Vince Insalaco: ‘Against Washington’ Was Entire GOP Message

Democratic Party of Arkansas chairman Vince Insalaco said a singular GOP focus on national discontent was too powerful of a message for Arkansas Democrats to overcome on Tuesday, Nov. 4.

“It was constantly that ‘against Washington, against Washington’ – that was their entire message,” Insalaco said of the GOP’s historic gains on this week’s edition of Talk Business & Politics, which airs on Sundays at 9 a.m. on KATV Ch. 7.

“Obviously, when Tip O’Neill said, ‘all politics is local,’ that’s no longer the case. I think that’s probably a thing of the past. People went out and voted their national fears on a local level,” Insalaco said.

In the general election, Republicans won a U.S. Senate seat, all of the Congressional races, all of the constitutional offices, and larger majorities in the Arkansas legislature.

It wasn’t from a lack of effort on the Democrats’ part, but the results still equated to a political earthquake in Arkansas. Insalaco led his party’s efforts to spend tens of millions of dollars in unprecedented fashion for a different result in the midterms. Still, Insalaco said it wasn’t enough to overcome Republican messaging.

“By all of what we’ve been told nationally, and what happened actually on Election Day, the undecided vote went 95% to the Republicans,” he said. “I think that was based on a national message. It certainly wasn’t based on anything that happened here in Arkansas. We had a wildly popular governor, who had a very successful eight years as governor, who did an enormous amount of work on education, the private option, job creation – obviously, that didn’t transfer into votes because people were thinking Washington.”

Insalaco said he is proud of the Democratic Party’s efforts to pass the minimum wage increase and to get a voter ID law declared unconstitutional.

He said re-messaging and hard work were the only alternatives for Democrats to work their way back to the first choice for voters, particularly rural conservatives.

“It’s going to take a lot of hard work. I think it’s all about messaging,” he said. “I think we have to learn how to re-message and talk to those folks about their local concerns.”

“I don’t believe the people who voted against us, I think our core voters still believe in Social Security, they still believe in protecting Medicare, obviously 65% of the people voted for the minimum wage when we were the ones who worked so hard to get it on the ballot,” Insalaco added. “If the Republicans do many of the things they’ve promised to do, we’ll just see how that works.”

Will Insalaco attempt to remain at the helm of the Democratic Party of Arkansas? Does a Hillary Clinton 2016 Presidential run change prospects for the state’s Democrats? Watch more of Insalaco’s interview below.