By Zack Stovall
Arkansas News Bureau
LITTLE ROCK — Though Blanche Lincoln has washed her hands of the Employee Free Choice Act, Arkansas’ senior U.S. senator is not done having to deal with the card check issue as she gears up for a tough re-election bid, Lincoln opponents and political observers say.
Last week, Lincoln announced her opposition to the incendiary measure that would make it easier for workers to form unions, to the delight of management and the dismay of labor. Her decision to oppose the measure, along with that of Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Arlen Specter, effectively killed EFCA for the current congressional session.
“While I may not have been clear about my position in the past, I am stating today that I cannot support Employee Free Choice Act in its current form and I can’t support efforts to bring it to Senate consideration in its current form,” Lincoln said last week during a speech to the Little Rock Political Animals Club meeting.
However, others believe card check will still figure prominently in Lincoln’s re-election bid, though opponents will have to recalibrate their focus.
“I’m glad that she is coming my way on this issue. I’m disappointed that it took years for her to get there,” said former U.S. Attorney Tim Griffin, a vocal critic of card check and Lincoln’s indecision on the issue, and a potential challenger to Lincoln in 2010.
“The question, it seems to me, becomes how is the current form different from the card check legislation that she co-sponsored and the card check legislation that she voted for,” said Griffin. “There seems to be an implication that something has changed.”
He added there are “a whole host of issues, including this one, that show she is out of touch with Arkansans or playing games with Arkansans.”
Doyle Webb, chairman of the Republican Party of Arkansas, said Lincoln’s lengthy deliberations on an issue so important cast doubt on her leadership.
“The length of time it has taken Sen. Lincoln to make this decision makes me wonder about her judgment,” Webb said. “I question under what circumstance will she vote for that, since she sponsored a similar bill only two years ago, and what will be her decision two years from now or three.”
He said Lincoln’s early start on the campaign trail — she has raised $2.3 million so far — is a sign that Lincoln realizes her vulnerability and is attempting to “rehabilitate” her connection with Arkansas.
“She’s petrified that it will come up for an actual vote in any form,” according to GOP strategist Bill Vickery, who said he doubted the sincerity of Lincoln’s position, calling it a “phony conservative stance” that she could come back to later and claim bipartisanship.
“Senate Democrats in the South want to say it’s dead, but it still looms,” Vickery said. “As long as it’s out there — and it is still in committee — Republicans will use it, especially in the South.”
Art English, a political science professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, said Lincoln’s decision can simply be seen as “mirroring her constituency.”
“I think it’s going to be tough to beat her,” said English, a Democrat. “But she certainly doesn’t want to beat herself by voting against her constituency. Arkansas is a red state presidential, and a center-right state in the south.”
He said, politically, Lincoln has been in a catch 22 on the matter of EFCA.
“If she doesn’t vote against it, she’ll be considered just another liberal Democrat. If she does vote against it, it’ll be seen as mere posturing. Either way, she would be criticized by her political opponents,” he said.
English acknowledged that Lincoln’s polling numbers are low for a two-term incumbent, under 50 percent, and that may be a sign she is vulnerable.
“Politics,” he said, “is all about making common sense judgments about electoral commitments.”
