By John Lyon
Arkansas News Bureau

LITTLE ROCK — Independent and Green Party candidates for U.S. Senate say they will be in Hot Springs Friday to protest their exclusion from a candidate forum sponsored by the Association of Arkansas Counties.

The association has invited Democratic incumbent Sen. Blanche Lincoln and her Republican challenger, U.S. Rep. John Boozman, to participate in a forum at its annual conference at the Hot Springs Convention Center, but independent candidate Trevor Drown and Green Party candidate John Gray are not invited.

“We’re going to be protesting over in Hot Springs on Friday morning on this,” Gray said Wednesday. “My feeling is, that is a state group, an association of counties, and they have no business whatever spending state money to have a private debate.”

“In the state of Arkansas, only 8 percent of the voter makeup is within the two-party system,” Drown said. “Ninety-two percent of Arkansans don’t register within that system, so they’re doing a huge disservice to the people of Arkansas by doing it the way they’re doing it.”

Randy Kemp, spokesman for the association, said the conference is primarily funded through private sponsorship, though counties do use public funds to send officials to the conference. The forum is one of many activities at the three-day conference, which started Wednesday, he said.

Asked why only Lincoln and Boozman were invited to participate in the forum, Kemp said, “The issues that they will be asked to discuss and answer questions about on Friday will come up for a vote in October, when they’re serving their function as either a senator or a U.S. congressman.”

Kemp also said that in presidential debates, a candidate polling at less than 5 percent typically is not allowed to participate.

“I don’t think that’s unprecedented at all,” he said.

Drown said the forum is clearly about the Senate race. If the association was only interested in hearing about issues coming up in October, he asked, “why didn’t they ask the representatives from the other parts of the state to come?”

Drown also said he has seen only one poll that included him by name and none that included Gray — who was nominated less than three weeks ago — so he was not sure how the association was judging the candidates’ poll numbers.

Gray said poll numbers should not be the issue.

“Anyone who has jumped through the considerable hoops you have to jump through to get on ballot in this state has established their credibility (and) that the people of Arkansas want to hear what they have to say,” Gray said.

During the 2009 legislative session, then-Green Party member Rep. Richard Carroll of North Little Rock filed a bill to prohibit third-party and independent candidates from being excluded from publicly funded debates or debates held in publicly funded facilities. The bill died in committee.