This is a Thursday edition of Ozarks at Large. I'm Matthew Moore. Joining me on the phone today is Talk Business and Politics’ Roby Brock. Roby, hello. Thanks for joining us on this Thursday.
Roby Brock: Hey, good to be with you.
Matthew Moore: We are less than a week away from early voting starting here in Arkansas. Elections will have some nonpartisan races across the state. We've got some primary elections going on here as well. Roby, there are a few elections that we're going to spend some time talking about and looking at. We've got two special elections, one that's happening in a Senate district in Franklin County, one that's a House district in North Little Rock. Let's start there if we can.
Roby Brock: OK, sure. The special elections are interesting. We're at the special general election portion of all of this now. We've been through a special primary. One of the Senate races had a special runoff, and now we're at the general election where that's all lined up. Basically, you have got Brad Simon as the Republican who won that primary in Senate District 26 to replace the late Gary Stubblefield, who passed away. He faces Adam Watson, who is an independent. The Democrats did not field an opponent in that race. So Simon versus Watson will be the primary day special general election matchup, if you can kind of keep all that straight.
Then down in North Little Rock, Carlton Wing vacated his seat to take over what was Arkansas PBS, now Arkansas TV. There is a Democrat and a Republican in that race. It'll be Holiday, the Democrat, versus Wrenshall, the Republican, in that one. We'll watch for the outcome of that. That's the two special elections that sync up with the primaries.
But there's a lot of activity on the primary front if you want to run through some of those.
Matthew Moore: Yeah, let's do that.
Roby Brock: All right. First of all, at the statewide level, you've got some primary races for governor and for U.S. Senate on the Democratic side. You've got Supha Xayprasith-Mays versus state Sen. Fred Love as the two Democrats vying for the nomination for governor to challenge incumbent Sarah Sanders. You have got Ethan Dunbar and Hallie Shoffner on the Democratic side for the primary for the U.S. Senate race, to probably oppose Tom Cotton. He's got two primary opponents this time, which are both not names anybody would know of, and I don't anticipate any problems for Sen. Cotton.
On the Democratic side, we'll be watching those races for governor and Senate to see who wins the nominations to challenge in the fall, and those will be big races.
There's also a secretary of state and a commissioner of state lands Republican primary that we'll be keeping our eyes on, too. And don't forget, there is a Supreme Court race, Nick Brown versus John Adams, on the ballot, too. That one's a big one and could have some statewide implications just in terms of Brown's a pretty conservative candidate there, Adams a little bit more moderate to progressive. So there are definitely some judicial philosophy differences in that race.
Then there's a number of state legislative primaries to watch across the state.
Matthew Moore: I think one that's probably of most interest to our listeners here in Northwest Arkansas is the race for the Senate district that incumbent Sen. Bryan King holds right now. He's got a challenger in that race, and we've seen quite a bit of mailers coming out, a lot of social media conversations around this race. Why do you think this one is such a contested race?
Roby Brock: State Sen. Bryan King, the incumbent that you mentioned, has this Republican challenge from Bobby Ballinger, whose father Bryan King defeated. So you've got some interesting family dynamics there. But it's also a race where Gov. Sarah Sanders and some of her political apparatus have played in that race. Sen. Bryan King, obviously a huge opponent of the Franklin County prison, and I think Ballinger is benefiting from the governor's political forces with some of the money and all this political communication that you're talking about with social media and direct mail. I'm sure there's probably some stealth radio going on here and there as well.
So that's a really interesting race to watch. Honestly, it's a coin toss. I don't know who wins that one. It's almost a matchup of the last time around, but it's just a different Ballinger candidate there.
Over in East Arkansas, state Sen. Ron Caldwell is facing a primary challenge from a candidate named Trey "BoDirt" Bohannan. That's another one where Sen. Caldwell has been in some opposition to the governor on some of her policies, and there's a candidate that's been fielded to run against him on that one. So there are some interesting Republican primary races going on that might have some effect in the Legislature.
Matthew Moore: From what I can tell, it seems like in these Republican primaries, we're seeing people run farther to the right of the incumbents in these races. Does that seem fair to say?
Roby Brock: I think that's fair to say. We're in the age of Donald Trump, and this is where the Make America Great Again, the MAGA movement has positioned Republican politics. It's kind of a can-you-get-further, who-can-get-furthest-to-the-right dynamic on some things, which is probably not great for governing style, but it is kind of the magic formula for trying to win a Republican primary in Arkansas.
It's not like what you might see in a more liberal state like California or New York, where Democrats might square off against each other and the more liberal Democrat might have a better chance of winning the Democratic primary. I think you've got the same kind of calculus here with the Republican primary and the way it's working. Your observations are spot on.
Matthew Moore: Speaking of Republican primaries, we're seeing a new rule that has been put in place for this election cycle. Listeners of Ozarks at Large will know we spoke to Jennifer Price earlier this month about the logistics and how that will happen. Can you give us a quick TLDR of what's changed for the primaries and how that could affect people going to vote during this cycle?
Roby Brock: The rule was passed by the Republican Party of Arkansas state committee. It's not a state law. It's just a rule they passed that prohibits anybody who's registered as a Democrat from voting in the Republican primary. But a voter can change their party affiliation to Republican prior to the election or even on the day of voting at the polls.
Democrats don't have a similar rule prohibiting registered Republicans from voting in their primary. This doesn't apply to independents or people who haven't picked a party affiliation, which is about 87% of the voters in the state who don't have a party affiliation. Anybody can show up and vote in a Republican primary if you want to. But if you are registered as a Democrat, if you made that declaration in your voter registration, you would have to say, "I would like to switch that to Republican" in order to vote in a Republican primary this year.
I don't think it's going to be a big issue in this election cycle, because you do have those primaries for governor and U.S. Senate, and I think Democrats are going to want to try to pick their choice in that race. They were going to be picking a Democratic ballot for the most part anyway.
It's kind of an unusual rule. I'm surprised it hasn't had some sort of legal challenge, and I suspect that it might after the primary from someone that just wants to test it. The logic is Republicans don't want Democrats crossing over and voting in their primary and picking more extreme candidates that won't do well in the general. I don't think this is a widespread crossover problem in Arkansas. It's a little bit of a solution in search of a problem, in my estimation.
Matthew Moore: If you're ever looking for where to find your new statewide or otherwise, you can always go to talkbusiness.net and look at Roby's reporting and the whole team at Talk Business and Politics. Roby, thanks for joining us today and thanks for the work that you do.
Roby Brock: Always good to be with you, Matthew. Take care.
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