By John Lyon
Arkansas News Bureau
LITTLE ROCK — After Lt. Gov. Bill Halter announced his U.S. Senate campaign last week, embattled Democratic incumbent Blanche Lincoln said Halter’s entry into the race “doesn’t change anything” for her bid for re-election.
Political observers say Lincoln might wish that were true, but in fact the state’s No. 2 Democratic officeholder is forcing the senator’s campaign to shift gears.
“They immediately ended up counterattacking very quickly after the Halter campaign ended up announcing,” noted Andrew Dowdle, assistant professor of political science at the University of Arkansas. “They have a strategy, they’re responding quickly, they’re taking this seriously. This is not something where they’re taking this for granted.”
On Monday, the day Halter announced, Lincoln said she was “the rope in a tug of war between outside special interests.” Within hours of Halter’s filing on Tuesday, Lincoln’s campaign issued a statement criticizing Halter for receiving the support of “Washington-based liberal groups that are generating out-of-state
cash” for his Democratic primary campaign.
Halter defended his contributions solicited by groups like MoveOn.org and big labor unions, saying the money was coming from “working men and women across Arkansas and across America.”
Halter’s campaign also issued a statement that criticized Lincoln for accepting “over $1 million from the exact special interests she claims to be saying no to,” such as banks and credit card companies.
Much of the reporting on the Halter-Lincoln contest in the national media has focused on the ideological differences between the two Arkansas Democrats and their supporters. Halter has said he supports a public health care option, extension of the estate tax and at least some provisions of the union-backed Employee Free Choice Act, all positions that put him at odds with Lincoln.
A blogger for The Nation, John Nichols, wrote last week that the Halter-Lincoln contest could be “definitional for Democrats.”
But Dowdle said the primary race doesn’t appear to be shaping up as an ideological clash.
“Outsiders argue is that this is a battle primarily between the left and moderate wings of the state Democratic party,” he said. “I think you’re going to end up seeing a race that’s not going to be fought on left or right issues, on whether a jobs bill ought to be voted for, whether health care reform ought to be enacted. It’s going to be on questions of … this insider-outsider dichotomy, in terms of who’s the real representative of Arkansas.”
Both candidates are playing “the Arkansas first card,” said Hal Bass, a political science professor at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia.
“That says, ‘I’m here representing you,’ trying to convince citizens that their (intent) is to look after them and not after some more abstract partisan or ideological interest,” Bass said. “It’s traditionally worked in Arkansas. The question is, is that old tried-and-true formula something that’s going to work in the current environment?”
The best-known Republican Senate candidate, U.S. Rep. John Boozman, recently told The Hill’s campaign blog, Ballot Box, that Halter’s entry into the race could ultimately benefit Lincoln, if she emerges as the primary winner, because “a tough primary forces people to get organized and helps them in that regard.”
Boozman has his own primary battle to fight: He is one of four Republicans who have filed for the GOP nomination to challenge Lincoln, and four more Republicans have said they will file on Monday, the last day of Arkansas’ political filing period.
A third Democrat, D.C. Morrison of Little Rock, has also filed to run for the Senate.
Dowdle said the idea that a tough primary contest helps a candidate prepare for the general election is popular in some quarters, but “I really don’t end up buying that.”
“I think that the fact that there is going to be obviously a conflict here is going to be something that has to be at least a slight negative, in terms of that amount of money (Lincoln will have to spend),” he said. “And there’s always the problem that when somebody in your own party goes on the record attacking you, even if you end up winning the primary, that becomes something that is obviously ammunition for the general election.”
And what if Halter wins the primary?
Bass said Halter would need to make some adjustments for the general election race.
“He’d have to move to the center pretty hard,” Bass said. “I just don’t think there’s a strong left-of-center majority in the Arkansas electorate. Whether he could pull that off, whether he could pivot and do that I think remains to be seen.”
