Second Verse, Same as the First: The 2012 Presidential Election in the South

8: Arkansas

123 8 Arkansas Another Anti-­ Obama Aftershock Janine A. Parry Jay Barth The election of 2008 provided the first in a series of major jolts that have transformed Arkansas politics. Barack Obama’s pronounced unpopularity in the state—­ driven by a combination of factors, including his defeat of the former first lady of Arkansas in an intense nomination battle—­ made Arkansas the state that had the most pronounced shift in the GOP direction between 2004 and 2008.1 In rebuffing Barack Obama’s Democratic Party, with its emphasis on an unfamiliar social diversity exemplified in the candidate himself, many Arkansas voters—­ particularly, white rural residents—­ showed through their votes a clear discomfort with the change Obama promised. Still, the inability of the traditionally hapless state GOP to field candidates outside northwest Arkansas and a few other pockets limited its 2008 successes down ticket even as John McCain ran up his numbers across the state. Two years later, with antipathy toward Obama at its national peak, a second Obama-­ driven aftershock hit Arkansas hard, pulling Re­ publican candidates (some from local Tea Party operations that the state party had not recruited and barely knew) into an array of offices up and down the ballot. Consequently, the GOP picked up a U.S. Senate seat, 124 H Janine A. Parry and Jay Barth three additional statewide offices, and two new congressional seats and reached post-­ Reconstruction highs in bouncing numerous Democratic incumbents from the state house and senate. Polling in that cycle showed that the better-­ funded and better-­ known Democrats led their opponents when no party labels accompanied the names but that because of the Democratic brand’s toxicity, the GOP candidates opened up leads when party names accompanied candidates’ names.2 Election Day 2010 provided confirmation of those polling patterns. With respect to 2012, it was always clear to Arkansas partisans that with the deeply unpopular Democratic presi­ dent at top of the ticket, it would no doubt provide a third consecutive jolt to Arkansas. The key question was whether that aftershock would be significant enough to have an impact at the lowest levels of Arkansas politics and, specifically, whether it would propel Republicans into control of the Arkansas state legislature for the first time since Reconstruction’s end. While not as pronounced as it was in the 2010 cycle, the Obama effect remained significant enough to do exactly that. The Primary Season In 2008, the presence of a former Arkansas governor on the Republican primary ballot and a former Arkansas first lady on the Democratic slate meant that the state’s Super Tuesday primary was lacking in drama on either side. The decision of the state legislature to hold the presi­ den­ tial nomination vote in 2012 at the traditional late-­ May date ensured that Arkansas voters would find themselves even more irrelevant to the 2012 nominating process than they were four years earlier. That said, the strikingly poor performance of Presi­ dent Obama against a protest candidate reiterated the depth of the presi­ dent’s electoral travails in the state. On the GOP side there were numerous signs that Arkansas’s Repub­ licans were slow to warm to Mitt Romney. The greatest burst of enthusiasm was for Texas governor Rick Perry, who received the endorsement of twenty-­ six Arkansas GOP elected officials and party leaders in June 2011.3 Late 2011 polling also showed Perry to be a stronger general election candidate in the state than Romney, although both led Presi­ dent Obama by large margins.4 However, Perry’s poor debate performances and his perceived moderation on immigration issues eventually pushed some GOP activists away from the Texas governor.5 About that time, businessman Herman Cain headlined a sold-­ out Washington Arkansas H 125 County Lincoln Day Dinner in vote-­ rich northwest Arkansas, and state party loyalists still looking for their candidate expressed interest in backing Cain.6 Although outnumbered, two high-­ profile Republicans, central Arkansas congressman Tim Griffin and Lieutenant Governor Mark Darr, did throw support to Romney early.7 Griffin would become Romney’s state campaign chair and gain a coveted speaking role at the Republican National Convention.8 If Arkansas’s primary had been held earlier in the spring, Rick Santorum no doubt would have performed well, as he had in neighboring states with ideologically and religiously similar GOP electorates. The former Pennsylvania senator had suspended his campaign, however , by mid-­ April...