Conventional wisdom holds that the static political condition in Arkansas accrues to the advantage of Republicans.
It's that a Democratic candidate must disturb that static condition to stand a chance to win. It's that the Democrat must stem the tide to get himself or herself noticed positively and the Republican candidate noticed negatively.
It's also that the "down-ballot" Democratic candidates for lesser constitutional offices face a particular disadvantage. It's daunting for them to try to get themselves noticed amid the financial and rhetorical excesses of the races for the U.S. Senate and, to a far lesser extent, governor.
That brings us to the office of attorney general, which is important if lesser as compared to the marquee offices. And it brings us to Nate Steel, the bright young lawyer from a dynastic political family in Howard County. He is the Democratic nominee for attorney general.
Steel told me Monday that he doesn't disagree with that conventional wisdom. He said getting his race noticed will be especially challenging in light of his commitment not to go negative against the Republican nominee, Leslie Rutledge.
He's not going to what?
So I'm thinking that's his shtick. I'm thinking Steel is trying to disturb the status quo by being noticed as that nice young Democrat who knows people are sick of the attack ads and simply will not engage in them.
Oh, and he also seeks to be the nice young Democrat who is assertively opposed to sexual predators of children.
Is he tacitly implying that Rutledge is not as opposed as he to sexual offenders of children?
Oh, no. He's merely noting that she says she doesn't intend to propose a legislative package as attorney general, but to leave that to legislators.
And he's merely saying that, for his part, he intends to propose such a package. And he's merely saying that the bill atop that package will be one to forbid parole to felony-convicted child predators.
Recidivism is highest among people who commit those kinds of despicable crimes, he says.
I remember the time in 1984 when then-U.S. Sen. David Pryor came out of the blue to say he was opposed to Texas getting Arkansas water. His Republican challenger, Ed Bethune, was suddenly confronted with suspicion that he wasn't as fervent about protecting our water as he perhaps ought to be.
Sometimes you needn't be negative. Sometimes you can be so all-fired positive that the other candidate positively pales against your positivity.
Rutledge, you see, says legislating is for elected legislators and that, as attorney general, she would not presume to offer bills herself. Instead she would stand at the ready to assist with the wise counsel of her office.
What she instead will do, she says, is sue Barack Obama for messing with Arkansas on environmental regulations and such.
Conversely, Steel says we elect six people to go to Washington to tend to our interests in national affairs. The state attorney general, he says, ought to concentrate on state affairs.
And the most pressing state matter in the legislative session of 2015, or so he says, will be public safety, which encompasses prison overcrowding and parole-system dysfunction.
That will be his positive focus, you see, as the state's top law enforcement officer.
(The attorney general actually isn't the state's top law enforcement officer, but the head of state government's law firm. But there's not nearly as much political currency in promising to file competent briefs as in promising to fight crime. Or sue Barack Obama.)
Steel proposes to create more drug courts and alternative sentencing for drug and nonviolent offenders. He wants to keep the truly egregious offenders in jail longer without granting parole, beginning with those child predators. He calls that "truth in sentencing."
Then he wants the less-crowded corrections system to do a better job counseling and training these bad guys. Then, when these serious offenders get released after serving their full sentences, maybe they'll stand a better chance of getting a job and not terrorizing the general population, he says.
That is what Steel will spend $300,000 or so to say on television in October while others will be tearing each other down, or apart.
"I'm confident that when people get around to making a decision in this race, they'll have enough information to make a responsible and informed choice," he said.
As a former federal judge's law clerk, Nashville city attorney, deputy prosecutor and state legislator, Steel stands in reasonably good stead to emerge at least in the consciousness of discerning voters he can manage to reach.
So I'm tentatively adding Steel's name to the list of Democratic candidates conceivably capable of disturbing the static culture and contending seriously this fall--behind Mark Pryor, Mike Ross and Pat Hays.
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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.
Editorial on 09/04/2014