By David J. Sanders
Sometime this week, perhaps while gathered around the table with his family on Thanksgiving Day, Stanley Reed will decide if he’ll become a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate.
But for argument’s sake, let’s say he pulls the trigger and joins the cavalcade of other Republicans vying for the GOP nomination.
By comparison, Reed is not the typical Republican candidate the party has offered up for statewide office in recent years.
First of all, he’s a lawyer who gave up his practice years ago to go back to plowing, planting and harvesting crops from his Delta farm. East Arkansas isn’t exactly the hot bed of Republicanism and certainly hasn’t provided the GOP with many statewide candidates over the years.
By nature of his past presidency of the Arkansas Farm Bureau and chairmanship of the University of Arkansas Board of Trustees, Reed has operated at the top of two extremely large organizations with incredible reach into all areas of state. This makes him an insider nearly anywhere he steps foot.
Notably, he has supported Democrats with his vote and checkbook. Specifically of interest was his past, and even recent, backing of Democratic incumbent Blanche Lincoln, whom he would presumably face-off against should he prevail in a GOP primary.
Reed’s supporters say all of this taken together not only makes him a great Republican U.S. Senate candidate, but potentially a transformative figure as far as the state’s politics are concerned.
Here are their arguments:
With regard to the U.S. Senate race in particular, they believe Reed could come at Lincoln where she is strongest — from the Delta and in the state’s agricultural community. Divide and conquer, of course, has long been a strategy employed in political campaigns, but taking on the newly named chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee will not be easy.
His relationships through the Farm Bureau and the U of A will serve him well when it comes time to build a campaign organization and raise money. Though he hails from the Delta, his friends believe Reed’s solid friendships and relationships in Northwest Arkansas could make a huge difference in the Republican stronghold.
They also believe that his having been counted as one of Lincoln’s backers — based primarily on her performance on agricultural policy — makes Reed a logical critic on the senator’s most recent handling of issues that he and other Arkansans find most offensive.
But beyond the U.S. Senate race, his supporters, along with a few GOP insiders, believe Reed could become the transformative figure their party has lacked.
They contend that if he is elected, Reed would begin to change the electoral balance in the only Southern state that avoided the Republican tidal wave that started sweeping across the South in the 1980s by helping other Republicans vying for office and rebuilding the party apparatus into a viable political organization.
But Reed’s potential opponents see plenty of fodder to use against him, mainly his past support for Lincoln. In fact, one GOP candidate’s adviser predicted that if Reed gets in the race, his campaign will be over before it gets started. The operative predicted that the campaign he worked for, as well as those of other candidates, will undercut Reed simply by painting him as a Republican in name only.
After all, when asked by a reporter only weeks ago if he would support Lincoln should he decide not become a candidate, Reed didn’t say one way or the other.
For now, Reed is not saying definitively what he is doing. But should he decide to run, both his backers and opponents believe they’ll have plenty to talk about over the next few months.
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David J. Sanders writes twice weekly for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock and is the host of Arkansas Education Television Network’s “Unconventional Wisdom.” His e-mail address is DavidJSanders@aol.com.
