First the disclaimer: This is not an endorsement. Nor is it a testimonial.

It is pure analysis of something that probably won’t happen. But it might qualify as the most interesting political development in Arkansas in decades if it did.

Now that I’ve either lost or hooked you, let’s begin with an anecdote.

A young businessman from eastern Arkansas was telling me the other day that he had once thought he was Republican. But then personal matters helped him understand something important. It was that not all people can help themselves at all times and that government must provide for those needs.

He said he would vote Democratic nationally and, in all but one possible case, do the same in state political races. He would favor Mike Ross over Bill Halter in the coming Democratic primary for governor, he said.

The only thing that would change that, he said, is “this guy right here.” He was pointing over his shoulder.

The man to whom he pointed—who had his back to us as he engaged in another conversation—was House Speaker Davy Carter. He’s a 38-year-old Republican banker and lawyer from a farm family in Marianna who now lives in Cabot. He is thinking of seeking the Republican nomination for governor.

Carter managed to lead the deeply divided state House of Representatives through a minefield without fatal injury to himself, or anybody.

The young eastern Arkansas businessman said he disagreed with Carter probably 40 percent of the time. But he said he knew Carter well and trusted his intentions and was confident Carter would, when necessary, work with Democrats to fashion workable government solutions to meet real human needs.

Actually, we are in possession of sterling, indeed compelling, evidence of that. I refer to the private-option alternative to Medicaid expansion, which Carter did not design but vitally championed.

The private option was the best example I’ve seen of well-intended and clever partisan compromise.

Sounding like overstatement doesn’t make it so.

This private option took a generally pervasive Democratic concept and added conservative Republican principles. It produced a center-out solution to a polarizing issue. It pleased the vast bipartisan middle and aggravated the opposite extremes.

The extreme right was irked that government was being expanded. The extreme left was chagrined that a program was being converted from a government model to a privatized one.

Nobody was ecstatic. The sane were somewhere between happy and satisfied. The extremes were huffy. That’s close to perfection.

A Carter candidacy for the Republican gubernatorial nomination would disturb a long-entrenched status quo in Arkansas gubernatorial politics.

It’s a status quo that puts its premium on retreads. It has Republicans looking to run for governor a three-time loser in statewide races, Asa Hutchinson. It has Democrats looking to run a reliable old Blue Dog Democrat, Mike Ross.

Carter’s candidacy would introduce a new generation. It would suggest pragmatic if not centrist Republican politics that could appeal to rural independents. It would not much frighten the non-extreme Democrats, who know from recent legislative experience that they can work with Carter. It was the House Democratic Caucus that delivered his speakership.

The sane and reasonable do not object to disagreement. They object to zealotry and extremism grounded in apocalyptic thinking.

Carter, for example, is a thorough economic conservative on taxes. He wants to lower income and capital gains taxes in Arkansas. And he’s started the process.

He embraces the theory that the economy is helped when rich people keep more money. He embraces the theory that rich people pay most of the money for Medicaid expansion and that, if it can be afforded, they deserve a break.

I disagree fundamentally and rather intensely. But I do not recoil zealously or extremely or apocalyptically. I don’t deem Carter evil for embracing such a tax theory. And I don’t think he finds me evil for rejecting that tax theory.

What matters it that he is inclined to find a way to compartmentalize honest differences to get important things done in a way that reasonable people can find agreeable or at least acceptable.

Arkansas voters are conservative generally and devoted to common-sense pragmatism specifically. And I’m not sure I didn’t just describe Davy Carter.

“He reminds me of me,” Mike Beebe once told me.

That surely won’t help Carter in a Republican primary. It would hurt him severely. But would amount to pure gold in a general election if he could get there.

Ross wants to run for Beebe’s third term. That effort would be inconvenienced if Ross’ opponent was someone Beebe had likened to himself. It would be infinitely more convenient for Ross if the Republican opponent was the same retread whom Beebe defeated in 2006.

So I heard a political-watcher suggest the other day that Carter might become for Republicans what Dale Bumpers was for the Democrats in 1970. That would be a young fresh face coming from the outside.

Bumpers barely eked into a Democratic primary runoff. After that, though, he routed everyone in sight.

Carter would face the same kind of daunting challenge in a Republican primary against Hutchinson.

The veteran Hutchinson surely would carry his Republican-rich home counties of Benton, Washington and Sebastian. Those, it so happens, usually dominate, indeed decide, statewide Republican primaries.

But if Carter could add Republican primary voters elsewhere and change the dynamic just enough to eke out a primary victory, then the rout could well be on.

It probably won’t happen. Carter didn’t become a lawyer, banker and successful House speaker by being delusional or illogical. And logic says Hutchinson wins a Republican primary by an undisturbed inertia.

If Arkansas Republicans were as tactical as Arkansas Democrats, willing to win for the mere sake of winning, they would embrace Carter and a new deal-making generation. Fortunately for Arkansas Democrats, many Republicans are entirely too strident for that.

This column, coming from the likes of me, probably kills Carter with the Republican base.

I can hear some conservatives now: The liberal columnist is just writing that to try to weaken us with a primary fight.

More conventional thinking is that Carter would opt down to attorney general.

But I’m not sure he’s conventional or that a lawyer and banker would give up a good living for the attorney general’s job.

I’m not sure why a young politician coming off a big resume-enhancer would choose to sit around for eight years waiting for the status quo and inertia to rust his resume.

John Brummett’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected]. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.