Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) has a few choice words for the
liberals rooting against her in Tuesday’s primary. “Just like the
far right, I think the far left also believes that you’ve got to
be with them 100 percent of the time or you don’t meet the test,”
she
told the Hill. “I don’t think there’s anybody that
you’re going to be with 100 percent of the time — not and be
true to your constituency. My first commitment here is to
Arkansas.”
That is the theme of a television ad Lincoln is running as she
seeks re-election in a tough political climate: “I don’t answer
to my party. I answer to Arkansas.” In Arkansas, liberals are fed
up with their party establishment. They may not have a Tea Party
or the Club for Growth. But they do have Lt. Gov. Bill Halter,
who on March 1 announced he would challenge her for the
Democratic nomination.
Halter wasted little time raising over $2 million (the first $1
million came within 48 hours of his announcement), augmented by a
$1 million anti-Lincoln campaign by the Service Employees
International Union (SEIU). This dynamic has left the two-term
Democratic incumbent stuck between a rock and hard place: her
votes for the health care bill and the stimulus are as unpopular
in Arkansas as President Obama himself. But the left dislikes her
opposition to card check, the public option, and cap and trade,
as well as her occasional votes for free trade agreements.
In its ad binge, SEIU focused on the trade angle. Greg Knowles,
an employee at Cooper Tires in Texarkana, said Lincoln had “a lot
of nerve” boasting that she had saved 17,000 jobs at the company.
“We saved our own jobs and we had to take big pay cuts to do it,”
said Knowles. “We would not have to have done that if Miss
Lincoln had not voted for all those unfair trade deals.”
Knowles went on to list Lincoln’s votes for “NAFTA, CAFTA, and
even a special trade deal with China.” Lincoln, however, has been
buoyed by supportive ads purchased by the business community. The
Chamber of Commerce, for example, came out with a 30-second spot
claiming that “for years, small businesses have counted on
Senator Blanche Lincoln.”
The Chamber cited Lincoln’s support for pro-business tax policy
and incentives for research and development. In 2008, the
Democrat also received a $10,000 contribution to her re-election
campaign from the National Federation of Independent Business, on
top of another $5,000 the business group gave to her leadership
PAC. The Chamber of Commerce has spent $300,000 on its
pro-Lincoln advertising campaign. An outfit called Americans for
Job Security has gone up on the air with Indian-themed ads
accusing Halter of serving as director of a company that
“exported American jobs to India.”
Business backing doesn’t normally get you very far in a
Democratic primary, and Lincoln is a major target of national
progressives. But she was clinging to a 44 percent to 32 percent
lead in the last Mason-Dixon poll, making the biggest threat that
Halter will force her into a June runoff. A third candidate,
libertarian-leaning conservative D.C. Morrison, has been drawing
up to 10 percent in recent surveys. Lincoln must break 50 percent
to win in the first round.
It may not matter who wins, because the polls also show either
Democrat getting clobbered by all of the major candidates running
in this week’s Republican primary. Arkansas is considered one of
the GOP’s best pickup opportunities this year. The left may not
view Lincoln as suitably docile, but to conservative Arkansans
she is plenty liberal enough (both Bill Clinton and President
Obama have recorded ads in support of her campaign). Arkansas
Republican Party chairman Doyle Webb
told a liberal website, “I feel very good about this race.”
After all, Lincoln’s flashes of independence are seldom more than
is required to win in a conservative, right-to-work state. She
still votes 100 percent of the time with NARAL, 90 percent with
the AFL-CIO, and 85 percent over the course of her career with
Americans for Democratic Action, the gold standard of modern
liberalism. Yet it is Lincoln’s political survival instincts that
irk the left.
Even if Blanche Lincoln prevails in her primary, her brand of
Democratic politics is out of step with the liberal grassroots.
The Democrats aren’t about to become the party of Lincoln now.
