Rep. Marion Berry (D., Ark.) said he urged President Obama not to force conservative Democrats like him to march “off into that swamp” by supporting unpopular bills such as health-care reform and cap-and-trade legislation. According to Berry, when Obama was warned that the 2010 election could bring a 1994-style GOP wave, the president replied: “Well, the big difference here and in ’94 was you’ve got me.”
Berry wasn’t buying it, and he promptly announced his retirement following Scott Brown’s upset Senate victory in Massachusetts. His seat in Arkansas’s 1st congressional district has been controlled by Democrats since Reconstruction, but that streak could well end in 2010. And if it does end, it won’t be despite President Obama, it will be because of him.
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Berry has tapped Chad Causey, his former chief of staff, to be his successor. Causey faces Republican Rick Crawford, who as a professional rodeo announcer and former Army bomb technician might have the most colorful résumé of any midterm candidate. Crawford, who received an early endorsement from former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, is trying to become the first Republican since Asa Hodges in 1872 to win the seat.
His odds look promising. A recent poll by The Hill has Crawford leading by 12 points — 46 percent to 34 percent — among likely voters, with 17 percent undecided. Strikingly, independents prefer Crawford by a margin of 51 percent to 24 percent. Most election handicappers have the race marked as a toss-up, though Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball newsletter has it leaning Republican.
Isaac Wood, the Crystal Ball House-race editor, says open seats are traditionally the first to go in wave years, as even popular incumbents have a hard time winning support for their chosen successors. The political environment this year is anti-incumbent in general but anti-Democratic in particular, which has frustrated the attempts of Causey and other non-incumbent Democrats to run as outsiders.
Andrew Dowdle, a political-science professor at the University of Arkansas, says there seems to be one overriding factor driving support for the Republican candidate: Arkansas voters do not connect with President Obama.
Not that they were very fond of him to begin with — Obama won just 39 percent of the vote statewide. He received only 38 percent in the 1st district, which had given 45 percent to John Kerry and 50 percent to Al Gore, the latter of whom actually won the district (barely). As Dowdle notes, it would be easy to argue that racism is to blame for Obama’s poor showing; plenty on the left have done just that. But the truth is more complex, and far less comforting for Democrats.
The political culture that gave birth to Bill Clinton’s successful brand of Democratic populism has always thrived on the personal connections between politicians and voters, which is why Arkansas Democrats have been so successful in an otherwise conservative state. A lot has changed in the past couple of years. “It’s an interesting turn,” says Dowdle. “It’s very much a populist state, but Republicans are finally able to paint Democrats as elitist.”
Even if Obama were white, he explains, “there are so many factors that paint him as an outsider,” and voters feel an enormous disconnect. This sentiment is compounded by the president’s highly unpopular policies — the same ones Congressman Berry warned about. “In Arkansas,” says Dowdle, “it really is a question of affiliation that drives people’s voting decision: ‘Do you feel comfortable with these candidates?’”
