Hillary Clinton's nomination for president of the United States is personal for many in Northwest Arkansas.
That's particularly true for Fayetteville, where she famously joined Bill Clinton on the law faculty at the University of Arkansas, married him and settled into that small stone house on California Boulevard (now Clinton Drive).
It was her introduction to Arkansas and its people and the state's first look at her.
For many Arkansans, Hillary and Bill Clinton aren't just the historic figures they have become. They are long-time friends and colleagues, individuals with whom the people in this region and this state have shared part of their lives.
They have a common perspective on life, similar points of reference and, for many -- though certainly not all -- shared political views.
Last week, as Bill Clinton remembered his and Hillary's life together, including his purchase of that little house the girl he wanted to marry had taken a liking to on an earlier visit to Fayetteville, people here knew the story. They remember those days decades ago, when both Hillary and Bill were framing their lives of service.
Her first visits to Fayetteville had come back in 1974, when Bill waged his first bid for political office, a close loss to Republican John Paul Hammerschmidt for the 3rd Congressional District seat.
She was here with him when Bill's next bid for office came two years later. He won the statewide office of attorney general, a campaign waged in part from that same little house in Fayetteville, where the Clintons had been married in 1975.
Then it was on to Little Rock for the Clintons, his 1978 election as governor, his defeat in 1980, his political recovery in 1982 and another decade as governor, then his march toward the White House in 1992.
All the while, Hillary Clinton was building her own resume of service, which her husband detailed in his speech this week to the Democratic National Convention.
Again, he offered repeated touchstones for listeners in Arkansas, like her creation of the first legal aid clinic in Northwest Arkansas to help poor people who couldn't afford to pay for such services, and her effort soon after the Clintons got to Little Rock to found Arkansas Advocates for Families and Children, still a vital organization for this state.
He mentioned, too, her work to expand health care to isolated farm and mountain areas in Arkansas and her role in developing new education standards for the state, both part of what he said was a lifelong commitment to improve lives.
All Arkansans were on the journey with them, even those in this state who didn't align with the Clintons politically.
Arkansans, like all Americans, also watched his presidency and her role in it, her emergence as a political candidate when she won a U.S. Senate seat in New York and, of course, her service as secretary of state and now as the first woman nominated by a major political party for president.
The Clintons may have been physically away from here most of that time but they never lost the connections they made here, even though the region and state have trended more and more Republican in more recent years.
That continuing connection may have been best illustrated last week in a report of campaign contributions in this presidential election year.
In an article last week, the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette compared donations to different candidates for president made by people from this region.
Federal records show donors in Northwest Arkansas have contributed almost as much money to Democrat Hillary Clinton's presidential bid ($269,115) as to all of her Republican rivals combined ($277,804), the newspaper reported on Thursday.
This Republican-trending region also gave Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Clinton's primary Democratic challenger, more money ($73,639) than any Republican candidate except Florida Gov. Jeb Bush ($140,050).
Together, Clinton and Sanders raised $342,754 from the Fayetteville-Rogers-Springdale Metropolitan Statistical Area (Benton, Washington and Madison counties in Arkansas plus McDonald County in Missouri.)
In this oddest of political years, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee collected just $31,048 from the local region for his Republican bid for president, but that was still almost double the $16,925 contributed locally to Donald Trump, the eventual Republican nominee for president.
Of course, Trump was mostly self-funding his primary campaign and the small amount of donations may not reflect the level of support for him at all.
Notably, almost half of Clinton's donations from the region reportedly came from Fayetteville. The total she raised locally pales compared to the more than $1 million donated to her campaign from elsewhere in Arkansas.
So the amounts donated aren't all that big.
Still, it's the comparative donations from the region to her and to all Republican contenders that speaks to the well-tended, long-held connections Hillary and Bill Clinton both have to Northwest Arkansas.
And it is those connections, the shared history between them and the people here, that make her campaign personal for those donors and for many more people in Northwest Arkansas.
Commentary on 07/31/2016