Election 2016 is not exclusively about choosing a new president.
It will be mostly about the open presidency and the clash of titans from the Democratic and Republican parties, but there will be more to decide.
Besides local and regional races, there will also be statewide contests for U.S. Senate in Arkansas and for two posts on the Arkansas Supreme Court.
Before this election season is past, those court contests may prove to be the most interesting. But the Senate race naturally drew more attention as election filings came to a close on Monday.
U.S. Sen. John Boozman, the state's senior senator and a Republican, drew opposition from within his party and from a Democratic challenger as well.
Republican Curtis Coleman, a North Little Rock businessman who ran poorly against Boozman in 2010, was among the last-day filers. Democrat Conner Eldridge, a former federal prosecutor and unknown in much of the state, was among early filers last week.
Both of Boozman's challengers face uphill battles, although Boozman showed only a 38 percent approval rating in the recently released annual Arkansas Poll. Only 21 percent of those polled disapproved of the way he's handled his job. But 42 percent either didn't know or didn't answer the question.
That might look like an opening, but Boozman is viewed by those who know him as a quiet, likable man who handily won his first Senate bid.
The former 3rd District congressman won the 2010 nomination from a large field of candidates without a runoff, then knocked off the incumbent Democrat, Blanche Lincoln, in the general election.
There was a lot more at work in that election year than Boozman's likability, but he won and probably doesn't have much to worry about this time around.
Still in his first term, Boozman became the state's senior senator when former Sen. Mark Pryor was defeated in 2014 by Republican Tom Cotton.
Notably, Coleman got less than 5 percent of the vote in that 2010 Republican Senate primary against Boozman.
Coleman fared better but was again unsuccessful in his second bid for statewide office. That was a 2014 race for the Republican nomination for governor. Coleman picked up 27 percent of the vote but Asa Hutchinson won the nomination and later became governor.
As for Eldridge, he's a young man with ambition, trying to regain the Senate seat that Democrat Lincoln held for so long. He's raising some money and may make a race of it, come Novembe, but he's got to cover a lot of ground just to get known.
And, for the record, there are two others who filed for the Senate seat. One is Libertarian Frank Gilbert of Tull and the other a write-in candidate, Jason Tate of Fayetteville. This may be one of the rare instances when their names even make it into print.
So, the race is Boozman's to lose. And he'll have plenty of help as Republicans seek to hold onto the majority in the U.S. Senate.
As for those Supreme Court races, these are nonpartisan elections but promise political fireworks for positions that often get ignored by voters.
The eight-year terms that come with election are the longest afforded any candidate, but judicial races typically draw slight interest.
This year should be different, rife with questions of judicial ethics involving some of the candidates.
The most prominent race features a sitting member of the court, Courtney Goodson, and Circuit Judge Dan Kemp of Mountain View for chief justice.
Kemp's filing was a welcome challenge to the long-planned run by Goodson for chief justice, a post now held by an appointee, Howard Brill, who cannot succeed himself.
Goodson was elected to her current associate justice position as Courtney Henry but soon divorced and later married a Texarkana lawyer, John Goodson, from whom she had accepted more than $99,000 in gifts. She and Goodson also took a pricy trip to Italy on a yacht courtesy of a business associate of his.
More serious are questions about the handling of a marriage equality case before the court that is the subject of a judicial ethics complaint.
The second Supreme Court race developed on Monday, when Clark Mason, a Little Rock attorney, filed against Circuit Judge Shawn Womack of Mountain Home for an associate justice position being vacated by Justice Paul Danielson.
Womack is a former state legislator with strong ties to the business community and had announced he'd run for the high court several months ago.
Mason's entry was a bit of a surprise and sets up a second serious race for the court.
Commentary on 11/11/2015