Northwest Arkansas races boost Democrats -- but for how long?

NWA Democrat-Gazette/ANDY SHUPE State Rep. Charlie Collins (center), R-Fayetteville, makes calls to voters Saturday with Bailey Janssen (right), field director for the party, and longtime volunteer Sunny O'Neal of Fayetteville at the Washington County Republican Party headquarters in Fayetteville.
NWA Democrat-Gazette/ANDY SHUPE State Rep. Charlie Collins (center), R-Fayetteville, makes calls to voters Saturday with Bailey Janssen (right), field director for the party, and longtime volunteer Sunny O'Neal of Fayetteville at the Washington County Republican Party headquarters in Fayetteville.

Nine Republican state House nominees from either Benton or Washington county face Democratic opposition this election, compared with three in 2016.

Win or lose, those campaigns will give a boost to Northwest Arkansas Democrats, Michael John Gray, chairman of the state Democratic Party, said last month. He said the volunteers drawn to the party this election season will have a lasting effect on the region's politics whatever the poll results.

"We've had people come to work for campaigns like we've never had before up here," Gray said, although he declined to provide numbers. Those volunteers are finding more support as they contact residents in person and by phone. "We're knocking on doors up here that haven't had a Democrat knocking on them in 30 or 40 years," he said.

There are 16 state House districts that include at least some portion of Benton or Washington county, along with six state Senate districts. Of those 16 House seats, 13 are held by residents of one of those two counties, 11 Republicans and two Democrats. Benton County became a GOP stronghold in Arkansas in the 1980s, but much of the Washington County legislative delegation and county officers were Democratic as recently as 2014.

The Republican Party has noticed the increase in Democratic visibility in the Northwest region, said Richard Bearden, a former state GOP chairman who was once in the position Gray is now: heavily outnumbered. Northwest Arkansas was one of the few areas of the state Republicans were safe when Democrats were dominant, Bearden said.

"I was in Bentonville and on the square in September, during the farmer's market," Bearden said. "When I saw people with Jared Henderson [the Democratic nominee for governor] T-shirts on and T-shirts for local candidates, I called other campaigns and people in our party and told them about it. It was something they needed to know." Bearden is a founding partner of Impact Management Group, a Little Rock-based consulting company.

Northwest Arkansas is growing, and the influx of people means change, Bearden said. It grew during its heyday as the safe haven for the GOP in the 1990s and early 2000s, he said, but the people moving in have changed. They are younger, more tech-oriented and coming from areas in the state and the country where the Democratic Party is more accepted.

"Northwest Arkansas is going to stay Republican, but the difference is we are going to have to work to keep it that way," Bearden said. "The local Republican party up there knows. The Democrats have sparked a response."

"It's a push and pull effect, if you will," Bearden said.

Mapping the results

Democrats know the odds of success in the region are still long, Gray said, but even if the GOP meets the challenge and prevails in this election, Democrats have a bigger base to build from. The election will also definitely yield information from election results, win or lose, he said. Even in Republican-majority districts, Democrats will learn where their supporters are. This kind of information cannot be found when there are no local Democratic candidates to vote for, he said.

The demographics this election will reveal will be extremely valuable for both parties but particularly for the one trying to make inroads, said Jay Barth, professor of political science at Hendrix College in Conway and author on Arkansas politics.

"If the Democratic Party is going to make a comeback, it looks like that is the place they will have to do it," Barth said of Northwest Arkansas. For one thing, this is where the people are, he said. It is one of the places in the state where the population is growing.

Barth made the same point Bearden did about how the people moving to Northwest Arkansas now aren't as reliably Republican as in the past. "It's increasingly diverse, and the college-educated, high-tech jobs there are attracting people who tend to vote Democratic," he said.

Barth, like Bearden and Gray, also noted the organizing campaigns will benefit Democrats even if Republicans prevail. "To go from zero in some areas to anything at all is an improvement," Barth said.

The Democratic Party's attempt at revival comes after being reduced to 24 seats in the 100-member House. The party held the majority as recently as 2012. State election records show 26 Republican House candidates across the state had Democratic opponents in 2016. This year, 41 do. Of that increase, nine of the 15 Republican candidates with opposition live in Benton or Washington county.

"A win would be huge," Barth said. "From here, it looks like the Garner-Collins race is the most vibrant one," referring to the House District 84 race between incumbent Rep. Charlie Collins, R-Fayetteville, and Democratic challenger Denise Garner.

Collins has won every race in the district since his first in 2010. "He's won, but it's not a huge cushion there," Barth said.

Collins won with 58 percent of the vote in 2014, election records show, but Republicans statewide swept Arkansas elections that year, taking the governor, attorney general and secretary of state races for the first time in more than a century. Collins won his 2012 race with 54 percent of the vote and his initial run for office in 2010 with less than 51 percent of the vote -- a margin of 94 votes, defeating incumbent Rep. Jim House, D-Fayetteville.

"It would be important for there to be a win, but you could get a similar boost if there were a lot of close losses," Barth said of Democrats' prospects in the future if they do not do well in this year's elections. "Keep in mind this is a non-presidential year, and those can be tough years for a party trying to make gains."

Barth said, "There is something happening but I don't know how lasting it will be."

Women in the forefront

The Democratic Party has more female candidates than before, and the trend is especially pronounced in Northwest Arkansas, Barth said.

"This election has opened my eyes to how much more difficult it is for female candidates," Gray said. Female candidates have notably more acceptance in Northwest Arkansas than elsewhere in the state, he said, but all still face obstacles. "It's harder for them to raise money and to be taken seriously by some voters," he said.

The degree of that bias has surprised and disappointed him, he said. Northwest Arkansas' greater openness to talent despite gender will work to its advantage, he said.

"The first question men ask when you want them to be a candidate is, 'Can I win?'" Gray said. Female candidates, as a rule, have an issue they feel very strongly about and are more prone to run to emphasize their issue and bring it forward in a campaign. "The women we have running have great dedication to the issues, whatever issue it might be that drives that candidate."

How long will keep Democrats going if they do not get immediate success is what no one knows, Bearden said.

"Now they have an enthusiasm I haven't seen before, but the real question -- the question that matters -- is, will they still have that enthusiasm in January or February if they haven't had a candidate who won?"

NW News on 10/21/2018

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