Red, blue or purple?

Will the political landscape in Arkansas change after Nov. 4? That’s just one of the many questions citizens are pondering as the final surge of political advertising makes it way to mailboxes, email, television sets and media outlets across the state.

Will Arkansas continue on its march to become a “red” state? Or will its vintage “blue” image make a minor resurgence? Or should we view a future Arkansas as a “purple” state? A little bit of “red” and a little “blue” mixed in our political fabric.

Can our small rural and sparsely populated and largely independent minded state continue as a Republican controlled within both chambers of the Legislature? Or will that stance be strengthened? Is it possible the Grand Old Party will add to that Legislative margin, and capture several – if not all seven – of the state’s constitutional offices?

And will for the first time, well since the Reconstruction, will Arkansas’ two U.S. Senators be Republicans?

Another question: Will the state’s four Congressional seats, previously all held by Democrats for decades, but since 2012 controlled solely by the GOP, turn back to a split representation between Democrats and Republican? Or will it be a clean sweep for the GOP? Will the GOP lose just one? Or will two Congressional seats go back to the Democrats?

And will for the first time in recent memory, can all five of the questions on the ballot, referred by the Legislature and initiated by the public, go down in a thunderous defeat?

That’s a lot of mull over as the few days until Nov. 4 tick by.

Let’s consider those questions with a little historic perspective, at least from the perspective of major changes in Arkansas’ political landscape of recent memory.

I was not around to see the returning GI’s from World War II change the political climate of Arkansas, but they did. The returning GI’s ran hard against the entrenched courthouse crowd using their military service and support of fellow battle-tested veterans to unseat long-time incumbents in the late 1940s and 1950s.

That change did not, however, correct all the state’s political ills. African Americans were still disenfranchised from the ballot box. That inequity brought about the great migration from the South to the industrial North by blacks and whites. In the 1960s, industrial growth in the South was promoted by virtue of plentiful cheap labor, abundant raw materials and very few environmental restrictions. But another battle raged. It was the Civil Rights battles in communities still struggling to build an industrial base away from row crops and farming that changed the political landscape even more.

Several progressive individuals, including Winthrop Rockefeller, a New York raised billionaire, who happened to be a Republican, proved that Arkansans could indeed elect a GOP candidate as Governor. It was a rocky four years for WR, but a path was cleared for progressive governors to follow. Along came Dale Bumpers, David Pryor, and a saxophone-playing dude from Hot Springs, William Jefferson Clinton, to set the next several decades of Democrats in power.

A one-term interruption by the late Frank White made Clinton a better governor. Clinton continued as governor until a successful run for the White House. However, his former Lt. Gov. Jim Guy Tucker had to step down following a federal investigation. That opened the door for a decade of a populist GOP Gov. Mike Huckabee.

When Huckabee termed out, Arkansas seemed ready to replace him with another GOP chief executive. But Asa Hutchinson fell in that bid to a former State Senator from Searcy, Mike Beebe.

Slowly the state Republican Party built its base. It also changed chairman many times. Sometimes the state Party held with the focus of the National GOP. But largely the GOP began fielding candidates who appealed to the factor of disenfranchisement, and yes, of being a little bit different than the Democrats across the aisle.

Adding slowly to that number, the GOP managed to breathe life into fresh faces mandated by legislative term limits. No longer were the House and Senate spots places for decades of service and fiefdoms of power.

Former President Bill Clinton who has been crisscrossing the nation lately in support of struggling Democratic candidates, perhaps said it best, according to a New York Times article on his recent meanderings. His words have an eerie ring, even for Arkansas.

“Every place in the world people take the time to work together, good things are happening. Every place in the world where people spend all their time fighting each other and telling everybody how sorry they are, bad things happen.”

We have a few more days of negativity and finger pointing related to local issues and all the way to the White House. Only two more years remain until that occupant, President Barrack Obama, leaves to serve no more.

Many of Arkansas’ closely watched races are too close to call. We will soon see if the unified GOP strategy to oppose anything Obama supports will pay off. In a few days we shall see if the GOP’s effort of shouting Obama’s name at every Democratic candidate pays off.

Let’s hope whatever the outcome, our state does not become, like Congress, a place where divisiveness and fighting make bad things – or nothing – happen.