Could Arkansas Elect A Republican Senator?

By Bruce Morton/CNN

GRADY, Ark. (May 20) -- Democratic State Sen. Kevin Smith has walked 1,000 miles across Arkansas. We found him in Grady, wearing out his third pair of shoes, looking for votes in Tuesday's Democratic primary. He made some friends, but he has the least money of all the candidates, no TV ads and polls show him last.

Lawyer Sandy McMath's bus was campaigning hard, when we found it in Harrison. Only trouble was, the candidate wasn't on the bus. The bus waited in a pretty park. So did a small crowd. After a while, the crowd grew. After an hour and a half, we left.

But McMath did show up at the Magnolia Festival in Magnolia. He has a message. "I'm a Harry Truman, Andrew Jackson Democrat," he told the crowd. "I'm the only candidate that's not connected to all the famous goings-on in LIttle Rock and Washington."(98K WAV sound)

There are goings on, all right.

"Governor, are you confident Arkansans will acquit you?" one reporter asked Gov. Jim Guy Tucker as he entered the courthouse in Little Rock where the Whitewater trial is being conducted. Tucker is on trial for fraud, along with Jim and Susan McDougal, old friends of the Clintons. The president is himself a witness, also on the ballot, for the eighteenth time in this state, and unopposed for the Democratic nomination for president. The candidates don't talk about that much.

Trial lawyer Bill Bristow was at a political rally in Hot Springs, along with Whitewater defendant McDougal. Bristow's ads stress down-home virtues, including the candidate shooting hoops. That came up during a radio interview.

Joked the disc jockey: "Your jump shot? I heard it was a white guy set shot," to which Bristow deadpanned: "Well, you notice the commercial does not show the elevation (of his jump) and there's a reason for that."(96K WAV sound)

The Democratic front-runner, though polls show him dropping, is Attorney General Winston Bryant, a veteran who's been elected lieutenant governor or attorney general for the last fifteen years. "The difference is that I've actually done it as attorney general, as lieutenant governor, and the others are just talking about what they want to do," he said.

And Whitewater? Has that mattered? Max Brantley of the liberal Arkansas Times put it this way: "I think what all of this has done is just contributed another truckload of unhappiness to peoples' feeling about the political system and about politicians in general."

None of these Democrats is on the fast train to success. There will almost certainly be a run-off and the winner will start off as an underdog against Lt. Gov. Mike Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister, and, amazingly for these parts, a Republican.

"The Democrats in this state -- they greatly outnumber the Republicans -- are scared to death that for the first time in Arkansas history, this state is going to elect a Republican senator, and I think they are probably worried with good cause," Huckabee says.

It's not about issues. Notes Brantley: "Frankly the Democratic candidates are not dramatically different from Huckabee in terms of political position, but he's an immensely compelling political candidate."

But first, the Democrats hold their primary and the voters, they say, aren't very interested. At the Magnolia Festival, a lot more people watched the dancers and thought about barbecue than talked to the candidates.

This story originally appeared on CNN's "Inside Politics."

AllPolitics home page