A canvasser for Tippi McCullough came by the house the other day. I knew this canvasser a bit because of living next door to her and her fine family.
So we could speak candidly about McCullough's Democratic primary race with Ross Noland to replace mayoral hopeful Warwick Sabin for state representative from our House district, No. 33, the state's most liberal and decidedly Democratic.
I said I would be willing to put signs in my yard for both candidates if my neighbor would make a sign saying "or" to place between them.
Everything else being equal, I said, the tie this year ought to go to the woman. (In case you're wondering: Jan Morgan is no tie for Asa Hutchinson, so let's move on.)
We need more women in public office to make our public assemblies more reflective of the population and to inject more female perspective into public policy.
Since that front-porch conversation, the necessity to cast a vote in this race has begun to loom ominously. I've been given to wonder if (1) gender is that much a factor, and (2) whether these candidates really are equal.
This district settled the gender issue and a lot more a decade ago. It overwhelmingly elected over a couple of creditable male candidates the first known lesbian to the state Legislature.
With that much progressivism and enlightenment in your heritage, electing a woman is hardly a vital new frontier. It's so status quo as to be a non-event. This district needn't vote for McCullough to prove any bona fides. If Ross Noland is better, then Ross Noland it should be.
The more you ponder that proposition, the less sure you become.
There is not any meaningful difference between these candidates on the issues. She seems more compelling on education, and he more compelling on the environment. But that's mostly a matter of her being a teacher and his being an environmental lawyer.
McCullough says we need to end all new charter schools in Little Rock and return the state-run district to local control forthwith. She says that insistence distinguishes her in the race.
But Noland says a legislator's role is oversight and monitoring of the Education Department, and that he'll utilize that role to prod the state to set up a clear and binding timeline for returning the district to the community and to cease its reckless approval of new charter-school applications.
What's the difference? The number of words, mainly. McCullough is a teacher who speaks with passionate certainty; Noland a lawyer who speaks with procedural command of how accomplishing the objective would work.
Noland contends the decisive difference is that his training better prepares him for effectiveness in the legislative process.
He is an accomplished young lawyer and political aide. As a state representative, he likely would work with modest effectiveness amid Republican control. He likely would find ways to toil in the technocratically progressive style of Clarke Tucker.
But you can never tell about legislative effectiveness. When District 33 sent that first known lesbian to the state House of Representatives, I assumed that Kathy Webb would get nowhere in the ol' boy culture.
But she got somewhere fast.
She became in three terms no less than co-chairman of none other than the Joint Budget Committee. Those ol' boys were telling me that--all that sex stuff aside--Kathy is smart, and you can go to the bank with what she tells you.
Once a Confederate sympathizer and Abraham Lincoln detractor got elected to the House. Hearing he was at the Capitol the next day, I went out to talk to him. I found him huddled with Webb over a budget manual, as she instructed him.
McCullough became more active in politics nearly five years ago after Mount St. Mary's fired her as a 15-year English teacher when she and her same-sex partner went to New Mexico and got married.
Her political development since has been largely with the tutelage of Webb.
I don't know that Noland is any Clarke Tucker or that McCullough is any Kathy Webb. But, even as earnest increments, either will be a fine emissary to the state Legislature.
There is a yard up the way displaying side-by-side signs for both candidates. There's no "or" between the signs. The message could be that the choices are equally good or that the household can't agree.
I am that yard.
I grudgingly accept that it is not possible for the solidly controlling Republicans in the House to behave graciously and waive the one-man, one-vote principle so that the amiable liberal minority of District 33 could be represented by both.
All I know for sure is that I'm voting as early as possible, on the morning of May 7.
I must get this over with. My internal suspense is wearing me out.
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John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at [email protected]. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 05/03/2018