By John Brummett

If I lived in the 1st Congressional District of eastern and north-central Arkansas, I’d vote in a heartbeat, happily and confidently, for Steve Bryles to be my congressman.

But then I don’t live in the 1st District. I live a few blocks from Bryles in Little Rock.

Maybe you’re confused. Maybe you’re entitled to be.

Bryles is one of the more able and well-meaning members of the state Senate, where he, representing a district centered in his longtime hometown of Blytheville, has distinguished himself for nearly a decade as a progressive champion of improved educational accountability.

His leadership is the main reason Blytheville landed the state’s second KIPP charter school. Thus one can say accurately that educational opportunities are markedly better for Mississippi County children thanks largely to Bryles.

So now he has filed as a Democratic candidate to represent the 1st District in Congress, seeking to succeed retiring Marion Berry.

But there’s this: In 2007, Bryles sold his main house in Blytheville, took as his permanent residence another Blytheville house he owns and that he rents out, and moved with his wife and son to a rented cottage in old-town Little Rock. It’s within a John Daly tee shot of the state Capitol, where he has represented the Blytheville area in the Senate since 2001. Now he is term-limited.

He told me he found he could better represent the district and tend to his senatorial duties by staying in Little Rock and having the comfort of his family with him, rather than driving back and forth.

A cotton trader by profession, he said he owns plenty of property in Mississippi County, where his family’s roots trace to the mid-19th Century, and that he’d put his 1st District property tax bill up against those of any of the other candidates.

The question of whether his living outside the district day-to-day impairs his ability to represent the district genuinely, dutifully and loyally — that’s for the residents of the district to decide, as well as for Bryles to explain.

The question of whether his situation is significantly different from that of his two main Democratic rivals, Chad Causey and Tim Wooldridge — that’s also for the 1st District residents to decide.

Except that he is not married, but merely engaged, Causey presents a nearly identical situation to that of Bryles. He is a native of Jonesboro, where he owns a home that he rents out. For most of the last decade he actually has resided in rented quarters in Washington, D.C., where he has labored in top jobs on the congressional staff of the retiring Berry.

Wooldridge is from Paragould, where his wife stays. But he spends the preponderance of his week nights sleeping over in Little Rock, where, for the last couple of years, he has worked as the executive director for a new lobbying association for most of the state’s four-year institutions of higher education.

Wooldridge stressed that he goes to church twice every Sunday at home in Paragould.

Residency can be an evasive concept. In 1993 I lived in a rented house in Washington, D.C., where I spent the year working on a book. I rented out the home I own in Little Rock, but kept my voter registration, vehicle licensure and property tax assessments in Little Rock. I’m quite sure I was a pure Arkansawyer, merely a visitor in a strange land.

Here is the most relevant question for these fellows seeking to represent in Congress this uncommonly needy 1st District, containing as it does some of the nation’s deepest poverty: Where is your heart?

An equally good question, I suppose, is what these candidates intend to do to try to bring more jobs to the district.

They could speak with some authority, it seems, on the dearth thereof.

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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