Whoah, huge news! From likely Dem to likely Republican in one day!
And to think that just a few hours ago I was speculating on FR that the reason why Berry hadn’t announced for reelection was because he was keeping his options open in case Lincoln dropped out of the Senatd race.
Let’s not say “likely”, yet. First of all, we have not much of a farm team in this district. The only legislative Republicans within AR-1 are in the extreme western edges (no State Senators, just 3 State Reps, 1 from Baxter Co. (81st Dist.), another from Searcy Co. (90th) & another from Lonoke Co. (48th)). We’ve not won this district for Congress since 1873. Presuming our nominee isn’t totally incompetent, we do have a relatively decent shot. Warren Dupwe back in the ‘90s came close to winning it (against Blanche Lincoln with 47% in ‘94 and Berry with 44% in ‘96).
A big problem is if Dustin McDaniel, the State AG, gets in, he’d have better name ID to hold the seat. It’s remarkable the Dems are having to roll out their statewide officeholders to try to retain these House seats, it does show the difficult situation they’re in. I also mentioned, too, we have virtually no declared Republicans for the statewide offices, for which FIVE of them may be open. Only Lt Governor has a declared GOP candidate.