Ross, Carter And Other Prospects In Race

The secret of tapping into voter anger is to not get them mad at you, too.

Mike Ross decided to make the Republican “war on women” an opening theme of his Democratic governor’s campaign. It would have helped if he hadn’t been a decorated veteran of the other side. Democratic women and Republicans of all genders and persuasions pointed out with scorn he criticized state antiabortion legislation that was no worse than stuff he’d supported in the U.S. House.

It was a clumsy mistake, but opponents shouldn’t count on more. Ross sat out the 2012 elections. He’s a little out of practice. The whole incident reminds me of things about him I haven’t thought of in a very long time.

Ross got elected to Congress by unseating incumbent Republican Jay Dickey in 2000. It was a very tough race. It was also very long ago, but the similarities between that race and the current state of Arkansas politics are notable and relevant.

You can argue the world’s changed since then. I’d argue those changes started in the 4th Congressional District in 1992. Bill Clinton was elected president, and Republican Jay Dickey was elected to Congress in what had been staunchly Democratic south Arkansas.

Dickey’s win was a startling upset in a year of Arkansas Democratic Party triumph.

Now we know what it portended.

Now we live in a state with four Republican House members, one Republican U.S. senatorand a Democratic senator who’s getting berated by his own party for his stand on guns and gay marriage.

There are also Republican majorities in both chambers of the state Legislature for the first time in 138 years.

Democratic bids in 2012 to take back a U.S. House seat or hang on to Ross’ old district were complete busts.

You don’t need a yardstick to tell the tide’s in. The question now is, who do Democrats have who can swim against it?

How pretty would Attorney General Dustin McDaniel be sitting right now, with national publicity from the Mayfl ower pipeline disaster, if he’d not had a scandal. Ah, but that’s a daydream.

A good indicator of who can win a fair fi ght is whether he or she was tough enough to win one before. The last time Democrats took back a federal or statewide oft ce from a Republican in a real fight was 2002 when then-attorney general Mark Pryor won against a severely damaged U.S.

Sen. Tim Hutchinson. Next year, Pryor will struggle to hang on to that seat. The last successful Democratic counterattack before that was - Ross vs. Dickey.

Before that: Bill Clinton’s rematch for governor against Frank White in 1982.

The ability to carry through a successful counterattack is a rare one.

Ross went on to become one of the last “Blue Dog” conservative Democrats to survive. He might still be in Congress if an attempt to gerrymander his district had succeeded. When it didn’t, he had enough sense to get out on his own while the Republican tide crested.

You can say Ross was the least Democratic Democrat in Congress. You’d have a good point. It’s a point Bill Halter, Ross’ primary opponent, will make a lot.

It might work, but Ross has been in trenches crossing bayonets with peopletougher than Halter for more than a decade.

So, who will the Democratic survivor face?

One name getting a lot of mention lately is state House Speaker Davy Carter, R-Cabot. Carter has the talent, and probably the financial backing, but the challenges ahead of him are huge. First, Carter is not from Benton County. Primary front-runner Asa Hutchinson is. Second, there are a fair number of Republican primary voters who consider Carter a traitor.

Remember Gilbert Baker? He’s the very likable, energetic, experienced lawmaker who used to bethe darling Republican of the Little Rock political press. He worked well with the state political establishment. He came from a Little Rock bedroom community and seemed the obvious choice for the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, at least from the neighborhood of the Capitol. He never “betrayed” anybody.

Baker came in third in the 2010 Republican primary.

He got less than 12 percent of the vote. There was no runoff in an eight-man race. Baker fi nished behind second-place fi nisher Jim Holt of Springdale by almost six percentage points.

Certainly, Carter has far more to brag about as a lawmaker than Baker did.

His successful steering of the “private option” health care plan through the House is a governing accomplishment of the fi rst magnitude. Unfortunately for him, a substantial portion of the Republican base hates it.

A very wise man once said: Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.

Carter has a lot of enemies. Many of his friends won’t vote in a GOP primary.

DOUG THOMPSON IS A POLITICAL REPORTER AND COLUMNIST FOR NWA MEDIA.