Moore: We begin this Tuesday edition of Ozarks at Large with our pal Andrew DeMillo. He is the editor-in-chief of the Arkansas Advocate. Andrew, happy early voting week.
DeMillo: Happy early voting week to all who celebrate.
Moore: We’re going to spend a lot of our time here talking about elections and talking about candidates. Andrew, let’s first start by talking about the Arkansas Advocate has a new edition of your Arkansas Explained series out, talking about how to vote early in the 2026 midterm election. Why don’t we start our conversation there?
DeMillo: Yeah. We’ve got 1.85 million registered voters for this election. And as you know, early voting is an option that increasing number of people take advantage of rather than waiting until Election Day. So for all intents and purposes, the election is underway right now.
Our reporters are out around the state actually talking to voters to see what issues are really driving them and how they feel about the national climates, how they feel about some of the state issues here. We’re really kind of interested in seeing what’s going to happen with the turnout in this election.
This is an election where we’re seeing very competitive races in other Republican-leaning states and seeing if that spills over into some of the races here. So I’m really curious to hear what some of the voters have to say today.
Moore: I saw a news article over the weekend that said they are expecting voter turnout to be about 50%. Last week I had a conversation with Jennifer Price, who is the election commissioner here in Washington County where I’m at. It seems that people are interested in voting in a midterm election, which is not always the case, especially in Arkansas.
DeMillo: Yeah. And I think a lot of it is just because of what you’re seeing with a lot of voters’ feelings about affordability issues, about discontent with the Trump administration, objections to the war in Iran. What I’m really interested in seeing is what does that do with turnout among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents in Arkansas?
Last week, Sen. Tom Cotton’s campaign announced that they are funding a get-out-the-vote effort with the state Republican Party. So clearly, there is an effort to make sure that their folks still turn out for the election in what could end up being a very challenging environment, at least at the national level. And we’ve had kind of mixed signals about whether or not that spills over into Arkansas.
Moore: Well, speaking of Sen. Cotton here, last week, Arkansas TV hosted several debates for both federal and statewide elections. Your column a couple of weeks ago talked about the importance of having these sorts of debates.
Let’s spend a little bit of time here talking about some of the major takeaways from some of these key debates. And let’s, of course, start with the Senate race that Tom Cotton actually did not attend this debate.
DeMillo: Yeah. And a little bit of news that came after the debate was there’s not going to be a debate between Cotton and Hallie Shoffner, the Democratic nominee. As you remember, the two of them had agreed to debate on a conservative Christian media outlet. Apparently that fell through. There are kind of conflicting explanations of what happened with that. And that was going to be the only option for them.
So the debate that we had on Arkansas TV last week was between Shoffner and Libertarian Jeff Wadlin. And it was a Cotton-free debate. Second election in a row where Cotton has not participated in a debate.
And it really gave Shoffner a chance to focus on Cotton, focus on his absence, focus on a lot of her criticism of him, especially when it comes to farm issues, past votes against the farm bill. So it gave more attention to that.
The big question is, does that really have much of an impact in the race? We saw new polling this past week that showed that this race seems to be pulling away from her. Talk Business had a couple of months ago had shown that this race was statistically tied, basically, and their latest polling shows Cotton with a lead of 9 percentage points.
I think a lot of that is a reflection of what’s happening in terms of the spending. There’s a massive spending gap between those two campaigns and outside groups coming in and helping Cotton. I think it’s clearly that that is having an impact right now.
Moore: Another marquee race here in Arkansas is the race for governor. The incumbent, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, did attend the debate that also featured the Democratic nominee, Fred Love, and the Libertarian nominee, Colt Shelby.
DeMillo: Yeah. And that was a debate the governor had said she was going to participate in. The lines of attack against the governor were pretty much expected. A lot of focus on her policies and the complaints from Love and from Shelby that her policy priorities are misplaced. A lot of criticism of the voucher program.
As you know, Love is running on a promise to sign an executive order to eliminate the voucher program, which, that’s a promise that even you have some Democrats pointing out is problematic when it comes to state constitution. You need the Legislature to do that. And so you saw some criticism of that.
You saw some discussion of the future of health care and Medicaid. One thing that was very interesting with that was that, although none of them really kind of gave a specific answer of what the replacement program should be for Arkansas’ hybrid Medicaid expansion. And that is the issue that whoever is governor in January, that’s going to be their top issue, because that has just such a huge ripple effect, not just on health care, but the economy in general here.
Moore: Speaking of the polling that we were just talking about there with the Senate race, a new poll is out from Talk Business & Politics as well. The baseline poll showed Gov. Sanders with a 5% lead. This new poll is showing a pretty substantial gap between state Sen. Fred Love and Sanders. It’s almost 20 percentage point gap now.
DeMillo: Yeah. And what’s really interesting with that is Sanders has not seemed to be affected by national sentiment about Trump and national sentiment about Republicans as much as other candidates here in Arkansas, which is ironic, considering that she was White House press secretary during the first Trump term.
What the takeaway for me from that poll was how much, how well Shelby was doing. I think he had like 11, 10 or 11% points in the poll. And it’s clear that he’s pulling some votes away from Love.
Love is just not generating the same level of excitement and support that we’re seeing from other Democrat candidates like Hallie Shoffner or Chris Jones in the 2nd District. So she seems in a much more comfortable position than a lot of other Republicans in this environment.
Moore: The last race we’ll focus on here is the Central Arkansas congressional race, District 2, between the incumbent French Hill and his Democratic challenger, Chris Jones, who had previously ran for governor in the previous election.
DeMillo: Yeah. And that debate really focused a lot on a lot of national issues, but especially on Jones essentially portraying Congressman Hill as too beholden to the Trump administration, which is criticism that he’s hoping will resonate in an election like this, especially in a district like 2nd District where you have a fair number of Democrats.
What’s interesting to me is areas where Hill is willing to point out his distance from the White House. He talked about things like his disagreement on the issue of beef imports. He highlighted how President Trump did not sign his bipartisan housing bill, allowed it to become law without his signature. And that kind of gave him some daylight between the two of them.
And even after the debate over this weekend, we saw Rep. Hill basically raising questions about the executive order that the president has signed, waiving some sanctions against Russia. And Hill had said that he’s seeking a classified briefing to get an explanation of the reasons for that.
So this is something that we saw in 2nd District, and we saw in some of the other congressional debates here too, where Republican lawmakers, they’re willing to step out and distance themselves somewhat from the Trump administration, but maybe not flat-out criticize them, but kind of highlight their differences and try to really tout their independence as much as they can.
Moore: Finally here, we want to talk about something that was brought up during the gubernatorial debate and has a lot of resonance right now. And it’s the conversation around the death penalty.
There was a conversation during the gubernatorial debate talking about the botched execution that happened in Tennessee. And we heard some response from the candidates who gave some answers that I think might have raised a few eyebrows.
DeMillo: Yeah. This was a question about the botched execution attempt in Tennessee of Christa Pike and whether they would feel comfortable going forward with executions given what happened there. What was interesting is all three of the candidates essentially expressed support or at least openness to scheduling executions. And you even had Shelby raise the possibility of adding firing squad to an option, which would require a change in law.
Fred Love, who, he had voted against the nitrogen execution bill. He’s voted against legislation that keeps lethal injection drug sources secret. He seemed to indicate a change of heart on it, where he pointed out that he’s leaned against the death penalty, but he would judge on a case-by-case basis. The governor has also said she’d judge on a case-by-case basis.
And it’s interesting, especially when you contrast it to the history of executions in Arkansas. And what I pointed out was, Winthrop Rockefeller, when he was governor, one of the most famous things he did before he left office was commute the sentences of prisoners on death row. He was very outspoken, opposed to the death penalty.
And when he made this announcement, one of the things that he said, he asked a question of, “What earthly mortal has the omnipotence to say who among us shall live and who shall die?”
And kind of the point I made with that is that seems like a question that you almost want to ask people running for governor. When you talk about executions, there needs to be a deeper discussion of why do you think this is an effective deterrent, or do you think it’s an effective deterrent?
And how are you going to avoid the same problems that we’ve seen, not just in Tennessee, but with other executions, other botched executions? How do you ensure it’s constitutional process? And I don’t think we really saw that with the debate here.
Moore: The reason that the nitrogen law that she’s mentioning here, the nitrogen gas law that she signed is happening is because there are drug makers who are refusing to allow their drugs to be used for lethal injections.
And so it is a very fascinating conversation of, there seems to be a gap in, it’s not whether or not we can do it, but perhaps why are we doing it? And the quote from former Gov. Rockefeller there, I think is really apt because it seems interesting that it’s less of a conversation of whether or not we should do it, but perhaps why should we do it? And that doesn’t seem to be the conversation that’s being had.
DeMillo: Yeah, exactly. A question of why and how. The last time Arkansas carried out executions, Gov. Hutchinson had scheduled eight executions to take place over a two-week period. And that was because one of the lethal injection drugs was going to expire and Arkansas didn’t know if it was going to be able to get another supply of them.
This was something that drew not just national, but international attention, as well as objections from law, human rights advocacy groups. And that’s why you have the nitrogen option that was enacted. But also that there, concerns have been raised about whether or not that amounts to cruel and unusual punishment and whether or not that would pass constitutional muster.
So you have that issue happening. When you talk about the firing squads, you get into that question as well, too. And it kind of echoes what we saw with some of the discussion on the now-abandoned plan to livestream the execution of the Fort Hood shooter. So yeah, I think there is kind of a larger conversation about it.
And let’s be honest about Arkansas. Nationally, support for the death penalty is at an all-time low nationally. But in Arkansas, the polling that we’ve seen over the years, there’s a lot more support for it in Arkansas.
So it’s not realistic to expect any of them to say they flat-out would commute people on death row or would refuse to schedule any executions. But it does feel like there should be kind of a deeper conversation about this policy when you’re talking literally about a life or death issue.
Moore: Absolutely. There is so much more that we could get into here today. We just don’t have time to. One thing I would point our listeners to is Arkansas Advocate has an article, “Nine Arkansas legislative races to watch in midterm election.” You can find all of the election coverage that Andrew and his team are doing when you go to arkansasadvocate.com. Andrew, thank you as always for your conversation. Appreciate it.
DeMillo: Thank you.
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