BETWEEN THE LINES Election Divides Voters

There was a day when candidates actually tried to bridge the divide between Democrats and Republicans, but that seems to have been lost in today’s political landscape.

This week’s election, legitimately tagged as being driven more by national than local interests, seems to be about further dividing not just the players who will win election but also the people who’ll put them in office.

Blame us all, including the media who focus mostly on the animosity and the expected power shift in the U.S. House of Representatives, if not the U.S. Senate. That may be the story, but it isn’t all that voters need to know.

Blame the politicians, too, and the big-money interests that have bought so much air time to color how we think about candidates they oppose.

And blame voters, who are too often content to absorb just what comes over the airwaves, never bothering to investigate who these candidates are and what they really offer.

We get what we deserve. And, in this political environment, it looks like what we’ll get is more divided government, less able to get anything done because of the ideological shackles we seembound to put on those we elect these days.

Now, step back and compare that to a time here in Arkansas when candidates managed to reach across party lines, especially after an election was over.

Democrats did it, too; but the most notable practitioner may have been U.S. Rep. John Paul Hammerschmidt, the Republican who was the 3rd District congressman for 26 years, beginning in 1967.

Hammerschmidt was honored recently in Fayetteville at an event to raise money for the Brandon Burlsworth Foundation. Those who paid tribute to Hammerschmidt, notably, were both Republicans and Democrats, people he’d worked with and served over his long tenure.

Hammerschmidt was recruitedin 1966 to run against a 22-year incumbent Democrat in a state that had not been disposed to electing Republicans.

The political environment was obviously different than it is now. The state was solidly Democratic; but that was also the year that Winthrop Rockefeller broke through, becoming the first Republican governor since Reconstruction. His election was more about reform than Republicanism, but the mood for change carried over to Hammerschmidt’s election in the 3rd District.

The district back then was itself quite different, reaching deep into South Arkansas, a region then strongly resistant to Republican candidates.

Only a Republican with a bipartisan bent could have won election - or stayed in the office.

Hammerschmidt did because he listened to both Democrats and Republicans and served the people of Arkansas, not his party.

He also famously recognized that, when constituents needed help, they cared more about his responsiveness than his party affiliation.

The practice served him and his constituents.

---

BRENDA BLAGG IS A COLUMNIST FOR NORTHWEST ARKANSAS MEDIA.