The search for a Democratic nominee for governor began in earnest last week at the chance collision of breaking news about a front-runner’s withdrawal from the 2014 race and a reunion of some of the state’s most involved Democrats.

By happenstance, just as Attorney General Dustin McDaniel announced he will not be a candidate for governor in 2014, several hundred Arkansas Travelers and others were gathered in Little Rock to mark the 20th anniversary of President Bill Clinton’s inauguration.

When the Travelers and other celebrants weren’t looking back at that experience, they were looking toward the gubernatorial election that will be the next big test for the state’s Democrats, who lost a lot of ground in the 2012 elections in Arkansas.

The Arkansas Travelers were the friends who went all over the country campaigning for Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996 and for Hillary Clinton in her 2008 bid for the Democratic nomination. Many of the Travelers have since been candidates themselves or have been heavily involved in getting other Democrat selected to office in Arkansas.

Whoever eventually wins the party’s nomination will get most, if not all, of the Travelers’ support; but the Travelers will first have a hand in the weeding out of gubernatorial wannabes, a process that started this weekend as they pondered names of potential recruits.

For months, McDaniel was the presumed Democratic front-runner for the office a term-limited Gov. Mike Beebe will leave in two years. Now, tainted by an affair with opposing counsel in a lawsuit his office is handling, McDaniel is out of the race and the party faithful are casting about for someone to support.

Former Lt. Gov.

Bill Halter, who ran unsuccessfully two years ago for U.S. Senate, threw his name out there last week as McDaniel was withdrawing. Travelers took note of that, but his was hardly the only name being discussed among them.

The prospects most frequently mentioned included several of the Travelers themselves: former U.S. Rep. Vic Snyder of Little Rock;

Mark Stodola, the mayor of Little Rock; Patrick Hays, longtime North Little Rock mayor; and Mike Malone of Fayetteville, president and CEO of the Northwest Arkansas Council. The names of another former congressman, Mike Ross, and former U.S. Sen.

Blanche Lincoln were floated as were those of a couple of former state senators, Morrill Harriman, who is Gov. Beebe’s chief of staff, and Shane Broadway of Bryant, the state Higher Education Department’s interim director.

John Burkhalter, an Arkansas State Highway Commission member, was also being discussed.

The businessman’s name has been out there for a while now as a prospective candidate but he has not announced. Most of the rest of those named, plus a handful of others who got some mention over the weekend, have not indicated interest in the job - at least not publicly.

The nomination is wide open and these Democrats, political movers and shakers in their respective communities, are making it a mission to recruit a winner for the party.

For now, Halter is the lone Democrat who is an announced candidate.

He joins Republican Asa Hutchinson, the former Arkansas congressman and current leader of a National Rifle Association initiative on school security, in the ranks of announced candidates.

A couple of observations can be gleaned from listening to the Travelers’ conversations. They’re looking for a winner to nominate for governor and most of them will work hard to elect anyone other than Hutchinson, who helped impeach President Clinton.

That’s their preoccupation for 2014.

But what they most want is another crack at electing Hillary Clinton president in 2016.

BRENDA BLAGG IS A FREELANCE COLUMNIST AND LONGTIME JOURNALIST IN NORTHWEST ARKANSAS. SHE IS ALSO AUTHOR OF “POLITICAL MAGIC: THE TRIALS, TRAVELS AND TRIBULATIONS OF THE CLINTONS’ ARKANSAS TRAVELERS.”

Opinion, Pages 5 on 01/30/2013