Smart money is on U.S. Sen. John Boozman to retain his post as Arkansas' senior senator in next year's general election.
But an announcement last week may make for a more interesting primary race.
First, the history:
Curtis Coleman, a North Little Rock businessman, filed against the incumbent Boozman in next year's Republican primary. Coleman is making his third statewide race, having lost a 2010 bid for the Senate and a more recent try for governor in 2014.
Boozman is capping his first term as senator but also served for 10 years as the state's 3rd District congressman. He's the guy who won without a runoff in 2010's Senate primary, besting a large field of Republicans that had included Coleman, then taking out incumbent Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln.
Granted, Lincoln had been badly bloodied in her own primary election test against challenger Bill Halter, but Boozman won the general with a solid 58 percent of the vote.
Recently, the Arkansas Poll showed Boozman with a tepid approval rating of just 38 percent. The annual poll done by University of Arkansas researchers showed 21 percent of those polled disapproved of the way Boozman does his job while 42 percent either didn't know or didn't answer the question.
Those numbers suggest an opening for someone to challenge Boozman. More eyes probably turn to the young Democrat, Conner Eldridge, a former federal prosecutor, as the person more likely than Coleman to give Boozman any problems next year.
Remember, Coleman only got 5 percent of the vote when he last ran against Boozman. What could possibly have changed to give him a chance now against a popular incumbent?
Then came that announcement last week that Coleman has hired a political strategist with some political chops as a senior adviser to his campaign. The adviser is Zachary Werrell of Richmond, Va., campaign manager for a little-known college economics professor who defeated Eric Cantor in 2014.
Cantor was in the leadership elite, then majority leader for the House of Representatives and predicted to succeed John Boehner as speaker of the House. Dave Brat, with Werrell as his campaign manager, took the Republican nomination for Cantor's Virginia district, then won in November, too.
It was a stunning upset that demonstrated the right wing could challenge even a highly place incumbent and win.
Cantor himself is credited with not having done all he should for his district as he rose in party ranks and his inattention may have been most responsible for giving Brat and his supporters an opening.
That won't be Boozman's problem. Like all Arkansas Republicans, Boozman learned his constituent skills from the late U.S. Rep. John Paul Hammerschmidt.
Hammerschmidt was famous for tending to even the smallest of constituent problems in the 3rd District and all of the Republicans who've served that district since followed his example.
Nevertheless, Boozman could find himself being defined to voters who clearly don't all know him, despite his long service in office.
Werrell offered a hint last week of how he'll advise Coleman in his bid for the Senate seat.
"We will put on a grassroots campaign, hopefully doing everything that we've learned and improvements to that model since 2014 and apply it here in the state of Arkansas," he said.
Brat, Werrell claims, was "the canary in the coal mine" for current political sentiment in the GOP. He linked the popularity of outsiders like Donald Trump and Ben Carson to that anti-insider sentiment.
Imagine an opposition campaign that defines Boozman as an insider, an establishment Republican not doing enough to satisfy the hard right, part of the Washington that isn't working.
Already, Coleman has criticized Boozman's voting record as not being conservative enough, a claim Boozman says is "ridiculous."
Assuming Coleman can bankroll the kind of campaign Werrell imagines, Coleman will still face a big-money re-election campaign from Boozman.
The Republican Party won't risk loss of this Senate seat, but the run to re-nomination may get rocky for the favored incumbent.
There's no reason not to expect the "anti-insider" fever to be at play in more than presidential politics this time around. In Arkansas, that would be the Senate race.
Commentary on 11/22/2015