Arkansas election could underscore Republican gains in state

By ANDREW DeMILLO - Associated Press - Saturday, November 5, 2016

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) - It’s hard to escape Hillary Clinton’s legacy in Arkansas, where she was first lady for 12 years and where her name adorns the state’s biggest airport and children’s library.

On Tuesday, though, the state that the Democratic presidential candidate called home for many years will almost surely give its six electoral votes to her Republican opponent, Donald Trump.

This election could underscore just how solidly Republican Arkansas has become since Hillary and Bill Clinton left to move into the White House in 1993. The GOP completed its takeover of Arkansas’ statewide and federal offices two years ago, and it controls both chambers of the Legislature, where it is hoping to gain more seats.

“I think the election results will once again confirm that Arkansas has realigned as a republican state and that our citizens identify with the views and values of everyday hardworking Republicans,” state Republican Party Chairman Doyle Webb said last week.

Democrats are hoping to hold the line in the Legislature, where the GOP holds 62 of the 100 seats in the House seats and 24 of the 35 in the Senate. Republicans are virtually assured of keeping a majority in both chambers.

“I think it’s a home run for us if we maintain what we have because that means we will have stopped it, we will have stopped the slide for the party,” said state Party Chairman Vince Insalaco, noting that actually adding seats would be a “grand slam.”

The biggest question in the presidential race is whether Clinton can draw more votes than President Barack Obama, who remains deeply unpopular in Arkansas. The Democratic president drew less than 37 percent of the vote in the 2012 election and just under 39 percent four years earlier. Arkansas hasn’t voted for a Democrat for president since Bill Clinton’s re-election in 1996.

Voters are expected to back all of the Republicans at the top of the ticket, including Sen. John Boozman, who is trying to fend off a challenge by Democrat Conner Eldridge, a former federal prosecutor. Boozman’s campaign has raised and spent a lot more money than Eldridge’s, and polls have shown double-digit leads for Boozman and Trump in Arkansas.

Three of the state’s U.S. House members only face challenges from Libertarian rivals, while Republican Rep. French Hill is running against Democratic nominee Dianne Curry in central Arkansas’ 2nd District. Hill has been blitzing his district with TV ads, while Curry has been running a shoestring campaign.

Perhaps the most hotly contested aspect of the campaign is the effort to legalize medical marijuana. Issue 6 would allow patients with certain medical conditions to buy marijuana from licensed dispensaries, and it comes four years after voters narrowly rejected a similar measure.

The proposal has faced heavy opposition from the state’s biggest lobbying groups and Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a former head of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration. A competing measure, Issue 7, was disqualified from the ballot by the state Supreme Court last month and election officials have been ordered to not count any votes cast for it.

Voters will decide three other ballot issues. They include a measure that would allow the governor to keep his powers while out of state, one that would expand county elected officials’ terms from two to four years, and one that would lift the state’s cap on bonds it can issue for economic development projects.