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That unbeatable Senator Pryor Wednesday, May 21, 2008 By David J. Sanders "So when exactly did your junior senator become unbeatable?" That was a query hurled at me last week by one of those inside-the-Beltway political types during my brief excursion to the nation's capital. As a Republican who didn't have a lot to be happy about at the time, he was at loss as to why his local party in Arkansas, "the only Southern state to be represented in the U.S. Senate by two Democrats," couldn't find a quality candidate to match wits with Sen. Mark Pryor. To say our conversation was quick would be an understatement. In fact, as soon as he posed his question and uttered a few choice words, he excused himself, stomping off to some other encounter, no doubt spreading misery all the way. That said, his was an interesting question. Convention holds that if you ever want to take out a member of the world's most deliberative body, it must be done the first time he or she stands for re-election. Perhaps that is why the state's Green Party saw fit to put up a candidate to challenge Pryor. So when did he become unbeatable? Was it when Mike Huckabee decided he'd have better luck at becoming John McCain's running mate than beating a Pryor? Perhaps it goes back further, like the day he placed his hand on the Bible and was sworn-in as a senator, or it could have been the day he filed for office in 2002. Mark is son of David, the most revered Arkansas politician in recent or, for that matter, distant history. The younger Pryor earned his seat by beating Sen. Tim Hutchinson, a vulnerable Republican incumbent who had his share of shortcomings, not the least of which was that his last name wasn't Pryor. But, there is more to it; shall we work backwards? Last summer, Pryor stemmed the tide that could have produced a fire-breathing Republican, one who gets extremely worked up by the fact that the country has an illegal immigration problem, when he voted against Sen. John McCain's comprehensive immigration reform bill. He told me at the time that he "couldn't get comfortable" with the bill's provision that put illegal immigrants on a pathway to citizenship, which was sort of the premise of the entire proposal. Prior to that, he avoided the anti-gun label, by voting to exempt gun manufacturers from frivolous lawsuits. No one could tag him with the charge of being weak on security or wanting to cut-and-run from Iraq after he voted for the Patriot Act and against the defined timeline for a troop withdrawal. He earned a little ink by pushing a peculiar measure to leave Iraq with a "secret" pull-out date. As the one of the members of the so-called "Gang of 14," he was credited with helping hold the Senate's sacred middle ground, which put him at odds with the Democratic leadership's appetite for filibustering and allowed him to claim some credit for getting Samuel Alito onto the U.S. Supreme Court, despite having voting against him on the floor. He avoided the pro-life label in 2002, but shortly after coming to the Senate he seemed to embrace the moniker when he voted against a resolution affirming Roe v. Wade as the law of the land, after he'd voted for the ban on partial-birth abortions. I'm not sure any politician is ever unbeatable. But, after posting a first-term performance filled with a series of carefully orchestrated policy and political calculations aimed at placing him, both literally and figuratively, in the middle of everything, I'd say he's pretty close. ------- David Sanders writes twice weekly for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock and is a host of the Arkansas Education Television Network's "Unconventional Wisdom." His e-mail address is DavidJSanders@aol.com. |
