The race for the Arkansas 4th District Congressional seat is wide open this year after the July 2011 announcement of Rep. Mike Ross (D-Prescott) that he will not seek a seventh two year term.
Another change is the expansion due to post-2010 Census redistricting of the 4th District from 29 to parts of 33 counties stretching from southeast Arkansas west along the southern border with Louisiana and north through the western part of the state to areas around Fort Smith and parts of northwest Arkansas.
Republican candidates for the seat include Beth Anne Rankin, Tom Cotton and John Cowart. The Democrats running for the seat include D.C. Morrison, Gene Jeffress and Q. Byrum Hurst. The winners of both primaries Tuesday will face off Nov. 6.
Rankin
This is the second time around for Rankin, 41, of Magnolia, who ran an unsuccessful campaign to unseat Ross in the 2010 general election as the GOP candidate.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
Rankin, who is a former Miss Arkansas and policy adviser to Gov. Mike Huckabee, won the 2010 Republican primary by carrying 27 of the 29 counties that comprised the 4th District at that time.
“What I tell people is they will have a champion in me,” Rankin said. “In 2010, I said I wanted to be a people’s candidate. To do that, you have to be among the people. I have spent an amazing amount of time visiting with people, letting them know that I’m going to listen.”
“From not only the past 10 months campaigning, but from 2010 when I campaigned in the 29 counties, now 33, the issues have remained relatively the same,” Rankin said. “Folks are concerned, especially on the federal level, with the escalating national debt, even more so this year than two years ago. In 2010, the debt sat at about $10.5 trillion. Now it’s at $15.5 trillion. People can add, and they know that’s bad news for America.”
Rankin said she can champion a balanced-budget amendment if elected.
“I’ve not met anyone on the campaign trail who has not voiced support for a balanced-budget amendment,” Rankin said. “I’m certainly devoted to fighting for that.”
Rankin is a strong supporter of military veterans.
“I’ve never served in uniform, but as the granddaughter of World War II veterans, the sister of an Iraq war veteran and the sister of two National Guard brothers, it runs deep in my veins,” Rankin said. “I get pretty adamant over the fact we need to take care of our veterans.”
“Now, we have a tremendous amount of soldiers coming home from engagements on two fronts, Iraq and Afghanistan,” Rankin said. “I’ve had thousands of conversations about this. Folks are ready to bring our troops home and see a shift in strategy.”
Cotton
Tom Cotton is a 34 year old lawyer from Dardanelle who became a solider in Iraq and Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
“I hope I’m the captain of the team this fall on the Republican Party,” Cotton said. “I think that over the course of my life, I’ve developed a particular set of skills, whether it’s being a combat leader in Iraq and Afghanistan or working in business growing up on a farm. It’s prepared me to go to Congress and not just be a back-bench vote.”
“I left the Army a little over two years ago,” Cotton said. “I’ve never run for office before. This is my first foray.”
“I will bring a conservative voice and advocate from the very first day in Congress,” Cotton said. “Our district is a lot like the rest of America. We face a lot of the same challenges – a federal government that is spending too much and is facing a debt crisis in the very near future that we have to confront today.”
“I’m going to fight for policies to make the private sector grow and companies expand, and therefore need to hire,” Cotton said. “We have too much government regulation and spending that takes too much power, influence and money from the private sector. You have a lot of companies sitting on the sidelines not trying to grow their companies because they don’t know what the next Obama regulation or law is going to be. They could be hiring and expanding, but they’re not. That’s a slow-motion tragedy.”
Cotton plans to fight to overturn the 2010 federal health care reform law which he describes as an unprecedented assault on the freedoms of the American people.
Cowart
John Cowart, 41, is a political newcomer who entered the race to fight for restoring jobs and for family values.
Cowart, who is from Genoa in southwestern Arkansas, said that he will hit the ground running if elected to represent the 4th District.
“That’s what people can expect from me as a congressman,” Cowart said. “Not somebody who needs years and years and millions and millions of dollars to get the job done.”
“I have substantially more leadership experience, having been in the Marine Corps since 1991,” Cowart said. “I’ve had command of units of every level up to company level, including a unit that consisted of over 250 Marines and sailors and soldiers in Iraq. I received a Bronze Star medal for that effort.”
“People agree with my belief that we’re in an economic crisis because we’re in a moral crisis,” Cowart said. “I think we need to restore our fundamental values.”
To solve the economic crisis in Arkansas Cowart looks to fossil fuel sources in the state.
“We have the answer right under our feet in Arkansas,” Cowart said. “What we have to do is tap our own energy resources in order to create good jobs and lower the cost of living, reduce the need to send money to other countries. Gas and oil reserves are everywhere on this continent. It doesn’t make sense to leave it blocked off.”
Cowart said that being the father of two with a wife of more than 10 years have given him a particular perspective on life.
“I’m a husband and a father and really these values, they are not just political issues to me,” Cowart said. “They’re something I can say I’ve lived out for over ten years. I am really the only person in this Republican primary who can say I’m going to take the personal perspective of a spouse and a parent to the battle for family values.”
Morrison
D.C. Morrison, 62, is a businessman with a background in the agribusiness industry who wants to apply his get things done mindset to the problems and challenges of the U.S. Congress.
“I think I can help,” Morrison said of his decision to enter the 4th District race. “I’ve worked all my life. I am a good communicator and good at new ideas. I am good at understanding technology and communicating it to the public.”
Morrison said that he is a conservative whose background in agriculture has prepared him well to anticipate opportunities in that field that will lead to good paying jobs in the 4th District.
“I have raised my family,” Morrison said. “You’re not grown up until you have a family, have owned property and paid property taxes. I have had life experience and I want to fix the social safety net programs and make them solvent for the future. I am a conservative with family values.”
“Right now natural gas is selling for $2 per million BTUs,” Morrison said. “Urea fertilizers are a source of nitrogen made from natural gas. Right now urea sells for $800 per ton. That is the biggest price spread with natural gas that there has ever been. I want to build a world-class nitrogen fertilizer facility in Pine Bluff that would employ 100 people. These would be manufacturing jobs that pay very well. If I win the primary I will make it one of my missions to put this plan in place and find people to help build this plant.”
Morrison said that corporate America thanked the U.S. taxpayer for bailing out Wall Street in 2008 by continuing to export far more jobs overseas than they created in the U.S.
“They have sent two million jobs overseas during the past ten years,” Morrison said. “They only added a net of 100,000 jobs here. This is how corporate America has thanked us.”
Morrison is a supporter of the Fair Tax.
“I favor the Fair Tax which would abolish the IRS and repeal the 16th Amendment,” Morrison said. “You would not pay federal taxes on income. The current system is the worst mess we could imagine. Every taxpaying citizen would get a rebate of $150 to pay for the tax on necessities. This would also include an increase in the minimum wage. People are really struggling right now. I’m a businessman and not a politician. I would like for every American to have health care coverage but I don’t think the government should be doing it.”
Jeffress
Jeffress, 63, is currently serving in his tenth and final year as a term-limited state senator and previously served four years in the Arkansas House.
“I want to go to Washington to make Congress work,” Jeffress said. “I want to fix Congress. It’s broken. We need to get some people in there to look at each other and talk to each other. The way to make that happen is simply by acting like a south Arkansan from the 4th District.”
“We’re not a nation of Democrats or a nation of Republicans, we’re a nation of Americans,” Jeffress said. “We’ve got to get beyond party politics to make America work. I’ve been a legislator and it does matter. Also, I’m a family man.”
“We won’t get jobs until we get a great educational infrastructure,” Jeffress said. “Jobs will come when we have the workforce in place. Federal government doesn’t and shouldn’t control schools. Local government controls schools and I’ll fight to the death to keep that alive and well.”
Jeffress said that he believes in Christian principles and his platform is doing what’s right.
“Right is always right and wrong is always wrong,” Jeffress said.
Hurst
Hurst, 63, is a long-time attorney from Hot Springs who is keen to preserve Social Security and Medicare and to secure more jobs if elected to the 4th District seat.
“I think the top priority for every candidate should be jobs and job creation and rebuilding the economy,” Hurst said. “People have struggled all over the nation and in particular in the 4th District.”
Hurst wants continued investment in infrastructure in the Fort Smith area to help reinvigorate the economy by restoring domestic manufacturing, which he said has been hurt by businesses moving their operations to other countries, a practice that Hurst believes warrants a re-evaluation of the United States fair trade policy.
Hurst said that his 38 year laws as an attorney have prepared him well to represent the people of the 4th District.
“That’s given me a really vast understanding of what people have to go through in dealing with the civil justice system, the criminal justice system and the government and regulatory agencies,” Hurst said.
Chad Hunter of the Arkansas News Bureau, along with Jeff Arnold and Wanda Freeman of The Times Record contributed to this article.