By John Lyon
Arkansas News Bureau

LITTLE ROCK — U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln said today she expects health care reform to remain a hot topic through the 2010 election cycle, but she believes as Arkansans learn more about the reform bill she voted for last week, they will see it is good for Arkansas.

“I think the more people do understand about the health care bill, the more comfort they feel with it,” she said. “There’s been a lot of misinformation out there.”

Lincoln spoke to reporters after taking part in a ceremony in which Target presented a $7,500 donation to the Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance. As with most of Lincoln’s recent public appearances in her home state, most of the questions concerned the debate over legislation to overhaul the nation’s health care system.

The senator said that since she has been home for the holidays several constituents have approached her to talk about the Senate health care bill, including some who questioned her while she was at a Little Rock mall with her mother on Sunday to return gifts. The questioners were polite, she said.

“There were some people that were concerned, but nobody was taunting me or anything,” she said.

Lincoln said that after the bill is merged with the health care bill passed by the House, she will launch an effort during the spring recess to educate the public about the legislation, much as she did after the creation of Medicare Part D, the federal program to subsidize prescription drug costs for Medicare beneficiaries.

“We’ll probably have (something) very similar to what we did with Medicare Part D, and that was we had several different big summit-type meetings in different areas of the state where we could help explain,” she said.

The House health care bill includes a government-run health insurance option. Lincoln said that when the Senate and House bills are merged, the public option is “probably going to have to go away, like it did in the Senate.”

Asked if she believes health care will still be a hot topic by next November, when she is up for re-election, Lincoln said she thinks it will, but “you’ll be seeing a lot of other things coming up,” including issues considered by the Senate agriculture committee, which she chairs, and the Finance Committee, of which she is a member.

Republican political consultant Ted Thomas of Little Rock said today that Lincoln is right when she says other issues will come up, but he said Lincoln will do herself no good if she continues talking about health care.

“If I were giving her political advice, I’d tell her to get as far away from that health care vote as she could,” the former state legislator said.

Republicans have targeted Lincoln for defeat next year. Seven people have said they will seek the GOP nomination to challenge her, and former state Sen. Jim Holt, who garnered 44 percent of the vote against Lincoln in 2004, was scheduled to hold two fundraising events tonight for another possible Senate bid.

Lincoln also could face a Democratic primary. State Senate leader Bob Johnson, D-Bigelow, is mulling a U.S. Senate bid and Lt. Gov. Bill Halter has been coy about reports he may be considering challenging the two-term incumbent.

Thomas said that if he were advising Lincoln’s opponents, he would tell them to keep talking about health care but also talk about other issues.

“In some places it’s not so much any particular vote, it’s the sum total of where the country is at right now. People are dissatisfied with the debt, they’re dissatisfied with the bailouts, they’re dissatisfied with the stimulus package,” he said.

Janine Parry, an associate professor of political science at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, said Republicans are “right to bludgeon her with it,” but Lincoln’s role in the health care debate may not be much of a weapon by November.

Voters have short attention spans, Parry said, adding that Lincoln has been careful to distance herself from President Obama and the Democratic leadership by, among other things, opposing a public option.

“She cut it right down the middle. On the high-profile stuff, that’s what successful Arkansas politicians do,” Parry said.