Election Profiles: Arkansas House District 67

Editor’s note: Between Oct. 13 and Oct. 27, The City Wire will present information from candidates in 15 key races in Crawford County, Sebastian County, Fort Smith and area legislative districts. A schedule of races presented will accompany this article and each article in the series.

Republican Gary Stubblefield seeks to unseat incumbent Rep. Steve Breedlove, D-Greenwood.

In a normal election cycle, Stubblefield would have a tough time knocking off a relatively popular incumbent. But this is 2010.

An early September 2010 survey by Talk Business Research/Hendrix College suggested that Republican identification is more appealing to Arkansas voters in this election.

"Party identification produces sizable leads for Republicans at this juncture of the general election cycle, but if you remove the party labels you get much different results with Democrats leading opponents as well as a much larger undecided voting bloc,” Talk Business executive editor Roby Brock said in the survey report.

On Aug. 21, Arkansas GOP Executive Director Chase Duggar said their polling showed Stubblefield with a “good lead” over Breedlove.

“It’s likely we’ll go back (to the 2011 General Assembly) with more Republicans than ever before,” Duggar said in the first public announcement by the party of its internal polling results. “I think that’s the first time we’ve been in that shape.”

Some political watchers have said the Republicans could have 40 seats in the 100-seat Arkansas House of Representatives.

CANDIDATE RESPONSE REQUEST
In 400 words or less, please identify what you believe to be the top three needs/issues in your district and what you plan to do in Little Rock to address the needs/issues.

To the following list, simply note whether you are you FOR or AGAINST the item.
FOR or AGAINST: Renewal of the Governor’s quick action closing fund
FOR or AGAINST: Elimination of the remaining 2% sales tax on groceries
FOR or AGAINST: Raising user fees and/or fuel taxes or other taxes to pay for highway improvements
FOR or AGAINST: Consideration of an increase to the number of terms allowed under Arkansas’ term-limit law.

• Rep. Steve Breedlove response:
First and foremost is the removal of the remaining sales tax from groceries. I believe this is the most regressive tax that there is effecting lower income people more than any other.  I will again co-sponsor the legislation to completely eliminate this tax.

We have made great strides in education in Arkansas. Over the past four years, under the current leadership, we have moved our national ranking of K-12 education from 49th to 10th. This has been done by improving our standards, teacher training, and improvement to our school facilities.

Unfortunately, we have not seen those same improvements to our college graduation rates. We are still ranked at the bottom in per-capita college graduates.

As I see it, the cause of this situation is cost, first generation college students, and remediation rates. Even though we have some of the lowest tuition costs in the U.S. we are still ranked as the 14th most expensive cost based upon per capita income. We are going to have to seek new scholarship opportunities and ways to lower or at least slow the rate of tuition increases.

We have increased the number of college students by 5.1% this Fall semester.  This means we have a lot of students who are first generation college students. This causes a problem because they cannot get the help they need from home, because the college experience is new to their families. We must train the college counselors to address this situation and give these students the support they need to be successful in their college experience.

And although we have made great strides in K-12 our remediation rates in Arkansas are still very high. Our students spent over $62 million last year taking remediation courses at the college level. We can identify the students that need remediation at the 4th grade level in our public schools which, if we remediate at that level, will cost the student $0.  But we have to develop the same measuring tools to remediate at the K-12 level as is used at the Higher Ed level.

My third goal is to continue the growth of jobs and opportunities for businesses in the river valley.  We will continue to address our taxing structure to promote job growth and new industry.  We will continue to address the infrastructure issues of the area allowing for growth (I-49, HWY 22, Water Projects, Sewer for Central City, etc…).

• Gary Stubblefield response:
Stubblefield did not respond.