We begin this Tuesday edition of Ozarks at Large with our friend from his office in Little Rock, Andrew DeMillo, the editor in chief of the Arkansas Advocate.
Matthew Moore: Andrew, happy election day again.
Andrew DeMillo: Happy, happy election day. It seems like we just did this a few weeks ago.
Moore: I can't decide if it's Groundhog Day or Election Day. We'll see. So let's start, Andrew, if we can, talking about some runoff elections. We've got some local, we've got some that's happening in more regional ways. Let's talk about some of the runoff elections that you and your team are keeping track of for Tuesday's election.
DeMillo: The top one that we're watching is going to be secretary of state. It's the only statewide runoff election. It's the Republican race between Kim Hammer and Brian Norris. Whoever wins the runoff election is going to face a Democrat and a libertarian candidate in the fall. And it's a very interesting race, just given the context of what we're seeing right now with the push by Republicans and President Trump to impose new restrictions on voting — what we've seen with the Save America Act. But also from a political standpoint, this is just a really interesting race because it's kind of showing some splits within the Republican Party, and it's not the usual kind of split that you would see in a primary. It's not a moderate versus a conservative. These are two very conservative candidates, both of whom have allies who are closely aligned with President Trump. It's kind of a split within the MAGA wing of the Republican Party.
Kim Hammer has the support of the governor, has the support of other top Republicans, including Tom Cotton. He's kind of the establishment candidate. He has a history of pushing for various restrictions on the initiative process. And Brian Norris is someone who's advocated for paper ballots. He has support from other Trump allies like Michael Flynn and Mike Lindell, the MyPillow CEO. It's kind of turned into very much a difference of style, a difference of personality and a difference of philosophy, not necessarily of stances. It's an interesting thing to see how much of a split there is within what's already a very conservative wing of the party right now. It's something that's become very heated just over the past couple of weeks. We've seen spending on both sides from outside groups, and we're going to be watching around the state to see — I'm not really sure how this one is going to shake out, but this has definitely been one of the more heated races that kind of crept up on us after the primary.
Moore: I've seen a lot of screenshots of attack text messages that have been sent from both sides. This is very much a lot of infighting going on for a Republican primary, which is a little unusual for what we've got here in Arkansas.
DeMillo: And it's become very personalized. Norris has gotten criticism over social media posts that he's made, some that have been directed at fellow Republicans, including Cotton. You even had Cole Jester, who's the current secretary of state, use really strong language in condemning it. And Norris has been very critical of Hammer, has even filed a lawsuit over one of the laws that Hammer had sponsored in the legislature, dealing with being within 100 feet of a polling place. So it's become very, very personalized. It's kind of an outgrowth of what we saw during the primary with some of the legislative races where we saw some of the legislative candidates that the governor had supported being unsuccessful. But this kind of goes in a different direction altogether — those seemed to be hovering around the Franklin County prison issue. This is a lot more of an establishment versus anti-establishment kind of attitude. Republicans have in the past been able to kind of thread that needle pretty well in some of their primaries. I'm not sure if they're going to be able to this time.
Moore: Speaking of the legislature, we've got the fiscal session coming up next week. Your team has spoken to both the president of the Senate and the leader of the House. Tell me a little bit about those conversations. What did we see that was similar between the two conversations? And where did we see some differing between the two?
DeMillo: One of the bits of news that came out from our interview with Senate President Bart Hester was that the expectation is, after the fiscal session, they'll be going to a special session right after that. The governor has not said that she plans on calling one, but both Hester and Speaker Evans both said that that's the expectation. The governor has been pushing for cuts in income taxes, and especially during an election year, this is something that Republicans have been really eager to get — to get the income tax phased out essentially. So they're on similar ground with that.
One of the bits of news that came out from the interview with Speaker Evans was that the Franklin County prison has kind of overshadowed a lot of things. It's been the top issue politically in primary races and just in politics here generally. It sounds like there's a good chance the fight over it is not going to come up during the fiscal session. The speaker talked about how he thinks there's majority support for a prison, but the debate still, as we know, is where is it going to be. So it sounds like there's going to be kind of a wait-and-see attitude on that. Those are kind of the two main bits of news that we saw out of these interviews.
Moore: We heard an interview that our partner Roby Brock did last week with the governor when he pushed her to talking about the prison. And he said, it doesn't seem like you have the votes in the Senate, do you? What are you going to do to do more work on this? And she said, it's really up to the legislature at this point. From what it sounds like with Speaker Evans, their stance tends to be, we're just going to push it down the road.
DeMillo: That's the impression that I got from this interview with Evans. Everyone knows what the political dynamics and the political calculus of it are. It was already difficult even before the primary, but after what we saw with the governor being unsuccessful in being able to oust some opponents of the Franklin County prison from the legislature, it seems even more of an uphill battle. Legislative leaders are very aware what the vote numbers are and they know what the dynamics are. It still could end up coming up — they're going to be talking about the corrections budget anyways. There's nothing to keep legislators from trying to bring it up in some kind of discussion. But it really does feel like this is going to be more of a general regular session issue.
Moore: Lastly, I want to touch on your latest column that you can find at arkansasadvocate.com, talking about how the Arkansas Capitol grounds could bring people together, but you say an anti-abortion monument won't do that.
DeMillo: This was a column focused not on the abortion debate, but on the Capitol grounds itself. Arkansas is poised to become the first state that has what's called a monument to the unborn, that's being supported by anti-abortion advocates. One of the points I was trying to make is this really goes against what we've seen for the most part in recent years with monuments at the Capitol. We've got monuments to the Little Rock Nine, to fallen firefighters, to Gold Star families — issues that have really bipartisan support and really bring people together. An anti-abortion monument seems to go in a different direction and really is injecting politics into a space that really feels like it should be separate from that, especially as we see things within the Capitol and just politics in general becoming more partisan. It feels like there should be some area that should be a respite from it, and the Capitol grounds really, ideally, should be that. There should be some way to bring people together, and this monument does not seem to be the way to do it.
Moore: Well, you can always keep up with Andrew and his team's work when you go to arkansasadvocate.com. Thank you for your work, thanks for all you're doing, and we will catch up soon after the first full week of the fiscal session. And boy, I'm sure you'll be drinking just as much coffee then as you are today.
DeMillo: Oh, that's a scary thought, but yeah, I look forward to it.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
