With my whole family fully vaccinated, I resumed eating at restaurants for the first time in more than a year. It was warm on this late April afternoon, a perfect opportunity to dine outside on the patio of Doe's Eat Place in downtown Little Rock.
My lunch companion was Jonathan Martin, national political correspondent for The New York Times. Martin, a Virginia native who splits time between homes in New Orleans and Washington, D.C., has been a regular in Arkansas through the years. He knows the South. He also knows history and good food. And he knows where to find a compelling political story.
"What's in the water here?" he asked as we sat down. "It seems to me that Arkansas is the center of the political universe again."
The Arkansas Senate had reconvened at 12:01 a.m. that day to finish debate on constitutionally dubious legislation that would render any new federal gun laws "null and void." The House had also met in the wee hours of that Wednesday morning. Lawmakers, on the 108th day of this worst legislative session in my lifetime, then recessed until fall, when they'll return to Little Rock to debate congressional redistricting.
This part of the session ended just as it had begun--with the loudmouth Republican legislators I refer to as the Know Nothings pushing unnecessary cookie-cutter legislation drafted by right-wing organizations from outside the state. They stoked the cultural divide while the large group of lawmakers I refer to as the Cowards went along with them.
Inside Doe's, leading lobbyists were having a long lunch and celebrating the fact that legislators had gone home for a few months.
Martin explained that Arkansas is a microcosm of the wars taking place inside the Republican Party across this country. You have the demagogues in state legislatures who are trying to appeal to the Trump crowd with bills that have nothing to do with state government.
You have old-line Reagan and Bush Republicans (led in this state by Gov. Asa Hutchinson, the man Reagan made the youngest U.S. attorney in the country back in 1982) trying to figure out how to get their party back.
In Arkansas, you have a hawkish U.S. senator, Tom Cotton, who likely will run for president in 2024, presenting himself as a smarter version of Donald Trump. And now you have the tantalizing prospect that there might be two men from Arkansas in a crowded GOP presidential field.
Hutchinson, who is far more moderate than Cotton, is now a regular on network talk shows. He will become chairman of the National Governors Association this summer, a platform that will allow him to further increase his national profile.
The only former NGA chairman to become president was another fellow from Arkansas, Bill Clinton. What's in the water indeed, Mr. Martin. Having both Cotton and Hutchinson running for the 2024 nomination would be a dream for those of us who comment on Arkansas politics.
In this state of only 3 million people, Martin had found a great story for a national audience. Throw in the fact that Arkansans are almost certain to elect another Republican governor next year. There's Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the former Trump press secretary, running against Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, who incredibly has decided her best strategy is to be even more Trumpian than Sanders (as if that were possible). To add to the intrigue, Rutledge worked for Sanders' father back when Mike Huckabee was governor.
Sanders is bringing in millions of dollars from pliable Trump supporters across the country. I say "pliable" because these are people who still believe the election was stolen, along with various other conspiracy theories. They're the type of folks who fall for Internet scams and order pillows because they saw ads on Tucker Carlson's television show. In other words, writing texts and fundraising letters that will push their buttons is the easiest thing Sanders has ever done.
I warned Martin that the wild card in all of this might be Sanders. After cynically raising millions from gullible Trump loyalists in order to get into office, what if she were to surround herself with smart people and govern as a moderate, as her father did for more than a decade? That's our best hope in Arkansas right now.
A Governor Sanders will learn the hard way, just as her father and Hutchinson did, that her worst headaches will come from legislators in her own party.
While Martin thought about the story he would write for The Times, I contemplated how we wound up with a session in which so little time was spent improving the efficiency of government and making life easier for Arkansans.
Frankly, it's hard to blame the Know Nothings. Like the overbearing idiot who shows up at the coffee shop each morning and spouts off on issues of the day, they can't help themselves. They're simply not smart enough to realize the damage they're doing to Arkansas.
I blame the Cowards for not standing up to the Know Nothings. The Cowards know better, but hanging on to their offices and avoiding some angry calls back home is more important to them than the good of the state.
Mostly, though, I blame our state's business and civic leaders. I realize their focus must be on having profitable businesses. But the essence of leadership is giving back to the community. They've failed in their responsibility to recruit quality candidates and then raise money to support those candidates. In a state where the inmates are truly running the asylum in the legislative branch, businesses will now suffer from this civic neglect.
Senior Editor Rex Nelson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He's also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.