By James Jefferson
Arkansas News Bureau

LITTLE ROCK — Looking to capitalize on years of groundwork and the prevailing political wind, Republicans enter the fall campaign confident of gaining a strong GOP foothold in the state Legislature in the November general election.

Democrats have dominated both chambers since Reconstruction. Currently, the party controls 71 seats in the 100-member House (with one seat vacant) and 27 of 35 Senate seats.

Seventeen Senate seats and all 100 House seats were up for election this year. As a result of primaries this spring, Democrats are assured of at least 19 Senate seats and Republicans eight when the 88th General Assembly convenes in January.

Democrat Joyce Elliott, who is running for Congress, could return to the Senate if she loses. Competitive races are on tap for the remaining seven seats.

In the House, 37 Democrats and 21 Republicans have secured seats, leaving 42 seats up for grabs in 32 head-to-head contests between Democrats and Republicans, nine races featuring Democrats with Green Party or independent opponents and one Republican with an independent challenger.

Amid widespread dissatisfaction with Washington, Republicans are counting on a trickle down effect to help them eclipse their largest legislative contingent. In 2001, the GOP held 30 seats in the House and eight in the Senate, along with the top two constitutional offices and half of the state’s six congressional seats.

“I am more firm in our belief today that our numbers will be greater than those numbers,” state GOP Chairman Doyle Webb said. “There’ll be a remarkable and stark increase in the number of Republicans, both in the House and Senate.”

Webb said the party’s cause for optimism is twofold.

Since losing the governorship and lieutenant governor’s post in a 2006 Democratic sweep of the constitutional offices, the state GOP has shown renewed interest in growing the party from the grassroots up, Webb said, including an aggressive campaign the past two years to recruit candidates for county offices and the Legislature.

The effort included targeting races across the state, looking at the history of districts and precincts to determine in which districts the values and views correlated with those of the GOP, he said.

Also, the Republican chief said, conservative Democrats in Arkansas turned off by what he described as the “leftist agenda in D.C.” are now looking for new leadership at the statehouse.

“We now see the conservative Democrats not finding a home in the Democratic Party and not seeing their elected officials, from the governor on down, fighting the agenda that they’re so fearful of,” Webb said.

Todd Turner, the state Democratic Party chairman, conceded there is some anti-incumbent sentiment nationally but said it won’t filter down to district races in Arkansas, where he said Democrats have a strong slate of candidates.

“I don’t think that’s going to adversely affect our legislative candidates in their local areas where people know them and can evaluate them and compare them to their opponents,” Turner said. “I know the Republicans are going to try to somehow try to link a congresswoman from California to some (legislative) candidate from Magnolia, but I don’t think they’re going to get away with that.”

Turner said his party has not done specific, race-by-race polling because it’s been too early. Typically, voters don’t get engaged and focused on local races until after Labor Day, after the county fairs and when the weather cools down a bit, he said.

Also, Turner said too much has been written into the results of the presidential race in Arkansas two years ago, when Republican John McCain carried the state by a wide margin over Democrat Barack Obama.

If former Arkansas first lady Hillary Clinton had been the Democratic nominee, she would have carried the state, so the outcome of the race was not such a reflection of Republican inroads in Arkansas, he said.

“I don’t think that’s any kind of trend that suddenly we’re going to flip the majority in the Legislature,” Turner said.

“Besides, I’ve yet to hear the Republicans provide any explanation of what they could do better at the state level,” he added, noting that Arkansas is among just a handful of states operating in the black and one of the few southern states that have created new jobs and cut taxes.

“The local voters in the House and Senate districts around this state are going to recognize the Democrats have done what they said they would do,” he said.