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Obama’s Southern Strategy Omits Arkansas, So Far
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Race
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| Contributor | TX DEM |
| Last Edited | TX DEM Aug 16, 2008 01:53am |
| Category | News |
| News Date | Aug 16, 2008 01:00am |
| Description | Arkansas has a Democratic governor, an overwhelmingly Democratic legislature, two Democratic United States senators and three Democratic Congressional representatives out of four.
The Democratic presidential primary here drew 80,000 more voters than the Republican one. And though the state voted for President Bush in 2000 and 2004, the two previous elections went handily to its native son, Bill Clinton.
But Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, does not yet have a campaign office here, and has not visited the state since 2006. One group of his volunteers meets in a donated space — the small waiting room of a medical spa — that they share with a prominent display of skin care products and a leaky air conditioner. The only Obama signs and stickers at the state party headquarters were paid for by the Pulaski County Democratic Committee.
Obama campaign officials have made much of their desire to expand the traditional Democratic playing field into states like Idaho, Indiana, Missouri and Montana and have promised they will run a 50-state campaign. But in the red-bloc South, the campaign has begun a push only in Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia. It has offices in several Republican-leaning states that have three electoral votes to Arkansas’s six, leaving his supporters in this state to wonder, why not here?
“We checked the state borders to make sure they hadn’t been clogged up or something, to make sure a wreck hadn’t stopped traffic on the Interstate,” said Pat O’Brien, the Pulaski County clerk, who handles voter registration and who was one of the few elected officials to publicly support Mr. Obama while the state’s former first lady, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, was still in the race.
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