By John Brummett

This will be the most nationalized political race in Arkansas political history.

That means it will be about national issues and national constituencies and that our little state will only so happen, owing to circumstances, to be the battleground.

I’m referring to Lt. Gov. Bill Halter’s challenge in the Democratic primary to U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln.

These are those circumstances:

—The Democratic Party has been fractured by having taken over Washington yet failing to impose a long-desired liberal agenda. The left blames centrist Democratic senators like Lincoln for balking on health care reform, union card check and cap-and-trade.

—Lincoln is the most visible centrist Democratic senator happening to stand for re-election this year.

—As it further happens, liberals have organized in recent years into online organizations that can wield inordinate influence and raise large sums of money. Halter, an ambitious Arkansas Democrat with academic credentials, political experience and a record of championing the state lottery, was the ready and willing agent of these national liberal groups to mount a primary challenge to Lincoln. The idea is to beat her, ideally, but punish her, at least, and make other centrists think twice about defying the passionate left.

—A Senate race is cheap in Arkansas. National groups can take a straight shot at Lincoln for $5 million. They’d need 10 times that if they were going after, say, Diane Feinstein in California.

Each of these candidates will seek to create distance from this national elephant in the room.

You see, Arkansas has always distinguished itself as a peculiar, insular place where its politics gets played inside the state. If history is any judge, benefits will accrue greatly to the candidate who can better cast the other as an agent of out-of-staters.

In 2002, Mark Pryor pooh-poohed the notion that he was running for the Senate to give Democrats a vote in the Senate. He said his race was solely about that sign on his daddy’s desk proclaiming that Arkansas comes first.

Lincoln wants to say that Halter is a pawn of “outside extreme groups” and describe herself as “the rope in the tug-of-war” between both extremes, meaning those on the Democratic left and those on the Republican right. She wants to say the extremes oppose her because she cares only about Arkansas, not anyone else’s agenda.

Halter will try to say that his money comes from regular people only so happening to be mobilized by rich out-of-state forces. He will say that, while he’s collected money in small increments from regular people, Lincoln has taken maximum contributions from special business interests such as insurance companies and polluters that compel her to vote against Arkansas working families on health, labor, environmental and tax issues.

Most nationalized races occur in general elections. Ours is odd because it will take place within the Democratic Party. If we voted today, both Lincoln and Halter would lose in the general election to a Republican.

So consider my opening assertion that no race in Arkansas has ever been this overwhelmingly nationalized.

The nearest comparison is the epic battle of John McClellan and David Pryor in a Senate runoff for the Democratic nomination in 1972.

During a televised debate late in the runoff, Pryor talked about people dipping into their cookie jars to contribute to his campaign. McClellan responded by ridiculing that silly notion and, instead, calling the names of big out-of-state unions that had given Pryor money.

Will Lincoln be McClellan and Halter Pryor? Hold on tight and we’ll see.

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John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699.