With primary elections scarcely more than a month away, this has to rank as one of the more uninformative political seasons in Arkansas in recent memory.
Yes, there is television advertising out there, most of it for -- or against -- candidates for U.S. Senate or governor.
That's where the money is this election season, where candidates get to control their own messages and their foes get to sling accusations against them through negative ads.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders' bid for governor is a case in point for the candidate-controlled message while the attack ads posted against incumbent Sen. John Boozman illustrate the latter.
Boozman has his own set of image-promoting ads, but Sanders' stand out more because she doesn't have a record of her own to promote or defend.
She's the daughter of a former governor and she's a former White House press secretary in Donald Trump's administration. And, as one of her ads asserts, she's the mother of young children she doesn't want watching CNN.
The kids are cute. The ad is cute. But it tells voters little about what kind of governor this woman would make or what she might want to do in office.
Boozman's ads promote his conservativism on hot-button issues like immigration and the Second Amendment while those opposition ads try to paint him as a liberal sympathizer, a Republican in name only. That's a hard sell about this long-serving representative and senator, but that's where some of his opposition's money is going.
Both Sanders and Boozman have Trump's endorsement for their respective races, which matters in a state that voted so strongly for the former president in both 2016 and 2020. Trump is prominently visible in ads for both.
Sanders and Boozman each presumably has the edge toward nomination.
Sanders has all but been anointed as the Republican nominee and will face foes in the general election with far less campaign cash than she's amassed.
Boozman's status may be a bit less secure in his bid to be nominated again, but don't count him out.
There have been few surprises in the campaign so far. If there are to be any, they will come soon. Early voting begins May 9.
Meanwhile, the candidates with the most money will stay on television and maybe radio and keep sending direct mail to likely supporters. Other candidates, particularly for lesser offices, try to earn free media to go with whatever they can afford to buy.
You, as a voter, may actually cross paths with them. Maybe you won't. They're willing to let the advertising speak for them.
Voters used to expect more of candidates than ad buys. There was a time when many voters wanted candidates to shake their hands and actually ask for their votes.
They even wanted to hear the candidates speak in person, know their qualifications and size them up for themselves.
The measure of candidates these days is more the size of their campaign chests and the identities of their supporters.
Ad buys definitely let them reach more people quickly with a carefully parsed message.
While those have long been part of election campaigns, the problem now is that they seem to be most of the campaigns, to the exclusion of more substantive exchanges.
The primary counter is unfortunately provided not by debate or discourse but by negative ad buys from opposition forces.
Political news coverage is also admittedly less than it once was, particularly at the state and local levels. That's more a product of leaner reporting staffs than lack of interest, but it is reality nonetheless.
There are still some forums in which candidates appear together before potential voters, though probably fewer than in the past.
And, instead of moderated debates, they may be consecutive, short speeches from the candidates.
The better opportunity for interaction comes before and after as voters and candidates mingle, just as they might have at past county fairs or political rallies before elections.
All such opportunities are waning.
While you may still see campaign booths at the county fairs, the rallies seem to be disappearing. There are a few on the parties' calendars but rallies are increasingly part of that bygone era before politics was quite so heavily driven by money.