Arkansas Lt. Gov. Bill Halter has been the bane of the Arkansas Democratic establishment ever since he had the temerity to enter the 2006 gubernatorial primary against Mike Beebe. While he eventually moved over to the Lt. Governor's race, the tone was set. Halter was an outsider interloper who refused to wait his turn to run for higher office. He hadn't kissed the right rings.
And the anger is palpable.
"I don't know anybody that cares what Bill Halter is going to do except Bill Halter," [Rep. Marion] Berry said in an interview Thursday morning. "He is only of consequence in his own mind." [...]
Berry said a run against Lincoln "would probably be the end of Halter's political career in Arkansas because he'll get beat and that will be the end of it."
"He's pretty much exhausted his ability to raise money in Arkansas," Berry said. "It was kind of fluke he got elected to lieutenant governor's office" in 2006.
The Halter camp responded:
Congressman Berry’s comments are not surprising to us. After all, he did not support Halter’s campaign for lieutenant governor which beat the insiders and has now resulted in a scholarship lottery that will help thousands of Arkansans afford a higher education.
If getting under the skin of the insiders is the price for helping Arkansans, he’ll do it time and time again. Should he run for federal office Arkansans can look forward to more of the same because Washington is broken and it needs more people like Bill Halter who aren’t afraid to stand-up to special interests and insiders.
This dynamic is important, so keep an eye out for it. Arkansas Dems worship people like Blanche Lincoln, but the voters have the last say. They made the right call in the Lt. Governor's race, angering the establishment, and right now, the establishment in both Little Rock and in Washington D.C. is apoplectic. (The White House, for example, has already announced their support for Lincoln today.)
But if there's one thing we've seen, it's that the establishment has zero incentive to fix things. In fact, they seemed genuinely perturbed that voters expect them to deliver the results they promised.
It's time to clean house of the corporatist, anti-reform Dems, and we can start with Blanche Lincoln.
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