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GOP over troubled water? Saturday, May 24, 2008 By John Brummett The more optimistic Arkansas Democrats speculate that Tuesday's primary suggested the political ship was turning at sea in famously Republican Benton County. But it might merely have been a case of temporarily turbulent waters. For one thing, the strongest evidence of a partisan turn came from a supposedly nonpartisan race, which, at the least, would be ironic. Courtney Henry of Fayetteville, a daughter-in-law of a prominent Democratic family, won by an absolute landslide in a race for a district seat on the Arkansas Court of Appeals. The person she ran over was Ron Williams of Springdale, a father-in-law in a prominent Republican family. This was the race in which Williams, related by marriage to the Hutchinson clan, hired Jim Holt, the extremist right-winger, as a consultant. The idea had been to turn out Holt's regional base of anti-gay, anti-Hispanic and anti-science forces. Yet Henry carried Benton County along with the other six counties of the district. She didn't do it as a Democrat, though, but as one branching out from a Democratic familial base to pick up endorsements from prominent Republicans among moderates and economic conservatives - people like John Paul Hammerschmidt and Dick Barclay and Horace Hardwick. Democrats criticized Williams for hiring Holt and lending a partisan flavor to what was supposed to have been a nonpartisan judicial race. So now that Henry has creamed Williams, these same Democrats can't very well cite her win as a Democratic accomplishment. That would mean they were as partisan about a nonpartisan judicial race as they had accused Williams and Holt of scandalously being. Most likely Henry won by performing as a strong and well-financed candidate of bipartisan appeal running against a fellow who, party stereotype aside, hurt himself by relying on Holt, whose religious fanaticism perhaps lost political currency amid more pressing economic concerns. And that's another factor. This is not a good time to be a Republican anywhere and the repercussions probably can be felt even in a veritable GOP hotbed like Benton County. Then there was this: Democrats are citing a Benton County state legislative race in which Republicans persuaded a Democrat from the quorum court, Tim Summers, to switch to their party so that he would stand a better chance of getting elected to the Legislature. Then, after Summers switched and announced, along came Vickey Boozman, widow of regional Republican titan Fay Boozman and sister-in-law of U.S. Rep. John Boozman, to run against him in the Republican primary. Democrats were telling me weeks ago that Summers had gotten himself snookered, squandering a Democratic quorum court seat for the greater Republican allure, and the clever Republican trap, of promotion to the state Legislature. But Summers beat Vickey Boozman on Tuesday. Most likely, that was less a matter of Summers' having been a recent Democrat than a manifestation of general anti-politician mood by which Benton County voters resisted any idea of keeping the same families at the state legislative trough. State Sen. David Bisbee's wife, Linda, got beat, too, in her bid for a state legislative seat. Fact is, the same thing happened in two other places across the state. All of that is to say that, while it was indeed a most interesting political week in famously Republican Benton County, I remain for now unpersuaded of any meaningful switch in the alignment of the stars over Wal-Martville. ------- John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699. |
