Could it really have been all that long ago when Republicans were but a token minority in the Arkansas Legislature? When the only Republican in major office in Arkansas was the late U.S. Rep. John Paul Hammerschmidt?
The pattern held for decades but it is hardly the case now.
Republicans hold all the major offices in Arkansas and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
Plus, when state lawmakers convene for the 2017 regular session, Republicans will have a supermajority in the Arkansas House of Representatives and almost as strong a presence in the state Senate.
In all, Republicans will hold 75 of the 100 House seats and 26 of the 35 Senate seats. One more senator and they would have enough in both houses to pass any appropriation bill without a single Democratic vote.
It doesn't really matter how they got that big a majority, but they can thank two former Democrats for a couple of the seats. State Reps. Jeff Wardlaw of Hermitage and David Hillman of Almyra switched parties after the recent election.
So strong is the Republican majority that its members will control all the committees of the Senate and all but one of the committees of the House.
Republicans in the Senate assured their control with a rule change recently that at least five members of the Senate's eight-member committees must be Republicans. No more than three Democrats can serve on a committee.
State Sen. Jim Hendren, R-Sulphur Springs, proposed the change, saying it would accurately represent the Arkansas elections.
Republicans dominated the elections and his rule change, Hendren said, would give the Republican-controlled Legislature the ability to implement the agenda that it was elected to enact.
That's another way of saying, "to the victors belong the spoils."
To be sure, when the roles were reversed, Democrats similarly worked their collective will. Declining membership among Democrats in recent years has hurt their ability to have much say in state affairs.
Two years ago, Democrats nevertheless had managed to get half the seats on two different Senate committees because of their members' seniority.
With the new rule, that can't happen in the Senate now. But something similar did happen in the House a couple of weeks back.
Seniority gave House Democrats 11 of 20 seats on the House Revenue and Taxation Committee when House members met to assign committees. Republicans will control the rest of the committees.
Eventually, House leadership expects to change House rules, but it won't impact committee assignments for this next term.
So, weakened Democrats will start the session with control of the tax committee and little else.
This Republican dominance of the Legislature -- and of the state's constitutional offices -- began several election cycles ago. The numbers built rapidly as this once Democratic state became so reliably Republican.
The switch had already begun to take hold in the Legislature by 2010. That was the year state voters also gave three of the state's constitutional offices to Republicans.
While then-Gov. Mike Beebe, a Democrat, easily won re-election, the offices of lieutenant governor, secretary of state and land commissioner went to Republicans Mark Darr, Mark Martin and John Thurston, respectively.
It was a significant breakthrough for the party. Darr himself wouldn't last, but Republicans held on to those offices and added more four years later.
By 2014, voters put Republican Asa Hutchinson in the governor's office and chose Republicans for lieutenant governor (Tim Griffin), attorney general (Leslie Rutledge), secretary of state (Martin), treasurer (Dennis Milligan), auditor (Andrea Lee) and Land Commissioner (Thurston).
Meanwhile, the Republican representation in the Legislature continued to grow. In 2014, Republicans won solid majority control in both the House and Senate. This year, they topped those numbers, taking the 75 seats in the House and 26 in the Senate.
That compares to much slower growth in earlier years for the party. In the 1970s, for example, only a handful of state legislators identified themselves as Republicans. A few more were added each election cycle, but the big changes at the state and district levels have come since 2010.
Arkansans had already shown a lean to Republican representation at the national level.
Granted, Hammerschmidt and his 3rd District successors were the lone Republicans for many years, but Arkansas elected at least one more Republican to Congress in much of the 1980s and 1990s.
By 2010, Republicans won three of four U.S. House seats and picked up the fourth in 2012. They've held them ever since.
Arkansas has had at least one Republican U.S. senator for 20 of the last 28 years and has had two Republican senators since 2015 (John Boozman and Tom Cotton).
That federal dominance continues with the re-election this year of Boozman and all four of the state's Republican congressmen (Rick Crawford, 1st District; French Hill, 2nd; Steve Womack, 3rd, and Bruce Westerman, 4th).
What all that Republican representation means for Arkansas, especially with a Republican president and Republicans in control of both houses of the Congress, is yet to be determined.
It sounds like a lot of unity, but don't count on it.
Each of these people likely has a different idea of exactly what agenda the voters expect them to enact. While their differences may not be strictly partisan, they will still have plenty of differences to resolve.
Commentary on 11/30/2016