State Highway 64 – the cut-through between Conway and Beebe – is littered with every campaign sign known to mankind.

If yard signs could vote, you’d have no clue as to who might win the hotly-contested Prosecuting Attorney race in the district. Republican Cody Hiland and incumbent Democrat Marcus Vaden are dueling for the most advantageous locations and most yard signs for any prosecutor candidate in state history, it seems.

Signs for Mike Beebe, Jim Keet, Tim Griffin, Joyce Elliott and state legislative candidates Linda Tyler, Eddie Hawkins, David Meeks, Steve Magie, Jonathan Dismang and Sandra Prater occupy the salvage yard fences, convenience store corners, and the fresh-cut dells full of rolled haystacks.

It is retail politics at its finest as you can imagine each candidate or a diehard supporter has gone and asked for personal permission to plant a sign on every piece of property.

The combination of candidates from differing political parties is always an interesting one. We’ve seen Beebe and Griffin signs on the same property, but we’re still in search of our first Keet-Elliott combo.

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Have you seen the new GOP attack ad on First District Democrat Chad Causey – "You Can’t Spell Chad Causey Without D.C."?  The ad, which you can view below, paints Causey as a Washington, D.C. insider and emphasizes no less than 5 times the phrase "D.C." in a disdainful narrator’s voice.  Causey, as you know, is the former chief of staff to retiring Rep. Marion Berry.

It is a hard-hitting ad that will likely score some political points. Ironically, it’s produced and paid for by a quintessential "Inside-the-Beltway" D.C. political group – the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC).

For the record, we’d point out that you can’t really spell Crawford without a "D" and a "C" either.  They are the first and last letters of his name.

Another curious note about the ad: there is an image of Causey receiving money from someone at a podium. Nefarious?  Hardly.

We asked the Causey campaign about it. The cash handed over was a whopping $3, given by a senior citizen at last summer’s Democratic state convention, we’re told. Three dollars will buy you a few wooden yard sign stakes at Home Depot.

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In a sure-fire sign that it’s time to wind this election down, an exchange between the Democratic Party of Arkansas and the Ozark TEA Party offers plenty of proof.

The DPA criticized a recent radio appearance that GOP Senate hopeful Rep. John Boozman made at a TEA Party rally in Mountain Home. National radio host Rusty Humphries lambasted recovery funds spent in Arkansas, allegedly saying they were "wasted on a lousy attempt to buy votes from slackers and stupid people."

Apparently, Boozman clapped and laughed his way through this portion of the interview.

The DPA kicked out a press release with a few rhetorical questions:

Does Boozman believe that Recovery Act funding recipients at UAMS are "slackers and stupid people"?  Does Boozman believe the thousands of new Arkansas homeowners who received first-time homebuyer tax credits under the Recovery Act are “slackers and stupid people”?

Humphries also apparently referred to early voters as "idiots."

“I hate early voting. It drives me nuts. You’ve got to have two months to vote? What kind of idiot are you?" Humphries reportedly said.

It’s actually two weeks in Arkansas, and again, the DPA called on Boozman to distance himself from the comments. Boozman didn’t respond, but the Ozark TEA Party did.  Local TEA Party member Richard Caster fired off a press release that read:

The Ozark TEA party is deeply troubled that the Democratic Party of Arkansas is more concerned with who laughs at what joke than the quality of life of their constituency.
 
While Baxter County is burdened with an 8.1% employment rate, toxic federal and state spending and an unsustainable national debt, we find it alarming that the DPA is more concerned with the humor of a national radio talk show host than the serious issues raised by all the candidates at last Sunday’s Ozark TEA Party in Mountain Home, Arkansas.

We are also proud that this hometown TEA Party can scare a major political party into sending a poorly thought out press release attacking the citizens they claim to represent. We look forward to November.

As do all of us on these e-mail distribution lists.

P.S. Although there are a high number of retirees in Baxter County, a quick examination of county jobless numbers indicates that the county had an "unemployment" rate of 8.1% in June, not an "employment" rate of 8.1% as was referenced by Mr. Caster. If "employment" were only 8.1%, we wouldn’t have a TEA Party taking place in Mountain Home – we’d have a Pity Party.