Committee.

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

The Arkansas Legislature goes into session in January, but some of the most important decisions will be completed this month, without much debate.

That’s because, by Nov. 1, the House and Senate Education Committees will complete the state’s adequacy report, the biennial (once every two years) document that governs how and how much (always more) the state spends on K-12 public education.

The adequacy report was created in the wake of the Lake View case, a lawsuit brought on by a poor, rural school district in the Delta. A series of court decisions said the state wasn’t spending enough on education and wasn’t spending it in the right places – including on students like those in Lake View. In response, Arkansas consolidated schools (Lake View ended up being one) and poured money into education at a time when other states were cutting spending.

Fear of returning to court has governed Arkansas policymakers ever since. No matter what the economic or budgetary situation has been, schools are funded first, and they always get a raise.

There was a time when the money spigot was wide open, but now it’s closed to a small stream. Basically, schools get a cost of living adjustment every year now. The chairman of the House Education Committee, Rep. Bruce Cozart, R-Hot Springs, figured out a raise of 1.15 percent this past weekend and challenged members to create their own figures.

That’s probably about what will end up happening. The committees will finish their work and present the adequacy report to Gov. Asa Hutchinson by Nov. 1. His administration will tweak it, it will be presented to the Legislature, and the Legislature will pass it without much debate. Any dissenting legislators will be cut off by two words: Lake View.

That’s roughly 41.5 percent of your general revenue budget right there – general revenues being the state spending over which legislators have the most control. The general revenue budget this past year was $5.3 billion, and of that, $2.2 billion went to the public school fund.

There will be arguments over smaller parts of the education budget, including funding for school transportation. Current funding is based on the number of students school districts have, not the number of route miles their buses travel, so some compact districts pocket extra money that they use for other purposes, while far-flung districts lose money driving all over the county. There’s been talk for years about basing funding on route miles, which seems obvious, but that would mean some districts would win and some would lose. When that happens, expect a fight to occur.

Education advocates will say a 1 percent raise isn’t enough, but they’d better be glad they’re getting it. The state does have other priorities – colleges and universities, human services, highways, prisons – that must fight for what’s left after schools, and advocates would say it hasn’t been enough.

A case can be made that the Lake View case set the stage for Arkansas being one of the few Republican-leaning states to expand Medicaid through Obamacare to create the controversial private option, which purchases private health insurance for lower-income Arkansans. The state was primed to take the money partly because it can’t cut funding for schools.

But starting next year, the private option, which has been funded almost entirely using federal dollars, will start to nibble at the state budget. The state will be responsible for 5 percent of the cost in 2017 and 10 percent by 2020. Meanwhile, the number of Arkansans receiving benefits has soared past the expected 250,000 and continues to rise.

That’s kind of scary. Schools will still get a raise, but everyone’s looking at rising health care costs. Meanwhile, highway advocates are begging for money that’s just not available. The state is trying to figure out how to slow the growth of prison costs without making crime worse. And amidst all that, the governor says he wants to cut taxes again.

How do you make the numbers work? The state’s economy must continue to grow, which it is doing to the tune of a 3.9% unemployment rate. And the state will continue to take federal dollars wherever it can, including for highways and health care.

There will be a big debate about that – taking money for health care. Legislators will have time because 41.5 percent of the budget will already be settled. Nothing starts an argument like the word “Obamacare.” Nothing shuts it down like the words “Lake View.”

When the governor crosses the line

Gov. Asa Hutchinson

Gov. Asa Hutchinson

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

If Asa Hutchinson is in Texarkana, Ark., he’s governor. If he crosses over into Texarkana, Tex., Tim Griffin, the lieutenant governor, becomes governor. If Griffin is also out of state, he isn’t the governor either, though he’s still lieutenant governor. In that case, Senate President Pro Tempore Jonathan Dismang, a legislator from Beebe, is governor – assuming he also hasn’t left the state.

Got it?

Under the Arkansas Constitution, the governor relinquishes his powers to the lieutenant governor whenever he’s out of state. But that could change. Issue 2 on the November ballot would allow governors to maintain their powers wherever they are.

Legislators placed the proposal on the ballot because this is the 21st century, and governors can maintain contact with home much more easily than in 1914, when voters created the position of lieutenant governor and assigned its duties.

Moreover, the governor has become, in addition to being chief executive, a traveling face-of-the-state and occasional globe-trotting salesman. For example, in the past 12 months Hutchinson has flown to China to help secure a $1 billion paper mill in Arkadelphia, and to Europe to attend an air show, meet with aerospace-related business prospects, and open the state’s European office. He’s going back to China in October. He was in Austin, Texas, for the Texas Tribune Festival Sept. 24.

The system works fine most of the time because Hutchinson and Griffin, like most governors and lieutenant governors, get along well, are members of the same party and know their roles.

But there have been times when things didn’t work so smoothly. When Gov. Mike Beebe, a Democrat, was at a National Governors Association meeting in 2013, his Republican lieutenant governor, Mark Darr, signed a gun bill Beebe did not intend to sign, though Beebe planned to let it become law unsigned. In 1993, when Gov. Jim Guy Tucker was out of state and the lieutenant governor’s office was vacant, Senate President Pro Tempore Jerry Jewell used his temporary powers to set free a convicted murderer and another convicted felon and pardon two men on parole. In 1987, Senate President Pro Tempore Nick Wilson fired Gov. Bill Clinton’s chief of staff, Betsey Wright, and vetoed some bills. Clinton rehired Wright when he returned. Wilson eventually went to prison, for other reasons.

This is the second time in 14 years Arkansas voters have had the chance to make this change. They rejected a similar proposal in 2002.

The arguments against? Even in the 21st century, there could be times when a governor might be out of state and inaccessible. On Sept. 11, 2001, Gov. Mike Huckabee was in Kentucky and could not return by air, and Lt. Gov. Win Rockefeller could act with authority on that terrible day because he legally was the governor. Plus, maybe it’s a good thing that the Constitution reminds the governor not to be too much of a globe-trotting salesman.

One other thing about Issue 2 is that it would add feminine pronouns to that part of the Constitution. Section 4 of Amendment 6, which would be amended, refers only to “his” and “he.” The assumption in 1914 was that the governor would be a male, which makes sense because women were six years away from having the right to vote.

I worked in the lieutenant governor’s office from 2003-06, and I can tell you that we don’t really need the position as it currently exists. Its only constitutional duties are to preside over the Senate and to serve as governor if the elected governor is out of state, dies or is incapacitated. No well-run business would have a “lieutenant CEO” with similar non-duties, a salary and staff.

So I will vote yes. The governor should still be fully governor when he or she leaves the state, just as when the president leaves the country, the vice president doesn’t take over the job.

But it’s not the reform that’s needed. What should happen is that the governor and lieutenant governor run together on the same party ticket, like the president and vice president, and work together as a team after elected. That way, Rockefeller could have managed the situation with plenty of authority as Huckabee’s lieutenant governor on Sept. 11, but Jewell wouldn’t have been able to let the convicted murderer out of prison.

At least Issue 2 will let the governor be governor whenever he crosses the line.

A better Electoral College

Elections aheadBy Steve Brawner
© 2016 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Voters across this country are being reminded once again this year that, if they live in 39 states including Arkansas, presidential candidates either take their votes for granted or write their votes off.

That’s because we don’t elect presidents by the popular vote but through the Electoral College. Arkansas gets six votes out of the 538 cast, and everyone knows who will win those six – the Republican, in this case Donald Trump. In a Talk Business & Politics-Hendrix College poll published Sept. 22, Trump was trouncing Hillary Clinton, 55-34 percent. But the outcome was obvious long before then.

On Election Night, the Associated Press and the TV networks will call Arkansas for Trump the instant the polls close and then move on to the swing states: Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Virginia and Wisconsin.

If elections were decided by a national popular vote, Arkansans’ votes would go into one big pot to be counted with those from every other state. Instead, those votes go into the Arkansas pot, where the outcome is already known.

This means your individual vote in Arkansas effectively has zero influence on who becomes the next president. So if you cannot abide Trump or Clinton, you are free to join the seven percent of Arkansans who told Talk Business they are voting for someone else.

“Vote your conscience because your vote has no effect anyway” is not exactly a rallying cry for the status quo, and it’s not the only problem with the Electoral College. Because Arkansas is not a swing state, both the Trump and Clinton campaigns made early decisions to waste no resources courting it, and to make no promises that would benefit it.

The Electoral College has numerous other flaws. First, because 48 states are winner-take-all, the loser of the popular vote can be elected president, which has happened four times, most recently in 2000. In fact, it’s possible for a candidate to win the presidency by winning the largest 11 states, even if by narrow margins, while not even appearing on the ballot in the others. Second, because of the way electors are apportioned, Americans living in small states have greater influence than those living in large states. In a country that professes to believe in “one person, one vote,” a Wyoming resident’s vote has four times the weight of a Texan’s, according to the advocacy group FairVote. Third, the winner-take-all system creates a strong incentive for voters to choose the least objectionable major party candidate, making it very difficult for a qualified third party candidate with good ideas to make a dent. Finally, in 21 states, including Arkansas, electors do not have to follow the voters’ wishes. They can vote for whomever they want – and have done so 157 times in American history, according to FairVote.

The Electoral College was created by framers of the Constitution who were skeptical of giving the people too much power. If we were designing our democracy today, there’s no way we would do it this way.

One solution is a nationwide popular vote, but having to count 130 million votes one at a time could be messy and produce unintended consequences. Besides, a government that cannot produce a budget or fight the Zika virus is not going to make this big a change.

So instead of abolishing the Electoral College, why not just make it better? Multiple the number of electoral votes by 10 in each state, giving Arkansas 60 votes instead of six. That way, there would be enough to apportion them according to the results. In Arkansas, Trump would get the 55 percent he’s already getting without trying here, plus whatever else he could earn by actually campaigning, while Clinton would win electoral votes and so could the third party and independent candidates. Meanwhile, Clinton would no longer be assured of winning all of California’s 55 votes. Her total would match the percentage of 550 she earns there.

Also, either make it illegal for electors to vote against the people’s wishes, or, better yet, just get rid of electors entirely and assign electoral votes automatically.

We don’t have to repeal and replace the Electoral College. Let’s just fix it so presidential candidates can’t take anyone’s vote for granted or write anybody’s off. Let’s make every state matter, not just the swing states. All it takes is simple math: Multiply by 10 and divide according to the results.