Arkansas’ Christmas present: Early primary elections
By Roy Ockert Jr.
June 16, 2015
Thanks to Gov. Asa Hutchinson and the Arkansas General Assembly, we will be talking politics, or at least listening to political messages, during the 2015 holiday season. In a special session last month the Legislature passed a bill moving the state’s 2016 political primaries from May 24 to March 1, and the governor, who had supported the action, signed it into law.
That means the 2016 election season will start with filing in November 2015 and continue through the following November.
What a Christmas present for Arkansas citizens.
During the Legislature’s regular session this year a bill that would have moved the presidential primary but not the primaries for other offices passed the Senate but failed to get out of a House committee.
Hutchinson, who is backing former Gov. Mike Huckabee for the Republican nomination for president, inserted the primaries issue in his call for a special election and then pushed hard to get the legislation passed. After Senate Bill 8 failed to get the approval of the Senate Committee on State Agencies, the full Senate took the unusual action to extract it from committee and then passed it.
The bill had an easier time in the House of Representatives despite the opposition of Rep. Nate Bell, R-Mena, chairman of the House State Agencies and Governmental Affairs Committee. Stung by the House decision, Bell later quit the Republican Party and declared himself an independent.
The idea behind this move is to put Arkansas in a so-called “SEC Primary” with other Southern states, thereby giving these states a greater role in the presidential primary process. The SEC is the Southeastern Conference of the NCAA, an athletic conference that covers much of the South.
Theoretically, moving the primaries could also give the state a greater role in the selection of a Democratic nominee, and former Arkansas first lady Hillary Clinton is considered the frontrunner.
Our state’s leaders are thus repeating a history that was largely unsuccessful in 2008, when both Huckabee and Clinton were also pursuing their parties’ nominations. By action of the Legislature in 2005 the Arkansas presidential primaries had been moved up to Feb. 5, when 18 other states were also holding both primaries and five other states were holding one party primary or the other.
Alas, neither Clinton nor Huckabee took time to campaign in their former home states, and no other candidates chose to challenge them here. Each won solid endorsements from Arkansas, but hardly anybody was paying attention.
That year the Legislature, then controlled by Democrats, chose to keep the state’s regular primaries in May so the state spent an estimated $2 million for a bizarre split primary system.
Furthermore, neither Arkansas favorite got a big bounce from what was dubbed “Super Tuesday.” Arizona Sen. John McCain took a big step toward winning the Republican nomination, and the Democratic contest remained in doubt until May.
Worst of all, the Feb. 5 balloting in Arkansas was marred by stormy weather, including a tornado or tornadoes that caused death and destruction in Atkins and Sharp County. As editor of The Jonesboro Sun, I had assigned newspaper staffers and members of an Arkansas State University journalism class to courthouses all over Northeast Arkansas, and the challenge soon became getting them all back safely.
Craighead County election officials decided to close down polling places at 7:30 and not try to get their results back to the central election site that night. The “Super Tuesday” story turned out to be “Super Storms.”
Of course, bad weather can affect elections at any time of year, but in February and March Arkansas is more likely to have winter storms.
In 1988 Arkansas and 15 other Southern states moved their primaries up to March 8, also in hopes of having more influence on the outcome of the nomination process. Southern Democrats especially wanted a more moderate standard-bearer than Walter Mondale, who had been clobbered by Ronald Reagan in 1984.
But the plan backfired, leaving Democrats even more divided, and former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis eventually won their nomination, then lost the election to George H.W. Bush.
Interestingly, a 2008 Arkansas News Bureau story quoted former Congressman Asa Hutchinson, who had been the Sebastian County Republican chairman in 1988, on that attempt. “It was trying to make Arkansas relevant in the presidential campaign,” he said “Even at that point, even in March of that year of the nomination, it had pretty well been decided.”
Hutchinson apparently thinks things will be different this time around. The Republican presidential field now stands officially at 11 and will soon be above a dozen, and the polls don’t indicate a frontrunner. Maybe that race will still be undecided on March 1.
But will any of the candidates bother to come to Arkansas? Our state has comparatively few delegates at stake, and Huckabee and Clinton are likely to get the 60 to 70 percent endorsements that they received in 2008.
That split primary system in 2008 also took much of the focus off the second round — the May 20 primaries for congressional, state and local offices. Consequently, there were no challenges to the five federal incumbents and few contested seats in the state Legislature.
Of course, the rise of a real 2-party system has taken some emphasis off primaries anyway, but you certainly don’t help things by making it a holiday event.
Roy Ockert is editor emeritus of The Jonesboro Sun. He may be reached by e-mail at royo@suddenlink.net.