Is Arkansas Getting Redder?

Donna Hilton of the Siftings Herald thinks traditionally Democratic rural areas are shifting:

In some areas of Arkansas, political party affiliations are almost an afterthought. In others, they can make or break a candidate.

In Southwest Arkansas, voters traditionally support candidates affiliated with the Democratic party.

But, as the song goes, "the times, they are a changin."

Jonathan Huber is the first Republican elected to the Clark County Quorum Court since Reconstruction, he said.

. . . Since the South was rebuilt after the Civil War, "Arkansas has been a solid Democratic state," Bass said.

Beginning in the mid 1960s, some Republican candidates received support on a national level, but only in recent years have members of the Republican party been elected to state and local offices.

Bass cited the election of Republicans to the state legislature and Congress beginning in the late 1960s and '70s as a sign that Republican party members were beginning to produce more competitive candidates.

"It hasn't really trickled down to the local level from those established pockets" of Republican strongholds, he said.

He cited Northwest Arkansas as being one of the first areas of the state to support Republican candidates. In South Arkansas, there are a few isolated areas that have begun to show traditional support for Republican candidates, but not many, Bass said . . .

Maybe Chuck could comment on his experiences down there.