With the 2016 general elections looming, there are Arkansas politicians out there already talking instead about 2018.
That actually makes sense, if you realize how some people elected in 2018 will affect future Arkansas elections.
Clearly, John Thurston and Joseph Wood understand.
Thurston, who is land commissioner, and Wood, a deputy secretary of state, announced recently that each will be seeking the Republican nomination for secretary of state in 2018.
They may not be the only ones, but these two got out there way ahead of anyone else in their party. No Democrats have yet said they’ll run, although someone certainly will.
“It is early to start a campaign, obviously, but I just wanted to put the stakes in the ground just so that my constituents would know what my plans were going forward,” Thurston explained.
Thurston is in his second four-year term as land commissioner and therefore term-limited in that position. So he’s looking for his next job and doing what other term-limited state officials have often done, seeking a different office under the Capitol dome.
Ever since Arkansas voters imposed two-term limits on constitutional officeholders, elected officials have been trying to leapfrog from one office to another.
Several Democrats did so successfully and now Republican Thurston is planning to do the same.
Wood said he’s running for the office essentially to carry on the “phenomenal job” the secretary of state’s office has done in the two terms that Mark Martin, another Republican, has been in office.
Martin’s tenure has been marked by some controversy, so not everyone would agree with Wood’s assessment.
Nevertheless, Wood sees himself as Martin’s replacement. Successors sometimes come from within a given office, even if they may be comparatively unknown.
Martin, a former state legislator, was first elected in 2010, at the same time the politically unknown Thurston was swept into office on a Republican surge that claimed three constitutional offices. (The third was Mark Darr, former lieutenant governor, who later resigned under pressure.)
Like Thurston, Martin is finishing up his second and final term. Hence, the 2018 opportunity is there for Thurston — or Wood or someone else — to snag the high-profile office and major responsibility in redistricting the state after the 2020 decennial census.
Republicans will choose their nominee, once the full slate of potential candidates develops, just as Democrats will.
In the meantime, here’s what is behind the early posturing:
The secretary of state serves on the state Board of Apportionment along with the governor and attorney general.
Neither Gov. Asa Hutchinson nor Attorney General Leslie Rutledge has said whether they’ll seek re-election. Each would be the odds-on favorite to secure nomination again.
And, in a state that has put Republicans in all statewide and federal offices, it’s not much of a stretch to imagine Hutchinson and Rutledge being re-elected.
State Democrats will put up challenges, but the seat on the Board of Apportionment that will be most available is the secretary of state’s.
Together, the governor, attorney general and secretary of state will redraw the boundaries of legislative districts in a process that has traditionally let the party in power place those lines where they most benefit that party.
Democrats, who held control of the process for most of the state’s history, did it in years past. Republicans will now, if Republicans take at least two of the three key state offices in those 2018 elections.
Draw enough of those lines to create districts to favor Republican candidates and the state Legislature will remain under Republican control for at least another decade.
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Brenda Blagg is a freelance columnist and longtime journalist in Northwest Arkansas.