JOHN BRUMMETT: Coming up on the left

A lightly percolating question has arisen in Arkansas politics. It's whether a young Democrat named Conner Eldridge might actually make a race of his challenge to U.S. Sen. John Boozman.

It's been only months since Tom Cotton rode the roaring Arkansas Republican tide to rout a moderate incumbent Democratic senator named Mark Pryor who was much in the center-right, ever-finessing mold to which Eldridge seems to aspire.


So what would lead anyone to consider that Eldridge might actually compete with Boozman?

There are five factors.

One is that the roaring Republican tide was mostly anti-Barack Obama, and Obama is departing.

Two is that Hillary Clinton, having lived here a while, might do a little better in the state than Obama in the big presidential race that happens to be on the ballot.

Three is that Republican nominee Donald Trump is a loose cannon who is a threat every time he opens his mouth to do harm to Republican candidates everywhere, and who, at best, might not run as well in the state as Mitt Romney.

Four is that Boozman's election six years ago took place on the cusp of the state's Republican revolt, and thus was more about national issues than himself personally. Polls consistently show that Arkansas voters really don't much know him.

Five is that Eldridge is hard at work on a message, which is that these are dire times requiring problem-solving, not invisibility except to cast a predictable party-line vote, which is what he alleges of Boozman.

Number five provides a segue to the gun debate suddenly refueled by the Orlando shooting. It's an issue conceivably changing subtly, just enough to allow a politician to advance a modest gun restriction and get away with it in Arkansas.

In that context, Eldridge criticizes Boozman for voting early in the week against U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein's bill to deny a gun sale to any suspect who appeared on a no-fly list compiled by federal authorities.

Eldridge did a stint as the U.S. attorney for western Arkansas. He says that, based on that experience, he trusts the FBI and other agencies to compile a credible list.

He says such a law is needed because as a federal prosecutor he saw files on dangerous people--white supremacists, for example--who presumably can legally buy without any inconvenience all the guns they want and can afford.

But his real criticism, Eldridge says, is that the state needs more right now than a senator who offers no leadership and merely shows up to vote predictably with his party.

Eldridge told me Tuesday that, at that moment, moderate Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine was working on a compromise bill by which authorities would rely for denying gun sales both on the terrorist no-fly list and a list of "secondary suspects." Under her bill, those denied could appeal in court and collect attorney fees from the government if they won.

"I'd be working with her on that right now if I were in the Senate," Eldridge said.

But Boozman, he said, is nowhere to be found--not only on guns, but also on Arkansas Works, immigration, criminal justice and trade.

Eldridge said he'd also be working to solve the other current gun issue, which is whether to require background checks at gun shows and in Internet and personal sales. He said he opposed the bill defeated earlier in the week to do that, but only because it provided no exemption from the background check for, say, an uncle bequeathing a firearm to a nephew or a friend making a simple sale of a gun to a friend.

Boozman responds to all that by charging that Eldridge is politicizing the shooting tragedy in Orlando.

But there is a difference between tactless and immediate exploitation of tragedy and engaging nine days later in legislative debate on long-pending issues given timely relevance by the tragedy.

The Orlando shooting gave no politician license to escape accountability.

Otherwise, about all Boozman has said of Eldridge is that he's an Obama appointee. It is true that the White House took recommendations from the state's two Democratic senators at the time and nominated Eldridge for the U.S. attorney's position.

But Obama's presidency is in its sunset, leaving behind a saved economy, high national approval ratings and an Arkansas political climate perhaps not as toxic.

If Trump keeps blundering and Boozman keeps hiding, the preppy young former prosecutor out of Davidson College named Conner Eldridge might warrant checking in on occasionally.

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John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, was inducted into the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame in 2014. Email him at [email protected]. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.

Editorial on 06/23/2016

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