I don't make election predictions or endorse candidates. People make a living doing the former, some combing through data and explaining afterward why an outcome they described as unlikely was consistent with their expectations. I understand the distinction between a probability and a promise, but where I come from, a lost bet is a lost bet.
As for endorsements, I don't want to be anybody's intellectual mascot or boss. I describe; I don't prescribe. I'm interested in how people make decisions and what happens once those we elect exercise the authority we've given them. While I vote, I respect a few journalists of my acquaintance who decline to do so. As the man says, it just encourages them.
Election Day is Tuesday, a relief to those who refuse to accept ideology as identity. I've exhausted my interest in the candidates' talking points. Republicans hold every statewide partisan office in Arkansas and every seat in our congressional delegation. But maybe a few incumbents are nervous. I'm interested in the people making them nervous.
Polls deserve more respect. The American Association for Public Opinion Research found polling in 2024 more accurate than in 2016 or 2020, although it underestimated Republican support. Accurate measurements can still leave the winner uncertain. We forgive a three-point miss when our candidate wins comfortably and regard the same error as malpractice when it gives us a surprise.
A peculiar assortment of Arkansans--progressives, conventional Democrats, independents and conservatives--seems to be finding common ground in exhaustion with MAGA. Some may be embarrassed by the company.
Consider my colleague Rex Nelson and former Republican legislator Nate Bell. Neither can be explained away as a liberal who spent decades maintaining an elaborate disguise. Rex's Republican history is substantial. If inclined, he could make a credible run for governor. A lot of people would support him. Nate was elected as a Republican before becoming an independent. Their objections deserve a hearing as arguments from people familiar with conservatism, rather than evidence they never understood it.
MAGA is not conservative. Conservatism involves suspicion of concentrated power, regard for institutions and an awareness that human beings, including those we admire, require restraints. Making loyalty to one man the test of political legitimacy is antithetical to conservative instincts. Just ask George Will.
Some conservatives are considering candidates they once would have dismissed. They haven't necessarily changed their minds about governance; they're questioning whether elected Republicans share their concerns.
Reuters reported that Hallie Shoffner's cousin Kent, a Republican who voted for Donald Trump, wanted her to run against Sen. Tom Cotton as a Republican but would support her anyway. His concern was agriculture and her understanding of it. Shoffner liquidated most of her family's farming operation in 2025. The pressures she describes are recognizable across the political spectrum.
The counter is to brand her a radical liberal, out of touch with Arkansas values. That hyperbole may keep Cotton in office. Though Shoffner is describing problems voters recognize, MAGA has cultivated distrust of institutions that might give her arguments a hearing, newspapers among them. Any reporting that complicates the preferred account can be waved away as "fake" news.
Cotton's refusal to debate Shoffner and Libertarian Jeff Wadlin is tactical, suggesting his campaign believes he has little to gain from engagement.
They're probably right, though the cover story--that his responsibilities require him to work in Washington--is insulting. He is being asked to defend his record before the people who employ him.
French Hill is more disappointing because he has the experience and temperament to know better. Debating Chris Jones, the House Financial Services Committee chairman defended Congress' record of checking Trump and cited disagreements with him. But occasional disagreement does not discharge his obligation to restrain a president. It is dispiriting to watch a capable person accommodate behavior he wouldn't hesitate to condemn in a Democrat.
Jones, a minister with a doctorate from MIT who directed the Arkansas Regional Innovation Hub, ought to be difficult to reduce to a culture-war stock character. Yet the party label invites voters to recoil before hearing him.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders has made that politics central to her identity. Defending Trump brought national attention; the governorship supplied another platform for identifying enemies. Meanwhile, Fred Love has been talking about schools, hospitals and medical coverage for mothers after childbirth. He challenged her voucher program and refusal to support 12-month postpartum Medicaid coverage.
Declining to endorse candidates doesn't diminish my disgust at how readily Cotton, Hill and Sanders accommodate a politics that rewards submission to power and contempt for those who question it. Arkansas has given them secure positions from which to exercise independent judgment. What have they done with that security? They're supposed to work for us.
Arkansas Democrats have too often failed to offer credible opposition, helping Republicans treat public office as their property and criticism as an intrusion. Cotton should have to defend his record. Hill should explain how much presidential misconduct he will accommodate. Sanders should answer questions about schools and maternal health without changing the subject to the wickedness of Democrats.
I find hope in people who disagree about much else demanding those answers. Conservatives need not become liberals, nor progressives surrender their principles, to expect Congress to restrain a president or Arkansas' governor to attend to this state's needs rather than her national audience.
If Cotton, Hill and Sanders win, they will be entitled to another term, and we will be entitled to question every use they make of it. I hope the people finding common ground keep demanding answers after the signs come down. Cotton, Hill and Sanders may be accustomed to dismissing criticism from Democrats. They ought to have a harder time dismissing people who helped elect them and have come to regret it.