Posted on 09/13/2014 9:05:48 AM PDT by centurion316
In 1949, Harvard political scientist V. O. Key Jr. declared in his book Southern Politics in State and Nation that in Arkansas “we have the one-party system in its most undefiled and undiluted form.” Other Southern states, nearly as Democratic in those days as Arkansas, gradually became Republican. Arkansas didn’t. One-party Democratic rule in the state lasted another 60 years.
It was an amazing Democratic run that didn’t end until 2010. Now Arkansas has emerged as one of the most reliably Republican states in the country. And if Republican Tom Cotton defeats Democratic senator Mark Pryor in November and Republican Asa Hutchinson captures the governorship, the GOP ascendancy will be complete. Both Cotton and Hutchinson are favored to win.
Not long ago this was Bill Clinton’s state. Today he’s a nonfactor politically. His influence in Arkansas is striking in its absence. “I don’t think you can exaggerate how much the landscape has changed,” says Janine Parry, a professor at the University of Arkansas and director of the annual Arkansas Poll.
The partisan realignment here is historic. No state has switched party control as suddenly and totally as Arkansas. Before the 2010 election, Democrats held both Senate seats, three of the four House seats, the governorship, and both chambers of the state legislature. Republicans feared they were doomed to permanent minority status.
After the 2010 election, they stopped worrying. Republicans won all four House seats, and Republican John Boozman crushed incumbent Democratic senator Blanche Lincoln, 58 percent to 37 percent. Two years later, they took over the state legislature for the first time in 158 years. And Mitt Romney defeated President Obama in Arkansas, 61 percent to 37 percent.
(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
The largest city in AK (Little Rock) is <200,000.
Even after all these years, there are still tid-bits I don't know of the fakery and political calculation that define the Clintons. There are so many, one can never learn them all
I like that description. Have read about the NYC invasion corrupting what was once a solid southern state for decades now.
A lack of those damn Yankees?
Population growth would be my guess. It takes a while for the FDR democrats from the 30’s & 40’s to die off.
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Both good answers. Arkansas was the most rural and agricultural of Southern states, without even a little bit of coastline where northern retirees moved, so the state was the slowest one to change.
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In olden days, as Vermont went, Arkansas went the other way:
“I like that description. Have read about the NYC invasion corrupting what was once a solid southern state for decades now.”
Yeah NYC is the Puerto Rican-Jewish “Riviera.” Has been forever! The problem is that these groups manage to vote in both NY and FL! But hey, just look, it wasn’t just Florida, they came here to CA as well. Just ask Babs Boxster where she popped out. Answer: Brooklyn, NY. In truth, the Liberal/Commie/Marxists, all came from that neck of the woods as a result of allowing immigration from Europe a generation earlier. America is not well-served by the so-called “diversity” brought about by unfettered immigration by what most of us would deem as undesirable people.
Huckabee was governor before 2010. Asa Hutchison served in Congress before 2010. Tho, I o remember talking to him in the mid 80s when he said only AR and TN remained D states. Both have changed dramatically. I just think it began earlier than Barnes’s column claims.
“Population growth would be my guess. It takes a while for the FDR democrats from the 30’s & 40’s to die off.”
You’ve STUMBLED into something that the Democrats FULLY UNDERSTAND, but that the Republicans are unable to comprehend (face it, when it comes to raw politics, the Republicans cannot hold a candle to Democrats). And that is that Hispanics are REQUIRED to replace the FDR Democrats, and they need about 3 Hispanics for each FDR Democrat, as many Hispanics still vote Republican, and thus cancel out a good part of their help to the Democrats.
The FDR Democrats, on the other hand are TOTALLY BLIND to what the Democrats are doing and will ALWAYS vote that way. If you ask why, they’ll say something about the Democrats being for the “little guy” and something about how wonderful JFK was. But they are dying off...and if not replaced, it’s GAME OVER for the Democrats.
Now you won’t see that reported, as the media is DESPERATELY trying to get the Republicans to think that AMNESTY is ONLY way to reach Hispanics...while knowing full-well that repopulating the country with Hispanics will restore the kind of majorities that FDR had back in his day.
I appreciate all the comments — and especially your map, x.
I’m world-experienced, but a born-and-bred Southerner (to me, growing up, Arkansas was the Northwest). Now I have happily adopted Arkansas as “my” state for some 35 years. (Still a newbie; it’ll be a half-century before anyone refers to my land as “the old WombatArk place, LOL.”)
I think folks are overlooking the sweeping changes that started in the northwest part of the state with two titanic individuals: Sam Walton and J.B. Hunt.
Between them they brought growth, innovation, economic success and pride to a state that had long suffered “poverty of the spirit.”
They and their suppliers also brought a new understanding of economics and politics, along with new employees who understood both as more than mere party servitude. Their spirit infused not only the state but the type of retirees it has attracted from the North.
Interestingly, the remaining Democratic area of the state is the one diametrically opposed geographically: The old plantation area of the southeast Delta — and even that is beginning to change.
I have (he said immodestly) chosen a beautiful, varied and politically fascinating state in which to live out my life.
Did you say JB Hunt?. He is as popular as polocks as a subject of jokes
What do you get when you have 365 J. B. Hunt Drivers?
One year’s combined experience.
(Tom Carolan - J.B. Hunt Driver, Syracuse, NY)
What does J.B. Hunt, Schneider and the DOT have in common?
They all sit on their butts all day and watch big trucks go by.
(Tom Carolan - J.B. Hunt Driver, Syracuse, NY)
Did you hear about the merger of North American Van Lines, Great Coastal, Schneider ,and J.B.Hunt ????
They’re going to call the new company The Great North American Pumpkin Hunt...
(Midnight Bandit - Wal-Mart Driver)
A driver walks into a truck stop, tired after a long day on the road, but in good spirits none the less...he sits down at the counter beside another driver and begins talking...he asks the driver if he’d like to hear a great JB Hunt joke he had just heard that very day.
The other driver looks at him and says “Let me tell you something buddy. I drive for Hunt...and see that guy over there? He’s a Hunt driver too. And that guy over there, and that fellow at the other end of the counter there, and the guy over there in the booth...they drive for Hunt as well. Five Hunt drivers in here buddy...now...I ask you...do you STILL want to tell that joke?”
The first driver thinks it over for a second and finally says “Nah...better not...I don’t want to have to repeat it five times.”
(MadHatter - Yard Truck Driver for Stoughton Trailers,
but hitting the big road when she turns 21)
Why are most Schneider jokes one liners?
So J.B. Drivers can understand them. :)
(Rick. Pumpkin driver.)
The colors are backwards, as usual. Arkansas’ realignment was delayed because of Huckster, and he gave the GOP a bad name and left it for dead when he exited in 2007. It took having bonafide Democrats in charge to rapidly move the state to the GOP column under Beebe/Zero.
Also no mention in the article was that the seeds of the modern majority were planted along the western border with OK, the stretch from south of the heavily GOP SW Missouri (heavy GOP even during Dem dominance) to Fort Smith. The “realignment” there occurred in 1966 with the election of Hammerschmidt to Congress and Winthrop Rockefeller & Footsie Britt to Governor and Lt Governor. The next seeds were planted in the Little Rock suburbs (which elected a Congressman in 1978 a dozen years after Hammerschmidt). Unfortunately, aside from Jay Dickey’s win in 1992, the GOP couldn’t make any breakouts at the legislative level beyond those two areas, and only in the past decade started to elect Republicans beyond those areas (though the SE AR area with its large Black population and stagnant to declining growth remains where the Dems will likely be reduced to holding office outside of urban liberal areas).
Also not mentioned (and erroneous) was the Republican’s comment in the article that “everyone” in the state was Democrat. Unlike MS, LA & SC (which was voting Democrat for President by margins in the 80%s to almost 99%), AR had a modest GOP bloc that made it one of the more GOP of the Southern states (even after the Jim Crow laws were implemented). It voted 35% for McKinley in 1900, an improvement over 1896 when he got 25% (neighboring LA gave him 21%, MS gave him under 10% and SC 7%). In 1920 in the GOP landslide, it gave Harding his 4th highest % in the South with 39% (with only NC, KY & TN, the last of which Harding won, doing better).
After 1928 when Hoover again scored 39% (being one of only 8 states that Al Smith won, and this with their Senator Joe Robinson, the Minority Leader, as Smith’s running mate), only with the Depression did AR start voting more like the Deep South states, dropping to 13% for Hoover in 1932. By 1944, it was back up to 30% (for Dewey) and the anti-Truman vote in 1948 was 38% (21% for Dewey & 17% for Thurmond).
By 1952, Ike got a whopping 44% and 46% in 1956. Nixon got 43% in 1960 as did Goldwater in 1964. Nixon might’ve made the breakthrough in 1968, but Wallace carried the state with 39% to Nixon’s 31% (Humphrey got 30%, the lowest % for a Dem candidate in AR since Stephen Douglas in 1860 - who got less than 10%).
In 1972, Nixon carried EVERY county in AR with 69% (though McGovern received a slightly higher % than Humphrey did, 30.7 to 30.3%). Carter reversed that getting 65% (with Ford winning all of 3 counties, all in the NW). Reagan beat Carter by just 5,000 votes in 1980 (48.1 to 47.5%). He got 60% in 1984 and Bush, Sr. got 56% in 1988. Only because of Clinton did the state go back in the Dem column in 1992 and 1996 when he won 53% and 54%). Dubya put it back in the GOP column to date with 51% in 2000, 54% in 2004. McCain almost got Reagan’s 1984 performance with 59% in ‘08 and Willard beat it with 61% in ‘12, second only to Nixon’s ‘72 landslide.
So as you can see, the state never, except for a handful of occasions, was lacking for a respectable 1/3rd bloc of GOP voters for most of the 20th century until it finally tipped it downballot following the effects of Clinton & Huckster.
A very good account, and does point the important role that NW Arkansas played in the building of a GOP in Arkansas. This had its roots, I believe, in the migration of a sizable number of Union Army veterans into the farming country on the Ozark Plateau. While their numbers were never enough to gain political power, they did make the region much different than the eastern Delta region. The growth of Eureka Springs also contributed to a GOP kernal.
One would think that with this history, the change would have happened much sooner at the state level.
In 1951, Pratt Remmel made the breakthrough in becoming Little Rock’s 1st GOP Mayor (at least since Reconstruction). He was thought promising enough (especially after Ike’s performance in 1952) that he ran for Governor in 1954 (following the ugly Dem primary that saw Orval Faubus upset freshman incumbent Governor Frank Cherry). While he didn’t win, he got a whopping 37%, which portended that the GOP had a future there.
Not mentioned in the article was a bit about Winthrop Rockefeller. Although he succeeded Faubus’ 12 year reign as Governor, he didn’t exactly represent the Conservative wave of the future. In many ways, he actually aided the Democrat party’s break with Faubus (and Fulbright, for that matter) for the next generation of their politicians (Dave Pryor, Dale Bumpers) so they could “embrace” more of the national party on Civil Rights and other liberal positions. Of course, he failed to win a 3rd 2-year term in 1970 to the aforementioned Bumpers. Had he lived longer (he died in 1973), it would’ve been curious to see if Winthrop would’ve embraced more of a move to the right or if he would’ve pushed leftward (which would’ve kept the Democrats in the perpetual majority, as we’ve seen in states with a left-wing GOP, such as Massachusetts).
His son, Win Paul, decided to stay with the center-right and got the Lt Governorship in 1996. Sadly, just as he was gearing up to succeed Huckabee he died at 57 (younger even than his dad who was just 60). Of course, with so many more players on the field, the future of the AR GOP won’t be the exclusive province of just a few families (as it should be).
BTW, you mentioned you were related to some prominent political figures, who were they ? I’m curious.
Good insight!
The northeast of Florida is basically southeast Georgia. A fair amount of Confederate flags, people love guns, it's not Miami here.
“The northeast of Florida is basically southeast Georgia. A fair amount of Confederate flags, people love guns, it’s not Miami here.”
Yeah, I suppose it’s not monolithic just like here in CA. Everyone equates California with SF and LA. We’ve got 58 counties and in more than half of them you can get a CCW from your local sheriff for the asking. Every state has a couple of $hitthole big cities that make life difficult for the rest. I just had dinner with a friend who’s a State Senator in Wyoming (an R). Same story there only even in the two big cities there (Cheyenne and Casper) there aren’t enough RATs to control much of anything. But those places are the only places that elect a RAT or two. I just imagine though that the areas you mention don’t control the state to any degree either.
“Footsie Britt”
LOL, I probably should have heard of him before.
Too bad he up and retired.
Well, he deferred to Sterling Cockrill, the former AR House Speaker who had switched parties to run for Lt Governor. I wasn’t clear on the reasons for Britt’s stepping aside, perhaps he surmised the ticket might fail. One individual claimed Britt should’ve been the nominee for Governor instead. As it turned out, Cockrill got more votes than Rockefeller did in 1970.
Curiously, Britt was one of two Medal of Honor winners to serve back-to-back as Lt Governor. Nathan Gordon came off 20 years (1947-67) after he was awarded it during WW2, as was Britt. Gordon, like Britt, also stepped aside and didn’t run for Governor (though he also might’ve prevailed against Rockefeller in 1966). The Conservative Democrat “Justice Jim” Johnson who got the nomination for Governor that year ended up switching to the GOP.
Ill-advisedly, Britt did finally run for Governor in 1986, only to badly lose (3rd place) to ex-Gov. Frank White and another candidate. White lost his 3rd match with Clinton.
Colonel Samuel W. Peel - Congressman
James H. Berry - Governor and U.S. Senator
Both Civil War veterans
Your folks are Jewish? [/humor]
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