ROGERS — Rogers will get a new mayor in just a few weeks. The cause is something scientists call "sensitive dependence on initial conditions," or in laymen's terms, the butterfly effect.
This concept of chaos theory gets its name from one of the more common metaphors used to describe it: The flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil creates tiny meteorological changes that ripple through the atmosphere and ultimately trigger a tornado in, say, Texas. Or Northwest Arkansas.
For Rogers, the butterfly flapped its wings in Washington, D.C., last December when Sen. Blanche Lincoln finally got off the fence and cast a vote that allowed Congressional Democrats' controversial health care reform proposals to move forward. That wasn't the final vote or word on health care, but without Lincoln's yea vote, the proposal was procedurally stuck in the mud. It was eventually passed the following spring and enacted into law.
With that vote, Lincoln, a centrist Democrat, generated an ever-expanding ripple that will, at least for Rogers city government, break on the shore Nov. 23. That's when Rogers residents will elect either Alderman Greg Hines or businessman Kurt Maddox as their mayor.
We all know the story by now: Arkansas voters hated the health care plan, blamed Lincoln for giving it the green light and turned on her. For some voters, that vote was all it took; for others, it was simply the straw that broke the camel's back. Despite a sizable campaign war chest, middle-of-the-road record and stature as head of the Senate Agriculture committee, her faltering popularity attracted Republican U.S. Third District Rep. John Boozman into the Senate race. Boozman's switch, which paid off with a victory over Lincoln on Nov. 2, opened to door for Rogers Mayor Steve Womack to run for Boozman's seat in the House of Representatives. Once he won the GOP nomination last spring (and eventually the seat itself in the Nov. 2 election), the mayor's office in Northwest Arkansas' most vibrant city opened up, clearing the way for a very competitive election.
Hines and Maddox emerged from the five-person field as the two top vote-getters. Hines, a 12-year veteran of the Rogers City Council, narrowly missed taking the job without a runoff, falling just 354 votes short a majority of the 10,475 votes cast. Maddox, a businessman and former Congressional opponent of Womack's who moved back to Rogers from Gravette to join the mayoral race, surprised many observers with his second-place finish.
The race remains an uphill struggle for Maddox. Hines got more than twice the votes Maddox did (4,884 to 2,397). But runoffs are notoriously unpredictable, dependent as they are on turnout, weather and short voter attention spans.
So the butterfly effect that will sweep a new mayor into office in Rogers isn't quite complete. Voters in Rogers shouldn't stop paying attention to local politics just yet, even though the holidays and all the subsequent chaos looms just ahead. At least, that's the theory.
Rusty Turner is executive editor of Northwest Arkansas Newspapers and 20-year resident of Rogers.