Suddenly our politics matter. How much things here at home will change due to this new-found importance just dawned on me.
Electing a Northwest Arkansas state legislator used to be a defiant act of pure principle. The Republican Party was such a minority that electing one of them was more like sending a missionary than a representative. Their task was to go to the Capitol and make converts. We picked them largely on doctrinal purity. To be fair, the same thing could be said of Fayetteville Democrats, although the doctrine sure was different. So you could argue that the purpose of our conservative lawmakers was to make sure the liberal ones didn't get much traction and vice versa.
Sure, I'm exaggerating a bit. Our past delegations usually closed ranks when something mattered to the region. We've sent some fine lawmakers to Little Rock who labored hard and well under the burden of being a minority. They were either in a small partisan minority or the even smaller minority of being liberals from the flagship university's town. Still, there's a point behind my overkill.
Republicans became the majority party almost overnight. The state's political center of gravity shifted to here. Now the Republicans we send can pass a laws. They can steer the state's course, within limits. Even our Democrats can sway things because suddenly the new minority party needs every vote it can get.
The days when a member of our delegation can, for instance, vote for increased school spending, then vote against the taxes to pay for it and watch the tax pass anyway are over. We now set both spending and the taxing policy, or at least weigh heavily in those decisions.
The old, simple tests we used to pick our legislators aren't enough anymore. Everybody who runs as a Republican, for instance, had better have already passed the litmus tests on babies and guns. So, what's the new tests we'll use to pick our candidates? Beats the heck out of me. That's being debated right now. I've heard more policy discussed this primary season than ever, at least in some of the races. And I've covered elections up here since 1998.
Sure, there's still a lot of holier-than-thou talk on the wedge issues. It used to be just mouthing that taxes need to be cut, for instance. Now, there's at least some talk of what taxes should be cut and when. I also haven't heard the old shibboleth of Northwest Arkansas being the state's "economic engine" very much. Before, the supposed cure of all the state's problems was to further enrich this part of it.
These nuances may seem slight now, but expect them to widen into real differences. We have more candidates to choose from. We have seven primary races for the state House in Benton and Washington counties. Three of those are challenges to incumbents. We haven't had this many primaries since 2002, when we had eight. Now that being a Republican lawmaker in Little Rock is a thing to be desired, a candidate has to give people a reason to choose him.
Oh, and we're more popular to statewide politicians, too. At least four candidates for statewide office came to Northwest Arkansas on Tuesday. Then a candidate for Congress came to Madison County on Thursday night. Don't expect that sort of thing to slow up. Sen. Mark Pryor was in Fayetteville on Tuesday. So was his opponent, Rep. Tom Cotton. So was lieutenant governor's candidate Tim Griffin and state treasurer's candidate Dennis Milligan. James Lee Witt, a 4th Congressional District candidate, came to Huntsville on Thursday.
A newly crowned Miss Arkansas who'd won the lottery the same night wouldn't be more popular than we are.
I don't know if this region will keep its unity now that we have decisions to make. There was a lot of fear of partisan bickering between the state's Republicans and Democrats when party balance shifted. So far, I've seen more bickering within the Republican Party than between the the GOP and the Dems.
Old GOP certainties are gone. Before, a credible Northwest Arkansas candidate would win any statewide Republican primary. Now, the one place where the endless debate over "private option" health care plan still matters is the Republican primary. Will that issue cost Rep. Duncan Baird, R-Lowell, his race against Milligan? I don't know.
Things are a lot more interesting than they used to be. They weren't exactly boring before.
Commentary on 04/20/2014