It’s been awhile since I’ve taken a good look at the AR-01 Democratic primary candidates, and now that the field is set I’d like to take a good look at everyone running.  This is just my assessment, so take it for what it’s worth.  Here goes:

Tim Wooldridge-For me, this is a case of not just no but hell no.  At one point, I was actually open to accpeting Wooldridge as a possible nominee, even if I didn’t vote for him.  That was before his hate group connections became apparent and he let his campaign team lie, diss Max Brantley, and try to cover the thing up on Facebook apparently unchecked.  As such, at this point, stopping Wooldridge in the primary is, for me, imperative.  That said, I think Wooldridge carries the Paragould area easily.  Outside that, I’m not so sure.  At one point I would have said his Lt. Gov race left him as the front runner for this one, but he did terrible south of St. Francis county back then, and there are still plenty of African American and Democratic primary voters who aren’t about to support him and are looking elsewhere.

Chad Causey-Marion Berry’s Chief of Staff has a lot of strengths.  Word is that Berry is about to endorse him, and it looks like he’s running with almost the whole Berry team in tow.  There are a lot of people in my base of operations in Jonesboro supporting him as well.  Still, I just can’t be impressed with him.  His stance on health care was, frankly, bad.  And when he’s asked tough questions he seems to freeze and stagger around them.  A lot of people get the sense that he’s not ready for prime time yet, and one of my friends made the comment that she couldn’t vote for him unless he grew a backbone.  I like the guy personally, and he might end up surprising me, but I’m not ready to trust him with my vote.

Steve Bryles-A lot of folks thought that Senator Bryles was going to emerge as a sort of consensus candidate when he jumped in.  Since then though he’s been Mr. Invisible.  His campaign seems almost nonexistent, no one seems to really know where the guy stands on anything or what the campaign is doing, and the only time I’ve heard anything from him since his announcement was when he emerged out of his Dick Cheneyish seclusion to bash Chad Causey as a Washington insider while offering no substance of his own.  I think this guy is going nowhere fast.

David Cook-Right now Represenative Cook is potentially my second choice for this seat.  (More on my first in a moment.)  He’s an accomplished legislator and he’s spoken of his humble roots and his ability to relate to what ordinary folks are going through.  What he’s lacking on, so far, are specific ideas.  However, he has said that he wants “a second look” at the public option, which sounds encouraging.

Ben Ponder-As I related earlier, this is the guy I’m most interested in now.  Ben is a remarkable guy-incredibly smart, knowledgable, thoughtful, compassionate, idealistic, and motivated.  He  has a nice progressive populist approach to a lot of economic and domestic issues, and he’s knowledgable about foreign affairs and military issues as well.  He’s not a progressive on every issue, but he is much better than anything I had hoped for from this district.  Again, that’s not a Blue Arkansas endorsement, but I plan to vote for him unless something dramatic happens, and what’s more I’m not seeing it as a vote for the lesser of two evils but as a vote for a candidate I genuinely like, respect, and trust.  There are still questions I’d like him to answer, like what he thinks about the public option, global warming, and EFCA, and I want to see what he’s like on the stump and what kind of money he’s raising.  But by and large, I’m hooked.  The question now is can he jump from the back of the pack to the front in a short amount of time?

Terry Green-A late comer to the race who not much is known about.  Green describes himself as a conservative on his facebook page but also seems to be concerned about the environment, though no specifics.  He’s from Ponder’s Mountain Home, and I’m curious as to what kind of base he has there.

Notice that all the candidates are from the northern part of the district.  That means that the southernmost part is all up in play, and whoever wants to win this thing will have to focus big time on everything south of Jonesboro to pull this off.  One thing is clear though-this is anybody’s race.

Tags: AR-01, Democrats, elections and campaigns, primaries

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