‘Blue to Red’ author: Arkansas GOP in charge for foreseeable future

The Arkansas Democratic Party is in a worse position today than the minority Republican Party was in the 1970s, the author of a new book on the state’s transformation from Democratic to Republican dominance said. He doesn’t expect things to change much in the next 10 years.

“I would argue that it’s a lot worse for Democrats today in a lot of areas because back then … it wasn’t so ideological, and you already had ticket splitting,” said Dr. John C. Davis. “You already had voters flirting with the idea of voting for more Republicans.”

Davis discussed his new book, “From Blue to Red: The Rise of the GOP in Arkansas,” at the Clinton Presidential Center Monday (March 4). He is the executive director of the David and Barbara Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History and is a teaching associate professor of political science at the University of Arkansas.

The presentation came in the form of a question-and-answer session with Dr. Jay Barth, director of the Clinton Presidential Library and Museum.

Davis said the consensus among many of the 19 interviews he conducted for the book was that the next 10 years will look much like things look now, with Republicans dominating. Arkansas is still a small, rural state that is moderate-to-conservative.

The real question will be what happens with the next generations of both parties. Republicans have learned to govern and will have to determine how they prolong the wave. Democrats will have to start over and rebuild the party. Progress for Democrats could come in Northwest Arkansas, where there has been an influx of outsiders.

“If we see Arkansas become more competitive, it’s going to come out of gains made by Democrats in Northwest Arkansas,” he said.

Davis said Democrats didn’t create much of a political machine when they were dominant. Instead, politics was more about personalities and relationships. Both parties were marked by a lack of professional organization. Democrats didn’t need it, and Republicans didn’t have the resources.

Today’s Republicans are much more sophisticated in their professional party organization, he said. That happened around the time that Doyle Webb became party chairman. He said the party is in line with its voters, brand and candidates from the national level to Arkansas.

“The Republican Party today probably mirrors any high-performing organization that you would see in the U.S.,” he said. “We’re still not an overtly party-centered, orientated politics, I don’t think. But certainly the Republican brand, I think, aligns better with a lot of moderate to conservative voters in Arkansas, and so that party apparatus reflects that success.”

Davis said it is not unusual for a state to be dominated by a single party, as Arkansas and other states were dominated by Democrats from Reconstruction onward. In fact, in the 2008 elections, Republicans didn’t run a candidate against then-Sen. Mark Pryor. Pryor attended the March 4 presentation along with his father, former Sen. David Pryor.

What was unusual was the speed with which Arkansas transformed. It didn’t redden slowly as occurred in other Southern states. For years, it was almost like Arkansas was surrounded by a blue wall. On the morning of the November 2010 election – the first midterm election for President Barack Obama – Democrats still occupied five of the state’s six congressional offices, all statewide offices, and strong majorities in the Legislature. But the next morning, Republicans were well on their way to dominating state politics.

“We didn’t have the purple era. It never happened,” he said.

Davis traced the Republican Party’s ascendance through three waves. The first one was marked by the electoral victories in the 1960s by Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller and U.S. Rep. John Paul Hammerschmidt. Those were anomalies that did not lead to much party growth. The next generation was marked by Republicans being competitive when Democrats made mistakes.

Now the party is in a position where some of its officeholders in the State Capitol don’t know what it’s like to lose. Ambitious young people know they probably need to run as Republicans if they want to seek elective office.

Davis said the University of Arkansas’ annual Arkansas Poll shows the shift in the electorate. While Republicans have made gains, the bigger shift has been away from Democrats. Meanwhile, many Arkansas voters now call themselves independents even though they may vote in a partisan fashion.

Davis pointed to a couple of important events in the 1990s that helped set the stage for Republicans. One was future Gov. Mike Huckabee’s victory in a special election for lieutenant governor in 1993. He ended up becoming governor for 10 years.

Another was a court case, Republican Party of Arkansas v. Faulkner County, in 1995. Prior to that case, the parties funded the party primaries, giving Democrats a huge advantage with more cash raised from filing fees. As a result of that disparity, Democrats had more ballot boxes. One county near the time of the court case had one Republican box. Republicans couldn’t get traction and didn’t have candidates.

“It’s hard to grow up as a Republican in Arkansas when there’s no Republicans that can be elected in your county,” he said.

Future Gov. Asa Hutchinson, then the party’s chairman, argued the case on 1st and 14th Amendment grounds. After the Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the Republican Party, the Legislature changed the law to make primaries state funded. Then-Sen. Mike Beebe, a Democrat, was a strong supporter of the move.

Term limits also helped open up seats that became competitive, Davis said.