The Arkansas Democratic Party - A Few Thoughts

As anyone who has known me for a while - even if simply as an online presence - will understand, I've been residing in the state of Arkansas for about fourteen and a half years. When I moved there in the summer of 2010, the state's Democratic Party was usually more successful than not in electing statewide officials to office, held two US Senate seats, and supermajorities in both chambers of the State Assembly. In other words, compared to other neighboring southern states in the US that had long ago become solidly GOP, the Arkansas Democratic Party defied political gravity. The 2010 election was a sign that something was starting to change. Statewide office holders did fine, and Governor Mike Beebe won re-election by comfortable margins. But we lost a US Senate seat that year and we still had governing majorities but no longer supermajorities. Some formerly Democratic state politicians had changed their party affiliation from Democratic to GOP. And the population in the state seemed primed to join the backlash against the Obama Presidency. The 2012 electoral cycle was ideal for the GOP to flip both chambers in the State Assembly as Obama was up for re-election. Indeed that was what happened. So we had a divided government for a couple years and the state's GOP had only narrow majorities to work with. After 2014's election, which was catastrophic for Democrats nationwide, there was barely any Democratic presence left in Arkansas. I recall going to a rally on the grounds of a local high school in my city to see outgoing Governor Beebe, former President Clinton (an Arkansas native), Mark Pryor (a Senator up for re-election) and Mike Ross, who was vying for the Governor's seat (he would lose his race). One of our city's representatives in the state's Assembly, George McGill (now our mayor) warmed up the crowd and there was this sense of joy, but it also felt like a wake. We just didn't quite realize how quickly the Democratic Party would implode here. There were no questions about the implosion after the results came in. The state's GOP has run the tables ever since.

So why this little walk through history? One is to reinforce the idea that locations that may seem special or uniquely capable of defying political gravity are not so special after all. If you think about the context in which the state's Democratic Party collapsed in spectacular fashion within a couple electoral cycles, you will notice a few trends. Voters were still angry about the very slow recovery from the Great Recession. Much of the coverage of the news out of DC convinced too many of my neighbors that the Democrats, including our local officials and politicians, were out of touch with Arkansans, and GOP potential candidates became adept at tying every state Democratic politician to Obama and what was then the very much hated Affordable Care Act (now much beloved, and once more in danger). I think the focus on healthcare from the perspective of a critical mass of my state's voters seemed like a waste and pursued at the expense of other policies that would have a more direct and immediate impact on citizens whose rural economies were decaying or the collapse of manufacturing that was happening in various locations around the state. My city was still reeling from the Whirlpool plant closure. Add some culture war raw meat, and we had a perfect storm.

Now at the time, if I learned anything from the Arkansas Times, it was that the GOP in Arkansas was definitely not ready for prime time. It really didn't have much in the way of an infrastructure, and its leaders were not exactly known for their competence. What went unsaid at the time is that the Democratic Party in Arkansas was also threadbare as organizations go. Maybe it was complacency. Maybe it was something else. I can't really say because I don't truly know. But massive GOP gains were not necessarily inevitable at the time. Flash forward to the 2020s. When the state's current Democratic leadership team took over after yet another catastrophic election cycle in 2020, they inherited a state party that was quite literally on the verge of bankruptcy. The current party chair, Grant Tennille, did some very hard work at cleaning up what can charitably be called a mess left behind by years of neglect. The party became solvent by the time 2022 was all said and done. That didn't help us electorally, but it meant that we at least still had the beginnings of a functioning party infrastructure again. That has meant that some cash flow problems for county party organizations was possible once more. And the 2024 electoral cycle, whatever else we may say about it, was one where numerous county party organizations saw increases in membership and increased attendance at local meetings. I know that the times I've been able to make party meetings - something that isn't always easy given some of the challenges I've experienced personally over the last couple years - activists and party members have filled whatever meeting room we have set up. There is a sense of energy and enthusiasm I have not seen before. That's a good sign. I hope that momentum continues. My impression is that the party is now willing to field candidates in various state-level and local-level races at a level we haven't seen since maybe a decade ago or longer. Each US Congressional district was contested this time, and by generally quality candidates. Now that's the good news. The bad news is that when you have to rebuild an organization from scratch, you are not going to see immediate results. After this election was over, the state's GOP still held its supermajority status in both chambers of the state Assembly. Our Congressional candidates lost, and I think any of us who were realistic expected that. Still there were some bright spots. The candidate we backed as the chief justice for our state's supreme court won. We held some seats in the state legislature that were difficult to defend and flipped a seat or two in the growing northwestern region of the state. It's a start. 

My message to my Democratic neighbors in Arkansas is not to give up hope. Keep showing up to meetings in your counties and keep courageous. I am cautiously optimistic that as the state's party apparatus has stabilized that the things we started to do right this year will continue. The party's bench will grow by focusing on those local elections. That's turning out to be doable. The old-school approach of meeting voters where they are is sound. Focusing on the more rural parts of the state is worth the effort, even if it's far from a guarantee of victory in the short term. It's a safe bet that many of our state's voters like our policies, which is evident whenever we get to vote on voter-driven initiatives, such as increasing the state's minimum wage. They've been taught for years to dislike us as a party even if they like our policies. There is no easy fix for that, given the media landscape in which we exist. Even getting past that challenge, districts are so badly gerrymandered that we will inevitably be working harder to win back legislative seats than it should be. But we have no choice but to work harder. The state's GOP has never governed effectively. Some legislation has actually harmed rural voters, especially as our voucher system decimates their local public schools. Once that reality sinks in further, I would expect that our first goal of depriving the GOP of supermajorities in our state is a realistic possibility and one I would expect over the next couple electoral cycles. Having some of the consequences of a Trump presidency laid bare by 2026 may be help our candidates by then. Hang on to some hope.