Cook: ‘Shoe Leather’ Likely To Determine First District Democratic Winner

Talk Business blogger Michael Cook was our guest on this week’s television program.

Cook offered his thoughts on the results of last week’s Democratic primary poll from the First Congressional District, which showed the race to be wide-open between the three candidates: Scott Ellington, Clark Hall and Gary Latanich.

The Talk Business-Hendrix College Poll showed Ellington with 15%, Hall with 10% and Latanich with 3.5%. More than 71% of primary voters were still undecided with less than two weeks before early voting begins.

Cook said the shortage of funds these three candidates have is problematic for running a healthy Congressional campaign.

“It comes down to money, but if nobody has any money, then it’s going to have to be good, old-fashioned shoe leather,” said Cook.

The winner of the Democratic primary faces Cong. Rick Crawford, a first-term Republican, from Jonesboro.

The Talk Business-Hendrix College Poll showed Crawford fairly split with his job approval rating among Democrats, although a large minority — 46% — said they had no opinion of the incumbent.

“Rick Crawford has done a terrible job of letting the district get to know him. As the poll shows, Democrats don’t anything about him. They don’t know enough to like him or dislike him, which means that whoever the nominee is can really start defining him and painting a picture of why they think Rick Crawford deserves to be fired,” Cook said. “I think he’s really ripe to get beat this time.”

Cook said he thinks the national Democratic Party will play in the First District general election.

You can view Cook’s full analysis below.