Where, pray tell, did we get this rule that says you can't drink alcohol in the morning? What teetotaling deacon dreamed that one up? What starched-underpants spinster? What boring shut-in, still clinging to every word on C-SPAN for news of the triumphant reinstatement of Prohibition? Pshhht! There's no better time to drink, we say. The morning is when you're fresh, what with your tired old liver flushed of the previous day's imbibements!

Whatever the reason, unless you're a long-term guest at Miley Cyrus' pool house, brunch has become the last judgment-free port for breakfast-time boozers. One of the more interesting spots for Little Rock a.m. drinkin' in recent years has been the breakfast pizza brunch at U.S. Pizza. U.S. Pizza outlets serve their brunch menu only on Saturdays and The Lord's Day, from 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. With a full slate of egg-based breakfast pizzas, gluten-free frittatas and dirt-cheap mimosas, Bloody Marys and bottled champagne, it's the kind of wake-up call even a diehard snooze-buttoner can manage.

On a recent Sunday morning, while everybody else was parked soberly in church, we tried brunch at the Hillcrest location of U.S. Pizza. Though the place filled up considerably by the time we left, when we first got there a few minutes after they opened, Companion and I had the joint mostly to ourselves. Actually, the stillness of the dining room kind of perfected the moment. The day was crisp, traffic was light down Kavanaugh, and the autumnal street scene was lovely through the big windows next to our table. That two friends drifted in and joined us for breakfast soon after didn't hurt.

From the four available breakfast pizza varieties (they've also got a "create your own" for $8.29 for a 10-inch or $10.29 for a 13-inch), we tried the bacon, spinach and tomato pizza ($12.49 for the 10-inch, $14.49 for the 13), which featured eggs, bacon, spinach, roma tomatoes, cheddar and mozzarella. We also got the 8-inch spinach frittata ($8.99), with red pepper, onion, eggs, chicken, spinach, mozzarella and Parmesan and a fruit cup on the side. Because we were writing a story about drinking, we also tried the mimosas ($2 each). We weren't quite dedicated enough to the concept of getting dawn potted, however, to try the bottle of champagne ($6.99), which arrives at the table in an ice bucket with two glasses, and a carafe of orange juice.

The mimosa we sampled was dang fine, served in a decent-sized wineglass and featuring enough champagne that you could actually taste the alcohol, which is always a good sign when you're paying for a drink. A couple of those on a Saturday morning would likely make a trip to the farmers market lots more fun. While breakfast pizza that doesn't involve a styrofoam box from the fridge and a turn in the microwave might seem a little weird, it's actually a pretty good way to eat the most important meal of the day. Built on a base of fluffy egg, it turns out to be something like an omelet with a crust — in this case, the thin and crispy crust U.S. Pizza is known for. While each slice was in desperate need of salt, pepper and a liberal amount of Tabasco sauce, we found a lot to like about it. Not enough to make us swear off pepperoni pizza, but it's definitely a breakfast food more people should try. The frittata was similarly good, nicely browned where it counted and full of cheese, peppers and chicken.

In short, the U.S. Pizza brunch is a fun time out, and a decidedly different experience than the Denny's Grand Slam or a stack of syrup-slathered pancakes from IHOP. If you're out and about some weekend morning, it's definitely worth a try. I mean, come on: pizza and champagne before everybody else in the world has brushed their teeth? What's not to like?

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

"We just need to support the troops," is what they tell me.

Well, this is coming from a troop. So listen carefully ...

— Jacob George, "Support the Troops"

Given how tragically common veteran suicides are in this country, you have to know the whole story of Afghan war vet, peace activist and Danville native Jacob George to understand why the news that he'd taken his own life in Fayetteville on Sept. 17 hit the anti-war community like a punch to the ribs. Over the last month, the grief over his death has steadily seeped out via the Internet — dozens of eloquent testimonies about his kindness and caring, even as his own grasp on life silently deteriorated until it was gone.

Having emerged as a beloved figure in the anti-war movement in recent years through his protest music and near constant travel and activism — including riding his bicycle over 7,000 miles across America to speak to anybody who'd listen about peace and what the war was doing to soldiers — George seemed to be coming through his darkness. He was the one who talked other people off the ledge, doling out free bear hugs and helping vets through troubles only another vet can understand. He was the one who was supposed to make it.

Though some rushed in following the news of his death to try to reframe George's suicide as a statement on America's decision to re-entangle ourselves in Iraq and the Middle East, the portrait that emerges from the people who loved him is less that of an easy, two-dimensional martyr and more that of a flawed and vulnerable man who did his best to beat the ghosts that haunted him for as long as he could. If there's a silver lining to his death, it's that in the process of losing his own battle, he surely helped countless others get closer to winning theirs.

Backflip

See him there: Jacob George, 12 years old, standing on a wooden picnic table, toes on the bare edge of the wood, back to the world, hands out, knees bent. See him: shirtless and tan, legs coiled springs under the hem of his denim shorts, a small boy who'll never break 5-foot, 3-inches even as a man, tip of his tongue peeking out as he silently thinks: "Don't die."

Hot summertime in Danville, Arkansas. Behind him, his friends are standing around, pretending to be uninterested. Years later, his childhood friend Aaron Reddin will say Jay was the daredevil, impervious to even the idea that he could be harmed. He would do a backflip off anything, Reddin said. The other boys pretend they've grown tired of that trick. But in reality they never do. Fearlessness is a rare skill, even among boys whose bodies heal damn near quick as the immortals.

This was, of course, before the war broke some irreplaceable part of him, like snapping a dry twig over the knee. For now, there's only gravity, and pushing out the thought of hitting the summer-dry dirt face first or — God forbid — ass first, a wound to dignity being much more terrible than a plain old wound for a boy that age. And so he swallows his fear and does it. Liftoff. Kick. Backflip. The woozy spinning. And then his feet thud back to Arkansas and momentary glory. And he doesn't die.

The grandson of the once-powerful state Rep. Lloyd George of Danville, who served 28 years in the legislature and died in 2012, Jacob George spent his summer days as a child roaming the family's property on Danville Mountain, where he lived as a boy, or visiting his grandfather's picturesque farm. His younger sister, Jasmin George McBride, remembers him as wild and energetic; a free spirit who recharged in nature. "He wasn't afraid to climb the tallest tree," she said. "He would go and run the mountain to find peace — to find some relaxation and to calm himself."

George's mother, Robin Mulac, said that though her son was always musical, athletic and smart, his energetic temperament kept him from concentrating in the classroom. When his grades suffered to the point that he started seriously thinking about dropping out of school at 16, he and his parents made the decision to send him to the David Carrasco Job Corps Center in El Paso, Texas, a residential job training hub. George lived there for two years, graduating from the program with his high school diploma.

After Job Corps, George moved back to Greenwood, where his mother was living with Jacob's stepfather. He got a job, but soon tired of it. He was hungry to make a difference in the world, and to get money for college. "He just started getting really frustrated, wanting to do something more," Mulac said. "One day, he told me and his stepfather that he was tired of putting up with civilians. He was going to join the military."

"He saw that as a way to do something," McBride said. "To kind of get out and have some kind of a life."

After considering the Navy, George settled on the U.S. Army, hoping to join the Special Forces. He signed up, and graduated from boot camp in early 2001. He was eventually assigned to the 82nd Airborne at Fort Bragg, N.C., as a paratrooper and combat engineer. Then 9/11. Within weeks, George was on his way to Afghanistan. He'd eventually serve three tours there, rising to the rank of sergeant, spending most of his time in the provinces on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border, walking mountains that might have reminded him of home had Yell County been somehow denuded down to the dust.

Given how much impact the war had on him, it's strange that this is where most of what's known about Jacob George's war ends. Other than a few stories he told in his music or to the protest groups he visited, the years he spent in Afghanistan are mostly a black hole in his timeline, never shared even with his sister or mother. He just didn't like to talk about it. When he'd call home while he was in the service, Mulac and McBride said, he was always more interested in hearing about home than he was in talking about what he was doing. Later, during his bike rides across the country, when interviewers would ask him for war stories, he'd sometimes dodge the issue by telling them it was all classified.

One of the only stories he did share — which he shared habitually in interviews and in his songs — was about him running, camo clad, rifle in hand, out of the full belly of a dual-rotor Chinook helicopter onto a dusty farm in the Afghan mountains, seeing the terrified eyes of the people who lived there, and suddenly being clouted in the midst of the swirling grit and noise by a single thought: How frightened he would have been as a boy had soldiers swooped in and invaded his grandfather's farm.

The other is a strange little bit of coincidence that happened to George in 2002, as related in his song "Jimmy Freeman." This is the future, where everyone lives forever online, so it's actually possible to read George's own version of the story if you look for it:

"In the summer of 2002," George wrote in the description of a YouTube clip of him singing the song, "I ran off a helicopter near a hill on the Afghanistan-Pakistan (Af-Pak) border. As I approached the top of the hill, I saw a guy that looked really familiar. I had body armor on, so he couldn't see my nameplate. He had his blouse off, so I couldn't see his name. We stared at each other for a while trying to figure it out, then we went back to our dailies. Later on I saw him again, with his top on and it said 'Freeman'. I yelled out, 'Jimmy!' Jimmy Freeman was a childhood friend who ran around with me all over Danville Mountain in Arkansas. After not seeing one another for several years, he turned around and recognized me immediately. ... He was getting ready to return to the U.S. and I had just arrived. Both of us had been bouncing around different bases on the Af-Pak border. He was only going to be up there for three or four more days and my stay was about a week, so it felt very special to briefly cross paths at such an unlikely place."

One of the bright spots McBride remembers was visiting him at Fort Bragg with her husband in 2003. Always musically inclined, George had recently taken up the banjo. "He thought it would be funny," McBride said. "He was playing a lot of punk rock music, and he thought it would be funny to add a banjo. He ended up becoming an amazing banjo player."

'Moral injury'

Unless you're a vet or involved in veteran's health, you've probably never heard the term "moral injury" until now. An article published by the journal of the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs' National Center for PTSD in 2012 defines moral injury as recurring guilt or shame caused by "perpetrating, failing to prevent, bearing witness to or learning about acts that transgress deeply held moral beliefs and expectations." It's still a very new concept: the idea that a soldier can be mentally harmed not just by killing the enemy or seeing horrible things, but simply by being a cog in the machinery of war.

That sense of being morally wounded undoubtedly adds to the sky-high number of veteran suicides in this country every year. To call the suicide rate among U.S. veterans anything less than an epidemic would be to downplay the problem. According to figures released in 2013 by the Department of Veterans Affairs, in 2010 around 22 U.S. veterans a day took their own lives. There was an increase in the suicide rate of young male vets, many of whom served in Iraq or Afghanistan, of 44 percent between 2009 and 2011. On average, according to a VA study released earlier this year, two veterans age 30 or below kill themselves every day somewhere in this country. That's today, tomorrow, next Thursday, Thanksgiving and your birthday. That's seven days a week, 365 days a year.

Jacob George would come to use the term "moral injury" often about his own condition once he returned home from Afghanistan in 2004. When he got back, his mother said, there was a definite change. "It's hard to describe it," she said. "Maybe a little bit darker. He didn't like to talk about things that happened over there a lot. We didn't push it. We didn't ask."

George eventually moved to Fayetteville and took classes — including classes he loved in poetry and anthropology — at the University of Arkansas. His childhood friend Stephen Coger remembers that when George came back home, he very much supported the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Coger, a peace activist who started an anti-war group on campus, found that the philosophical split constrained what they could talk about.

"He had muscles from his earlobes to his elbows. He was just all muscle and trauma and just kind of made you nervous to be around," Coger said. "We were buddies, but we didn't talk about stuff that was really important to us because we wanted to stay friends, so we just played music together."

George eventually got a job with parking enforcement on the UA campus. His job, Coger said, was to go out and lock a heavy steel boot on cars with too many unpaid tickets, something George — who preferred bicycles over cars even then — did with a certain glee. George eventually built a custom trailer for his bicycle to carry the boot in, chugging it up and down the hills around campus.

After a few years of going to school and writing tickets, Coger said, George had an epiphany. "He was getting yelled at one day by his boss," Coger said. "I hope you'll excuse the language, but he thought to himself, 'I'm gonna punch this guy in the fucking throat.' But then he said that his next thought was, 'What if I don't?'" It was, George told Coger, the first time he'd considered a nonviolent response to a tense situation since he'd come home from Afghanistan.

Soon after, George asked Coger to introduce him to the president of the Omni Center for Peace, Justice and Ecology in Fayetteville. It was during that meeting, Coger said, that George brought up what would eventually become the focal point of the next three years of his life.

The road to Afghanistan

What Jacob George proposed to Stephen Coger and Gladys Tiffany of the Omni Center at that meeting might have sounded like pie-in-the-sky dreaming, if not for the fact that Coger knew how dedicated George could be when he set his mind to a goal. George told them he wanted to get on his bike and ride all over America, playing music and working for peace, until the U.S. occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan ended. A Ride Till the End, he came to call it.

"Honestly I was afraid," Coger said, "because I knew that he would do it, and I knew that I wouldn't see him much if he did. I didn't understand, and I don't think I could understand, the depth of Jacob's suffering and trauma. He needed that to heal it. All I could see was a long ass bike ride."

Once it became clear that he was serious, a group of Fayetteville artists, poets and musicians got together and cut an album called "Peace from the Hills," that could be sold on the road to help George pay expenses. The album features songs and spoken word poetry, including two poems by George, "Terror," and "I Know You Don't Mean It." In the poems, Jacob's voice is hesitant and subdued, the Arkansas shitkicker twang that would later creep into his songs mostly absent.

In May 2010, George, his younger brother, Jordan (who was then AWOL from the Arkansas National Guard, at Jacob's urging), and a friend set out from Fayetteville on their bicycles. Over the next three years, Jacob George would travel thousands of miles, coming back home to Greenwood or Fayetteville to sit out the winter before hitting the road again. Either alone or with others, he zigzagged all over, crashing on couches, talking to any media outlet that would listen (he called himself a "hillbilly" and "a farmer from Arkansas" in interviews, though friends say he'd never planted more than a row of beans in his life). He made his way to the Gulf Coast during the BP oil spill, to the opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Library, and was one of the few civilians let into the courtroom for the tail end of Bradley Manning's court-martial for aiding the enemy by giving classified information to Wikileaks.

After George and Air Force vet Brock McIntosh founded the Afghanistan Veterans Against the War Committee of the protest group Iraq Veterans Against the War, they were invited to travel back to Afghanistan as civilians, a trip which took them to Kabul and the Panjshir Valley in the winter of 2010. During the trip, McIntosh said, they discussed the first time you fly into Kabul as a soldier, the plane diving straight down to Bagram Airfield to avoid enemy fire, the mountains dark and terrifying obstacles in the distance, everything about the experience telling you "be afraid."

"Flying back as civilians was completely different," McIntosh said. "The first thing we noticed were how beautiful the mountains were the second time around."

George was in Afghanistan for a month. They visited museums and refugee camps while in the country, McIntosh said, and both were struck by the kindness of the Afghan people. He could see that the experience brought George peace.

"I know that it was a very moving experience for him," McIntosh said. "He constantly referred to it as a healing experience. I think it did make a big difference for him."

A soldier's heart

Jacob George is still alive online, video after video, shot on cell phones and Flip cams and big news cameras. If you had the time, you could track his travels point by point, and his grief, and his healing.

In one video, George sat down for a short-subject documentary before marching with thousands of other vets to the gates of the NATO summit held in Chicago in May 2012, where he hurled the medals he'd received from the U.S. Army over the gate. Sitting on the shores of Lake Michigan, looking road sore in a gray sleeveless T-shirt and a yellow bandana, he told the filmmakers he'd had to re-evaluate his experiences from Afghanistan.

"When I looked in the mirror, I started to see a terrorist," he said, "because the things I'd participated in over there surely brought the farmers terror when we landed in their fields, crushing their crops. I remember running off a helicopter and looking into a man's eyes and terror was what was looking back at me. It was as if a devil had just stumbled into his life. ... Judging my actions and accepting that is really one of the things that liberated my soul."

In another video, speaking to a Unitarian Church group in Dallas in April 2013, George said that he'd tried everything from traditional psychotherapy to sweat lodges to try and fix himself after coming home from Afghanistan, but throwing back his medals had been the only thing that worked.

"The act of throwing released something inside of me," he told the group. "I don't know what it is. I'm still trying to figure it out. But it played a role in healing my soul. It was a very transformative event. ... I started to see that my anti-war work, in a way, was me trying to heal my soul. Anti-war work, in particular, is a symptom of moral injury."

Given how it all turned out, it's hard to know what to think when watching all those videos. Everything except the music, of course. Music doesn't rely on how it all turned out.

At every stop, George talked to vets about their pain, played his banjo, and sang songs that would eventually become "Soldier's Heart," an album of nine bluegrass-infused protest songs he wrote and cut with Fayetteville producer Kelly Mulhollan in 2012.

Given how constrained George had been on "Peace from the Hills," Mulhollan said he didn't expect much when George called him during one of his breaks from the road, asking him to record a few songs he'd written. By the time he was done that day, however, Mulhollan was convinced he'd witnessed the creation of an important work.

"I didn't have any plans to produce it," Mulhollan said. "But I watched him knock out the most profound piece of art I've ever been in the presence of. That became 'Soldier's Heart.' He had gone through some sort of epiphany. He found his voice. He found a way to express his anguish. It's an album of crying out, in real time. It's intense."

Mulhollan said that he believes the album could help everyone, not just vets. "Right from the start, I saw that Jacob had a profound understanding of how everything is connected — the environment to peace and justice, how it all ties together. The big picture," Mulhollan said. You could hear all that in his songs, he said. But you could also hear that he was haunted by demons.

"They Call Me Hero"

by Jacob George

They call me son, they call me hero.

But to me, I'm neither.

I'm not what you think.

I'm scared of me.

I'm not that boy that left.

I've danced with death.

They call me son, they call me hero

But to me, I'm neither.

They call me precious

And worship my sacrifice

They gave me medals

To validate their lies

Their colorful clanging on my chest.

Calms 'em like a lullaby.

They call me son, they call me hero

But to me, I'm neither

They call me son, they call me hero.

But to me, I'm neither.

The celebration of violent deeds

puts my heart at unease

Parades and flags can't change what I done

There's no honor in what I've become.

They call me son, they call me hero.

But to me, I'm neither.

They call me son, they call me hero.

But to me, I'm neither.

I'm neither.

I'm neither.

I'm neither.

I'm neither.

'Accelerated darkness'

By the autumn of 2013, George's friends and family say, he was tired and ready for a break from the road, activism, and bearing the country's grief from the war.

"When he went on that 'Soldier's Heart' tour," Stephen Coger said, "everybody would come up to him after the shows and just unload all of their trauma onto him. When he came back from that, we had a visit at Nightbird Books in Fayetteville last December. He was like, 'I'm through playing that music for a while. I'm through listening to other peoples' problems unless they're family.'"

"Over this past year," said Jasmin McBride, "it's almost like he felt like he'd done what he needed to do as far as the political and the anti-war stuff. He still had the same beliefs, and the same feelings, but he was kind of ready to settle down and maybe have a family — to move past his protesting days. He was into his music, and he had a girlfriend. He just kind of wanted to be back into normal things."

Brock McIntosh, who'd kept in touch fairly regularly with George since their trip to Afghanistan, said George told him he'd decided to take a step back from activism and concentrate on himself. "He disabled his Facebook, and it was kind of hard to get in touch with him after that," McIntosh said. The last time McIntosh heard from him was when George called, distraught, to talk to him about how badly the media was depicting Bowe Bergdahl, the American POW who was released by Afghan insurgents in May 2014.

George came to Greenwood to stay with his mother for the summer. Robin Mulac and others said that his symptoms had noticeably advanced by then, making him frequently anxious, and nervous around crowds.

"I could tell he was really struggling," she said. "I encouraged him to go for his counseling, and he was going up to the VA in Fayetteville once a week. But sometimes that's not enough." On the night of Greenwood's Fourth of July celebration, George's niece encouraged him to come, Mulac said, but the crowds were too much for him. "He was only able to stay about 15 minutes and then he had to go back home," she said. "Too many people, too much noise. He just couldn't do it. It was too overwhelming for him. ... Several times this summer, he tried to get out and do things and he just couldn't." It eventually got so bad that even when it was a family gathering, he'd have to retreat.

"I saw the accelerated darkness," Mulac said. "I saw that he just couldn't be around people at all."

Still, none of the people we talked with said they had any inkling that it had gotten so bad for Jacob George that he was considering taking his own life. Every time they talked with him, he was speaking of a more hopeful future. He was living on 80 percent disability from the VA by then for his PTSD and other problems, and planned to try to be declared 100 percent disabled. In late summer, he'd gotten a small apartment in Fayetteville, surrounded by trees. A few days before he died, he'd sent an email to his girlfriend, Mulac said, telling her he loved her, and was looking forward to trying for a buck in the upcoming deer season, promising to make her a set of moccasins from the hide. The Sunday before he died, he'd called Mulac, chatting amiably about how he'd gone on a bike ride and had breakfast with friends.

"He was so excited, talking about the things he was going to do in the future," Mulac said. "The timing was a shock, because nobody saw it. Nobody."

Songs left unsung

Jacob George was found dead in his apartment in Fayetteville late on the evening of Sept. 17. He was 32 years old. His girlfriend became concerned when she hadn't heard from him in a few days, Robin Mulac said. After going to his apartment and peering through the window, Jacob's girlfriend called his brother, Jordan, who went in and found the body. The family declined to say how he took his life, though his mother said they believe he'd been dead for a few days by the time his body was discovered.

The outpouring of grief from the anti-war community on social media as the word spread was immediate. Though his family said George didn't leave a note, a few websites and blogs tried to connect his suicide to President Obama's Sept. 10 announcement that the U.S. would expand the military campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Jasmin McBride said the family reached out to a few of those websites. Headlines were cut, ledes rolled back to the truth: That while there are plenty of theories, from the 9/11 anniversary to the strain of reportedly talking another vet out of suicide a few days before his own death, nobody really knows what pushed Jacob over. Though there have been dozens of online tributes to her brother by the people who were touched by him, McBride said stories like that — which she called an attempt at using her brother — made her angry. She said she doesn't want Jacob to be turned into a martyr for someone else's gain.

"That's exactly what we don't want his death to be," she said. "If it does help other veterans see that maybe they need to get some help, then that's a good thing. But to us, he was our family. He was somebody we loved. He wasn't just an anti-war activist to be exploited for that. ... It's been hard to read all those articles. The articles focus on just the veteran and the peace activist. He was so much more than that."

Small memorial gatherings have been held in major cities all over America, and a memorial service arranged in Fayetteville on Oct. 5 drew more than 200 people, with others — including some of the Afghan peace activists George had talked with during his civilian return to the country with Brock McIntosh — Skyping in to talk about his good works. Jimmy Freeman was even there, McIntosh said, telling his side of the famous story: a small group of soldiers filling a wire and canvas blast barrier on a windy mountaintop, shoveling in rocks with their bare hands. Then the sound of a big bird coming, and a Chinook appearing over the horizon with a beautiful Bobcat tractor slung underneath, like a gift from Valhalla. And when the helicopter landed, here comes good ol' Jay George out of the back, impossibly, on a mountaintop a million miles from the green bosom of Danville. It's the stuff of a stirring song.

Robin Mulac is not stopping. After Jacob's death, she learned from the VA that all the family would be given is $300 to help pay for his cremation. "That's unacceptable in this country," she said. "One of my goals is to pick up where he left off and see if I can get that changed." The VA now says she may be able to get full death benefits.

Walking among the people at the memorial, Mulac said she was struck by how much good he'd done, but also puzzled by why it wasn't enough to overcome the darkness inside him. Why couldn't he see what he was worth to all those people?

"Part of the eulogy I gave at the memorial was, 'My heart breaks not only for the loss of my son, but for the songs left unsung, and the lives left untouched, and the stories left untold,'" she said. "How many more people could he have helped? Why couldn't he feel his worth in the lives of those he'd already helped and changed?"

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

The finish line is finally in sight. A bajillion dollars have been spent, football games and web surfing have been thoroughly ruined by excruciating and ubiquitous political ads, and we've endured more whoppers and flip-flops than we can count. It's election season. You can almost smell all the bull.

We've seen new faces and familiar rascals. Scandals from donut-shop blackmail to racist emails (oh, it was just "literary technique" or "country talk"). Fact-checkers pouncing, flaks spinning and national media swooping in to find the perfect Arkansas redneck for a salty quote.

We've heard the word "Obama" repeated so many times that Republicans are left speaking something not recognizable as English. It's their catchall phrase, full of Tea Party sound and fury. Many GOP candidates have decided it's all they need. They might be right.

A few of you have been like us, absorbing and inhaling every new nugget of overhyped news. Most of you have been smarter than that, dodging the onslaught when possible.

Whether you're a political junkie or just a citizen trying to figure out what's what, we have your one-stop shop for Election 2014: the best and (worst) quotes of the season, the legislative races to watch (including the senate contests that could determine the future of the private option), those ballot initiatives you keep promising yourself to study up on (they're a big deal!), the misadventures of Leslie Rutledge, the best and worst of the season's political ads, the impact of the unprecedented onslaught of money into Arkansas politics, and a rundown of all the demagoguery that would be shameful if only more politicians were capable of shame.

All the polling and predictions and punditry will soon be forgotten. Big questions — from control of the U.S. Senate to whether Arkansas has turned into a state as red as Oklahoma — will be answered Tuesday, Nov. 4. Mark your calendars. It's been an inglorious season, but here's our hokey political pitch: Exercising your right to vote remains a glorious thing.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Election Day will soon be over. We're thankful for that, because — as much as we like politics around here — you can't turn on an electronic device of any kind these days without having your eyes and eardrums roundhouse-kicked by a political ad, most of them featuring some stuffed shirt calling another stuffed shirt everything but a child of God. After you've seen a couple thousand hours of those, they can wear pretty thin. Seriously, candidates: At this point in the race, do you really think talking about your mom wearing cardboard shoes growing up and claiming your opponent is personally spreading Ebola through South Arkansas like Johnny Pandemicseed is going to sway anybody to your side?

It may be a little late to tell you this, but we've watched all the political ads so you don't have to. Here are our awards for the best and worst of the season:

Worst extended metaphor

The College Republican National Committee's head-scratcher of a digital ad featuring a waaaay-overextended metaphor in which Mike Ross and Asa Hutchinson are somehow represented by two wedding dresses, and the voters are represented as a bunch of wooden young actresses watching another wooden young actress try on the dresses, and the Mike Ross voter is somebody's clueless idiot mom, which of course makes the owner of the dress shop ... what? The invisible hand of the Free Market? Nancy Pelosi's stunt double? The Koch brothers in a pantsuit? Who knows? The only thing the ad is really proof of is what you already knew: Young Republicans are, in fact, the least funny people on any campus.

The Ivory-Billed Woodpecker Rare Bird Award for positive political advertising

We actually have a winner this year! It's the spot by 2nd District Congressional candidate Patrick Henry Hays in which Hays, clad in Workin' Man duds, drives a barge pushboat and a tractor trailer rig, hangs off the side of a moving Caterpillar road grader and serves Blue Bell ice cream at a soda fountain while talking about the jobs that came to North Little Rock on his mayoral watch. No scary type fonts. No insinuations that his opponent is out to kill your children. Just a guy talking about the good things he did for his constituents while in office. Of course, shortly thereafter it was no more Mr. Nice Guy from Hays, as he went after Hill with ads stretching to connect him to disgraced former Treasurer Martha Shoffner, but it was nice while it lasted.

Biggest lie

Tom Cotton's TV spot, showing picturesque scenes of the Cotton family farm, in which he stated: "When President Obama hijacked the Farm Bill and turned it into a food stamp bill, with billions more in spending, I voted no." In fact, the Farm Bill has been heavily linked to food assistance for struggling Americans since 1973, long before Obama even thought about becoming the president of Republican nightmares. Cotton was the only member of the Arkansas congressional delegation to vote against the Farm Bill in January 2014, but it wasn't because Cotton was standing up to the bogeyman-in-chief. It's because Cotton and those who pull his strings would tell hungry poor folks to eat cake. With opponent Mark Pryor hammering him over the vote and desperate to distance himself from a move that could hurt him with the state's farmers, Cotton spun himself a whopper. Cotton's claim that Obama had somehow hacked the Farm Bill, leaving him no choice but to vote against it, was so egregious that it wound up on Politifact.com's list of the nine biggest lies of the 2014 election season.

Most horrific

Mark Pryor's ad — featuring "piano in an insane asylum" music, plentiful Shaky Cam, and news footage of dudes in hazmat suits scrubbing down streets— which sought to connect the Ebola outbreak to Tom Cotton's vote against funding pandemic response. "He was the only one to vote against Children's Hospital!" the narrator goes on to say. Which would lead any reasonable voter to wonder: Who is Tom Cotton, and why is he so intent on making blood shoot out of our tear ducts and giving us all superherpes? The best part of the ad, though, is at the end, when a comment about Cotton voting for tax cuts for billionaires is queued to footage of a 2006-ish Lincoln Town Car gliding up to a parked jet. Seriously, Pryor campaign: Do you really think the robber barons that Two-Gun Tommy owes his spurs to would let their silky pantaloons touch the seat of a non-Teutonic motorcar?

Weirdest name change

Perhaps taking a page from Bryant Mayor Jill Dabbs' efforts to have her name changed to "Republican" Jill Dabbs on the ballot, Republican congressional candidate Conrad "Connie" Reynolds changed his name to "Colonel Conrad Reynolds" (and yes, "Colonel" is apparently part of his legal name now) before the 2nd Congressional District primary last May. BONUS: Colonel Conrad Reynolds is —wait for it — a retired colonel in the U.S. Army, which means his full, honorary title is now apparently "Col. Colonel Conrad Reynolds." Paging Dr. Strangelove. Roger, Roger. What's your vector, Victor?

Most down-in-the-gutter, chickenshit, slimy, etc., etc.

While there were plenty of candidates for this one (as always), this year's prize goes to the anonymous mailer sent out in late September to residents of House District 35 against Democrat Clarke Tucker. Featuring a fake return address, a picture of a woman being menaced and a font that would best be called "Serial Killer Taunts the Police Serif," the flyer said, in part: "Why would Clarke Tucker defend a violent criminal for free who pled guilty to robbery and terroristic threatening? While on probation, that Tucker arranged, this same man beat a woman with a bottle. ... Is Clarke Tucker soft on violent crime?" If you know where this is going, raise your hand. That's right: Clarke Tucker, who is a lawyer, once served as the attorney for a man who shoplifted under $10 worth of stuff from Kmart — a man who, after avoiding being sentenced to death for shoplifting, was acquitted of a subsequent charge. Tucker's opponent, Republican Stacy Hurst, initially disavowed the attacks, before sending out her own mailer that largely repeated the claims of the first. So, good job, Hurst campaign/anonymous jerks! Not only are you helping make people more stupid with your head-injury-victim syntax, you're wiping your rump with the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of an attorney for everyone accused of a crime.

Wiggliest earworm/best use of unpaid intern labor

The radio jingle for Lackey Moody Jr., candidate for State House District 63, written and performed by his 10-year-old daughter, Kate, with guitar accompaniment. It goes: "Lackey Moody, Lackey Moody, Lackey Moooooody! Just vote for State House District 63! Lackey Mooooody! District 63! Lackey Moody, Lackey Moody, Lackey Moooooody! A great representative for District 63! I love the man dearly! He is my daddy, too!"

The Mike Huckabee Award for best use of outhouse, dirt floor, tarpaper shack or "We et nuttin' but poke salat and hardtack growin' up ..." qualifications for office

Tom Cotton's ad with his mom, Avis Cotton, in which he unpacks a bag of groceries in a kitchen before saying she grew up without indoor plumbing. Cotton uses the inevitable mental image of his mom hunkered in the Wind Box as a segue into: "Every vote I've cast and will cast on Social Security and Medicare protects and preserves benefits for seniors like mom." In fact, Cotton has repeatedly supported cutting benefits and raising the eligibility age for Social Security, and has generally been a fan of any policy that would help slash the social safety net to tatters. It's an ad whose script belongs in the john out back, next to the cobs.

Best evidence that you should never put your parents in political ads

Mike Ross' ad featuring his mom and dad, which shows exactly where his wax-dummy stiffness before the cameras comes from.

RUNNER-UP: Tom Cotton's ad in which he sits on the tailgate of a pickup truck, surrounded by lowing cattle, while his dad gripes at him like a hick version of Clint Eastwood in "Gran Torino."

The worst. Just ... the worst

The bizarre anti-Pryor web ad, paid for by "Generation Opportunity" (the most youthful of the numerous Astroturf groups backed by the Koch brothers), featuring a satanic-looking Uncle Sam with an enormous paper mache head throwing stacks of money slo-mo in a hospital room to a circa-1988 hip- hop beat before a card comes up that says: "Tell Mark Pryor: Stop supporting Obamacare." It was all part of one of the weirdest political ad campaigns in history, which also featured the creepy Uncle Sam (and we are not making this up) sneaking into a doctor's office and snapping on a glove to give a young man a prostate exam, and silently preparing to assault a terrified young woman with a speculum during her visit to the gynecologist. Both ads then encouraged young people to "opt out of Obamacare." Nothing like a few terrifying-clown rape threats to get young folks rushing away from affordable health care, we guess.

Best use of 'gobs'

The truly epic radio jingle fielded by State Senate District 19 candidate James McLean, which features multiple singers belting out: "James McLean! James McLean! For Arkansas state Senate! James McLean! James McLean! He's the man we need to win it! Can you save us from the brink? Quicker than a wink! Can you bring this county cash? Faster than a flash! Can you bring us new jobs? Gobs and gobs and gobs! Can you make our future sing? James McLean can do anything! James McLean, James McLean! For Arkansas state Senate! James McLean, James McLean! He's the man we need to win it! James McLean! James McLean! James McLeaaaaaaaaaaaaan!" While our recollection of the gobs-to-reality exchange rate is fairly rusty, "gobs and gobs and gobs" is a pretty big order, pal, not to mention the assurance that "he can do anything." You know that "anything" includes a pony in every backyard, solid gold hula-hoops for everyone in the district, and a cure for cancer in your first term, right? Hope you can deliver.

Best "I'm just like you poor saps!"

The weird jalopy-off that some Republican candidates got into to prove their alleged penny-pinching, broke-folks bona fides to the for-real broke folks they wanted to vote for them. Included were ads by congressional candidate French Hill (a millionaire banker married to a lawyer) featuring "Old Blue," a 1998 Volvo wagon, and an ad by gubernatorial candidate Asa Hutchinson (a lawyer, former three-term member of the U.S. House of Representatives and former Drug Enforcement Agency director) in which he bragged that his truck had over 130,000 miles on it, while his wife's Chrysler had over 145,000. PREDICTION: By the next election cycle, we'll be seeing ads featuring a Republican gazillionaire swearing up and down his sole transpo to the gettin' place is a bicycle with no seat and with two flats. Built it himself. Didn't need no help from the gubmint!

Worst (literal) monkey business

The anti-Mark Pryor mailer, paid for by the Koch brothers' group Americans for Prosperity, which features a smiling monkey, a background of ripe bananas and a screaming headline that says the government spent $71,000 to study how monkeys react to the influence of cocaine. Monkeys on blow?! Those wastrels! Never mind that the mailer is referencing a four-year-old study, paid for by a grant from the National Institutes of Health, that helped scientists at Wake Forest University learn more about combating crippling drug addiction. Then again, who needs useless bullshit like that when we could be spending that $71,000 to buy a handful of Unobtainium wing-nuts for the Joint Strike Fighter?

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

"What you see in this campaign, playing out on your TV screens and playing out in your mailboxes is a business transaction. ... Congressman Cotton is a good investment for them, and that's why they've spent more than $20 million on television trying to buy this Senate seat. But ladies and gentlemen, you know what: This seat is not for sale."

—Sen. Mark Pryor

"There are only three things for certain in life: death, taxes and the unpopularity of Obamacare in the South."

—GOP strategistBill Vickery

"It's a pretty good scam isn't it? Give me a six-year job for a two-year protest. That's Mark Pryor's opponent's message."

—Bill Clinton, campaigning in Arkansas, on Tom Cotton's all-Obama-all-the-time campaign.

"My opponent [John Burkhalter] is the preferred candidate of President Obama."

— Tim Griffin, with a straight face, as part of his stump speech. Griffin is running for lieutenant governor, a state office of no importance.

"I am Obama's last choice for Arkansas Attorney General."

—Leslie Rutledge. We're pretty sure the president has never heard of her.

"After the Sandy Hook incident, Mr. Ross' knees buckled."

— Asa Hutchinson, accusing opponent Mike Ross of being insufficiently pro-gun in the immediate aftermath of the slaughter of 20 elementary school children.

"It's not an issue in my district. Folks there agree with my point of view on firearms and the personal use of firearms. I made it very clear that the timing certainly had a negative effect on some people. I meant exactly what I said. But sometimes tactfully it's better to refrain from saying some things at certain times."

— Rep. Nate Bell of Mena, currently running for re-election, on an infamous tweet that his opponent has made an issue of during the campaign. Bell added that he had counted 13 major media figures who made "the same basic statement ... without any repercussions whatsoever." The statement in question: During the manhunt for the Boston Marathon bomber in 2013, Bell tweeted: "I wonder how many Boston liberals spent the night cowering in their homes wishing they had an AR-15 with a hi-capacity magazine? #2A."

"Mike Ross is the biggest gun nut there is, right behind Asa Hutchinson."

—Green Party gubernatorial candidate Joshua Drake.

"These smartphones that children have these days are the devil."

— Attorney general candidate Leslie Rutledge, during a debate, on battling crimes in cyberspace.

"I'm a Christian, pro-life, gun-carrying conservative." 

—Rutledge, explaining the totality of her qualifications for attorney general.

"Obama."

—U.S.Rep. Tom Cotton, 74 times during his first debate with Sen. Mark Pryor and 80 times during the second debate.

"Congressman Hutchinson here, I can't figure out if he sounds more like a slick lawyer or a slick D.C. politician — he's been both. ... He was against the ballot initiative to raise the state minimum wage before he was for it. You know, you've gotta make decisions, Asa, not based on what public polling tells you. But you gotta make decisions from the heart."

—Democratic gubernatorial candidateMike Ross, on GOP opponent Asa Hutchinson's flip-flop on the minimum wage.

"It's Asa says, Asa does. He says one thing in Arkansas, he does another in Washington D.C. Let me tell you something, back home in Prescott, Arkansas, at the deer camp, we do what we say and we say what we do."

—Ross, on Hutchinson's pre-K flip-flops

"Economics is incredibly simple."

—State Rep. Richard Womack, running for re-election in Arkadelphia, explaining that all Arkansas has to do in order to enjoy prosperity is cut state income taxes. Womack, who's in the paint and construction business, noted that his theory comes from a three-day seminar with Art Laffer, the godfather of voodoo economics. Laffer served as intellectual inspiration, consultant and cheerleader for the tax-cutting experiment in Kansas, called a "red-state model," which was supposed to be something that could be applied in other states. The Laffer plan led to disastrous fiscal ruin in Kansas. Laffer predicted that the tax cuts would lead to booming growth in Kansas. He was horribly, catastrophically wrong. Incredibly simple, see?

"Rumors ... in social circles and cocktail party conversations."

—Stacy Hurst, Republican candidate for state representative, explaining why she initiated an investigation into the pre-K placement of Democratic opponent Clarke Tucker's 4-year-old child.

"Congressman Cotton wants to build the economy from the billionaires down. I want to build it from the middle class out."

—Mark Pryor, employing a zinger he used in both debates.

"When I think of middle class I think of most of Arkansas, up to $150,000 or $200,000."

—Pryor, asked to define the middle class, during his second debate with Cotton. Pressed for more specifics, Pryor again said "up to $200,000." He was referring to federal tax brackets and he meant a ceiling, not a median, but it was still a bone-headed thing to say, his only real unforced error in the debates. Only a tiny fraction of Americans make $200,000. Cotton pounced: "Sen. Pryor must be the one who's hanging around with out-of-state billionaires if he thinks $200,000 in Arkansas is the middle class."

"You may not believe it but I'm actually trying to help you. ... Here's the bottom line, you're finding a new career, you're not gonna run for state treasurer. OK? Unless you want to see this on the 7 o'clock news." 

—Republican candidate for TreasurerDennis Milligan,in an unsuccessful attempt to blackmail GOP primary opponent Rep. Duncan Baird out of the race with what turned out to be an innocuous video. Milligan was widely rumored to be wearing sunglasses during the encounter, which took place at a Krispy Kreme donut shop at Milligan's request (Baird declined to comment on what Milligan was wearing). Despite the revelation of Milligan's extortion attempt, Republican voters chose him as their preferred candidate.

"If you want to vote for a boy who voted for Barack Obama ... and thinks he's the greatest thing since sliced bread, vote for Tyler Pearson."

—Sen. Jason Raperton his 28-year-old opponent. Later, when Pearson had the mic, Rapert audibly added, "Act like a man."

"I'm warm, dammit."

—Tom Cottonto Politico, on complaints that he was too cold or robotic on the campaign trail.

"He's a human. ...He's not a robot."

—State Sen. Michael Lamoureuxon longtime friend Tom Cotton.

"He does have a great deal of empathy. It's just it's hard to see it."

—Another old friend of Tom Cotton's.

"He's had kind of a bad press for being unapproachable and rigid. I don't see that. Maybe he's a little on a different intellectual level. But I don't see he's unapproachable."

—An unidentified Cotton campaign staffer to a reporter from the Guardian at a church bazaar in Hattieville.

"You all know me."

—MarkPryor, repeatedly during the debates.

"The worst of dirty politics. ... These ridiculous, manipulative attacks are an attempt by a secret group, with secret donors and a secret agenda, to manipulate Arkansas's Attorney General election."

—Leslie Rutledge, on the influence of outside groups using dark money in the Republican primary to attack her. Her opponent, she said, was "dishonest" not to disavow the attacks. That was last summer. This fall, when a shadowy conservative group swooped in with $1.8 million in dark money to make misleading attacks on her Democratic opponent, Nate Steel? Not a peep from Rutledge.

"If a family is truly in poverty, the minimum wage is not any answer."

—Millionaire banker and ninth-generation ArkansansJ. French Hill, running for U.S. Congress in the 2nd District.

"Actually, birth control is not an abortion issue. That's a contraceptive issue. Totally different issue."

—StateSen. Jason Rapert, asked at a Vilonia Area Chamber forum whether given his opposition to abortion, he would do anything to increase access to contraception. In fact, that very same week, a study in the New England Journal of Medicine found giving free birth control to teenagers dramatically reduced their abortion rate.

"The best thing that could happen" to the Senate would be if Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) "gets beat and Harry Reid gets replaced."

—Mark Pryor, being Mark Pryor.

"Millionaires can get food stamps."

—Tom Cotton, who's never been able to cite an example of a food stamp millionaire. Almost all food stamp beneficiaries make less than 130 percent of the federal poverty level,and the program offers a benefitaveraging$1.50 per person per meal.

"We've all been in a situation where we stand in the grocery store at Walmart or at Brookshires and someone has steak in their basket yet they have a brand new iPhone and they're going out to a brand new SUV."

—TomCotton. Around 500,000 Arkansans — 17 percent of us — get food stamps. Nearly all have incomes below the poverty line, with a median income around $13,000. The program offers a benefit averaging $1.50 per person per meal.

"These are people who don't care if babies starve. They like their ideology more than human beings." 

—Green Party candidate for U.S. SenateMark Swaney, on people seeking to further slash funding for food stamps.

"I told President Clinton yesterday you've been running around taking credit for the balanced budget he provided this country. He got a pretty good kick out of it."

—Mike Ross, on Asa Hutchinson's repeated boasts that he "had the last balanced budget in our nation, when I left Congress." Of course, that was under President Clinton, who Hutchinson tried very hard to boot out of office.

"Several months ago Congressman Cotton went to a luxury resort in California to spend time with his billionaire donors. There's an audiotape where they brag about him for voting against the Farm Bill. It's a vote against Arkansas. You can hear the ovation on the tape — for voting against Arkansas. Folks, he's not listening to you. He's listening to them. That applause is still ringing in his ears and those dollar signs are still in his eyes. ... He has his billionaires, but I have you."

—Mark Pryor

"I've dodged real bullets in the streets of Baghdad, so a few metaphorical bullets on a political campaign don't really bother me that much."

—Tom Cotton

"President Obama has two years left in his last term. He is a lame duck. He is blocked by a hostile majority in the House. He has a Senate that at best is going to be evenly and bitterly divided. This is a six-year term for Senate you're running for. Would you please tell us what you hope to accomplish in those six years, most of which would not be under the administration of Barack Obama. Please don't mention Obama if you can give me an answer to that.

—Senate debate panelistDoug Thompsonof Northwest Arkansas Newspapers. Cotton began his response by saying ... "Barack Obama."

"When you ask a question about negative ads, Congressman Cotton talks about Obama. When you ask a question about ISIS, Congressman Cotton talks about Obama, ask a question about the Farm Bill, he talks about Obama. You see a pattern? Clearly Congressman Cotton is running against one man. But I am running for 3 million Arkansans."

—Mark Pryor

"The best political talent of his generation that I have personally witnessed."

—Gov. Mike Beebeon political newcomer Clarke Tucker, running for state representative.

"I think many primaries in [Arkansas politics] boil down to one issue: goofy vs non- goofy. My money is on non-goofy to win the day."

—Rep. John Burris, tweeting during the Republican primaries. In fact, goofy held its own in the GOP primary this year, including in the case of know-nothing Tea Party fave Scott Flippo, who knocked Burris off in their battle for state Senate.

"I've passed about 70 pieces of legislation, almost all of it bipartisan. That's how I work. ... [Cotton's] approach is this 'my way or the highway,' this dead-end politics that leads to things like fiscal cliffs and shutting down the government. Leadership in Washington involves walking across the aisle. And Congressman, you don't have the reputation, the ability, or the desire to walk across the aisle to get things done in Washington."

—Mark Pryor

"People like Ross and Pryor, they water [the Democratic Party] down. They make people think that the only people who can ever get elected are these quasi-Republicans. That that's our only option in Arkansas because people are so right-wing. It's part of the Democrats' job to speak out against the nuts like Jason Rapert. So many Democrats sat on their hands when Jason Rapert was passing all this crazy legislation. ... When Nate Bell took away outreach money toward the private option, Democrats just rolled over. They just have no backbone. The only way to really have progressive politics whether you're a Democrat or a Green or whatever is you gotta be willing to stand up to the other politicians and explain to people. If the only people talking are the right-wing nuts and Democrats are sitting there with their mouth shut, people are going to believe the people that are talking."

—Green Party gubernatorial candidateJosh Drake

"Just because a liberal reporter calls themselves a fact checker doesn't make anything he says a fact."

—Tom Cotton, responding to a reporter asking him about factually inaccurate advertisements.

"You just heard Congressman Cotton basically admit that he hasn't passed anything since he's been in the House. Even though he was there for one month and he ran a poll on the Senate race. Didn't even know where the bathrooms were but nonetheless now he thinks he is entitled to be in the Senate."

—Mark Pryor

"The word that I hear everywhere I go is 'embarrassment'— that Jason Rapert is an embarrassment to our district and our state. ... All he cared about was getting in the spotlight and focusing on himself."

—Political newcomerTyler Pearson, challenging state Sen. Jason Rapert.

"My wife and I have been married near 15 years with the best 3 children. She stays home. I love to hunt and fish as does my kids. I believe in the constitution as written."

—Marc Rosson, a Libertarian candidate for state representative in District 20.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

As countless election recaps recounted in 2012, Republicans took control of the Arkansas General Assembly for the first time since Reconstruction. But before we count the Natural State dead red, keep in mind that in the state House of Representatives, Republicans have the narrowest of majorities (51-49, including one Green who caucuses with the Dems), and they only got there by winning District 52 in Northeast Arkansas in 2012 by 45 votes.

With a favorable map this time around, Democrats have a path to retake control. While the big boys at the top of the ballot soak up all the media oxygen, the House could be the most consequential political story in terms of bread-and-butter issues in Arkansas. It's likely to be very, very, very close. Here are some races to watch.

District 18 (Arkadelphia area)
Democrat: Damon Daniels
Republican: Rep. Richard Womack

This one is a test case for the private option in a general election. Hardcore Tea Partier Rep. Richard Womack of Arkadelphia reportedly said at one candidate forum that he had devoted his life to ending the private option. That might be an awkward fit for this district, given the influence of Baptist Health Medical Center in Arkadelphia. Democrat Damon Daniels of Alpine, the owner of a dispatch trucking company, has been a steadfast supporter of the policy. Womack won with a small margin last time and this is seen as a strong pickup opportunity for the Dems.

District 26 (Malvern and surrounding area)
Democrat: Rep. David Kizzia
Republican: Laurie Rushing

Rep. David Kizzia of Malvern distinguished himself in his freshman year as one of the most competent and thoughtful legislators on the Democratic side, and no one in the House is more passionate or knowledgeable about pre-K and early childhood education. Kizzia took this seat by 10 percentage points in 2012, but he had the advantage of running against an opponent, Loy Mauch, who was disturbingly fond of slavery. No such luck this time — Republican Laurie Rushing, a Tea Party-approved Hot Springs realtor, is considered a strong candidate.

District 31 (Ferndale area)
Democrat: Clea Hupp
Republican: Rep. Andy Davis

Incumbent Rep. Andy Davis of Little Rock is a pro-private-option establishment Republican best known for attempts to dismantle environmental protections, including a law he passed that backfired catastrophically when the federal Environmental Protection Agency responded with plans to intervene to make sure Arkansas didn't violate the Clean Water Act; the law was repealed in a special session. Davis, an engineer, has been a consistent champion for industries he works for; Davis' own company, New Water Systems, has been cited 21 times in three years by the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality for releasing contaminated water. He's being challenged by University of Arkansas at Little Rock professor Dr. Clea Hupp, who is focusing on education and raising the minimum wage. Davis is expected to cruise to victory, but Democrats are playing hard here.

District 32 (West Little Rock)
Democrat: John Adams
Republican: Jim Sorvillo

Democrats have had their eyes on this seat (in a district with a population diversifying faster than you might think) for a while. Republican Rep. Allen Kerr, an establishment Republican who flipped his vote to a nay on the private option during the fiscal session, is term limited. Former Justice of the Peace Jim Sorvillo, a GOP Tea Partier, is vying for the seat against Democrat John Adams, a banker and former assistant attorney general, who lost the Democratic primary for 2nd District Congress in 2010. Adams has been active in good-government efforts, including Regnat Populus. This probably still remains favorable territory for Republicans. Another race where the private option looms large.

District 35 (Little Rock Heights and parts of West Little Rock)
Democrat: Clarke Tucker
Republican: Stacy Hurst

The most expensive House race in the history of the state pits Little Rock City Director Stacy Hurst, a self-described "very moderate Republican," against Democrat Clarke Tucker, a political newcomer with a familiar name in town (his father is developer Rett Tucker). Hurst reportedly originally planned to run as a Democrat before billionaire backer Warren Stephens told her she had to go GOP. With little separating the two candidates on the issues, the race has gotten personal and nasty. This district, where Obama won twice, has been a blue island in a red state. Can Hurst flip it?

District 38 (northern Pulaski County)
Democrat: Rep. Patti Julian
Republican: Donnie Copeland

Rep. Patti Julian of North Little Rock wasn't afraid to stand with her party and take tough votes in her first term, which has Republicans viewing her as a target. Julian, a retired North Little Rock lawyer, is being challenged by Donnie Copeland of Sherwood, a Pentecostal pastor whose previous forays into politics include a failed bid in the 2012 GOP primary for lieutenant governor against pizza man Mark Darr. Copeland is an extreme right-winger being backed by Tea Party gadfly Curtis Coleman. Outside groups like Conduit for Action, affiliated with Fayetteville millionaire Joe Maynard, a diehard opponent of the private option, have targeted this race. 

District 41 (northern Pulaski County)
Democrat: Danny Knight
Republican: Karilyn Brown

This is a seat being vacated by term-limited Rep. Jim Nickels, a strong progressive who won a squeaker in 2012 to hang on to a reddening district. Democrat Danny Knight of Sherwood, a former school superintendent, faces off against Republican Justice of the Peace Karilyn Brown, also of Sherwood. Having Pat Hays, the popular former mayor of North Little Rock, on the congressional ballot could help Democrats hang tough north of the river, but Brown, another Tea Party favorite, has reportedly been running ahead thus far.

District 52 (Northeast Arkansas)
Democrat: Radius Baker
Republican: Dwight Tosh

This was the Florida of the 2012 Arkansas House race, with Republican John Hutchison eking out a tiny 45-vote victory, 45 votes that gave GOPs control of the House for the first time since Reconstruction. It could be the difference-making race that will keep us up watching late again this year. Hutchison, the least qualified person in all of state government, went down in the primary to extreme right-winger Dwight Tosh, a retired State Police officer. Radius Baker, a former school superintendent with a strong base in the Valley View School District, is taking on Tosh, with control of the House potentially in the balance.

District 53 (Craighead County)
Democrat: Rep. Homer Lenderman
Republican: Dan Sullivan

This is a big target for the GOP with turf getting friendlier and friendlier to Republicans, as witnessed by Republican Sen. John Cooper's big win in a special election to take Democrat Paul Bookout's old seat. Rep. Homer Lenderman (D-Paragould), a retired teacher serving his second term, ran unopposed in 2012, but could be vulnerable this year. This time he's facing off against Dan Sullivan, CEO of Ascent Children's Health Services, which provides mental health services for children. The company, for which Sullivan has worked as a lobbyist at the Capitol, is heavily dependent on state Medicaid dollars. Sullivan, who lost to Cooper in a fiercely contested primary in the special election for Bookout's seat, has taken an Asa Hutchinson-style evasive approach to the private option. Polling has tightened in a race that has divided church pews — both Lenderman and Sullivan are elders in the Church of Christ, a powerful voting bloc in the district.

District 58 (Jonesboro area)
Democrat: Rep. Harold Copenhaver
Republican: Brandt Smith

Another seat Republicans are targeting aggressively because the Jonesboro area has gone dead red over the last few years, but Rep. Harold Copenhaver, a Jonesboro insurance salesman whose business caters to churches, is extremely popular in the district. Republican Brandt Smith, a former pastor and missionary who spent time working for a nongovernmental organization in Iraq during the war, is the challenger. GOPs are playing hard, but Copenhaver is considered the favorite to hold on to the seat he won in 2012 challenging slavery apologist Rep. Jon Hubbard.

District 59 (Craighead County)
Democrat: Ron Carroll
Republican: Jack Ladyman

Yet another tight battle in Northeast Arkansas. Term-limited Rep. Butch Wilkins, a conservative Democrat, narrowly survived a challenge from John Cooper (now the state senator) in 2012. Democrats have a strong candidate to fill the open seat in Ron Carroll, the head athletic trainer at Arkansas State University, though he's not a natural-born campaigner. His opponent, Jack Ladyman, formerly an engineer at the failed Nordex plant in Jonesboro, leans establishment Republican; he opposes the private option but doesn't sound like he's vying for a spot in the "Hell No" caucus. Ladyman has some baggage — improper tax exemptions, whispers about fiscal mismanagement during his tenure as mayor of Elkins, and past domestic violence incidents. Still, this one's a tossup.  

District 63 (Independence County)
Democrat: Lackey Moody
Republican: James Sturch

Term-limited Rep. James McLean (D-Batesville) is in a dogfight for a Senate seat. Can Democrats hang on to the Batesville area? It won't be easy. Democratic Justice of the Peace Lackey Moody, a realtor, faces off against Republican James Sturch, a UALR student pursuing a master's degree in public administration. This is a tossup race that could make the difference for control of the House. Moody's daughter wrote a very cute radio jingle that could swing the race.

District 70 (Conway area)
Democrat: Frank Shaw
Republican: Rep. David Meeks

Taking down the incumbent, Rep. David Meeks, of Conway, would be a shocking upset, though we keep hearing it could be closer than a lot of folks expect. Meeks, a former propane truck driver who teaches Sunday school, is the mouthpiece for the hyperactive Faulkner County Tea Party. Democrat Frank Shaw is a Conway lawyer previously rumored to be considering a run against state Sen. Jason Rapert (R-Conway).

District 84 (Fayetteville area)
Democrat: Candy Clark
Republican: Rep. Charlie Collins

He's the favorite to hang on, but even some Republican insiders believe Fayetteville Rep. Charlie Collins is vulnerable. The two-term-incumbent Collins, a bulldog legislator known for a narrow obsession with tax cuts and "Charnalogies" (frequent metaphors that infrequently make sense), won a squeaker last time and faces a strong challenger in Democratic Justice of the Peace Candy Clark, who has been on the Quorum Court for five years and is a former member of the Fayetteville Planning Commission. Collins originally planned to ditch the district for a run for lieutenant governor but backed out when Tim Griffin entered that race.

District 93 (Bentonville)
Democrat: Leah Williams
Republican: Rep. Jim Dotson

This is a long shot but Democrats are trying to expand the map into Benton County. Incumbent Rep. Jim Dotson of Bentonville is one of the most right-wing and least active (he passed just one bill) legislators in the state. The Democratic challenger, Leah Williams, is a strong candidate: a member of the Bentonville City Council, a former Walmart employee and wife of a Walmart employee. She has gotten the endorsement of former Republican U.S. Rep. John Paul Hammerschmidt and is emphasizing education and economic development. The dynamics in the race are interesting. Walmart money backed an unsuccessful primary challenge against Dotson, and get this: It's flowing money toward Democrat Williams in the general election, too. Big business Republicans aren't always happy with purist ideologues like Dotson.

District 94 (Rogers)
Democrat: Grimsley Graham
Republican: Rebecca Petty

If the Democrats pull off a miracle and win a seat in Benton County, this is the most promising target. That's hard to believe, given that Rogers sent right-wing extremist Debbie Hobbs (term-limited) to the House for six years. Grimsley Graham, a Marine Corps vet and longtime English teacher at Rogers High School, could be the one to turn the tides — we've been hearing universal raves about Graham from the Rogers area. If there's a spot where candidate quality could overcome the "R" by a candidate's name, this could be it. Still a tough slog in Benton County. Graham is taking on Rebecca Petty, an advocate for families of victims of child predators, who won a closely fought GOP primary by out-Tea-Partying her opponent.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

This year's General Election ballot includes four proposed amendments to the Arkansas Constitution and one amendment to the Arkansas Code. A court challenge has been filed to the latter, which would increase the minimum wage. The state Supreme Court had not ruled by press time. That means the issue will be on the ballot but it's possible the court will disqualify it.

Three of the ballot issues were referred by the General Assembly, which is limited to three. The others were referred by petitions from voters. Below, the ballot issues and their popular titles.

BALLOT ISSUE NO. 1:

Empowering the General Assembly to provide for legislative committee review and approval of state agencies' administrative rules.

This legislatively referred ballot issue is a power grab by the General Assembly to give lawmakers say over agency rules and regulations, a function now performed, as it should be, by the executive branch. The legislature has the power to appropriate funds to agencies and requires agencies to report its rules to the General Assembly's Legislative Council. So, say the Game and Fish Commission decides a bag limit of six deer, but there's a legislator who wants that limit set at nine. Sorry, G&FC! Then there are Medicaid coverage policies ... . A yes vote on Ballot Issue No. 1 would force lawmakers, given how many administrative rules there are to be examined, to keep the legislature in session forever. A no vote is appropriate. If approved, the amendment would go into effect 30 days after the election.

(The legislature — those in Republican Sen. Jason Rapert's camp, anyway — would also like final say over the judicial branch as well, thus creating a one-branch government, but that's for the next election.)

BALLOT ISSUE NO. 2:

An amendment allowing more time to gather signatures on a state-wide initiative or referendum petition only if the petition as originally filed contained at least 75 percent of the valid signatures required.

This amendment, sponsored by Sen. Bill Sample (R-Hot Springs), would make it harder for people to propose changes to state law. Under current Arkansas law, the secretary of state allows groups whose petitions meet the required number of signatures (78,133 for constitutional amendments, 62,507 for initiated measures, from at least 15 counties) but whose valid signatures fall short 30 days to collect more signatures. This amendment would require the secretary of state to verify that 75 percent of the submitted signatures are valid before granting groups more time to get names.

Had this amendment been in place in this year's and previous elections, for example, the 2012 medical marijuana issue and this year's minimum wage and alcohol issues would not have qualified for the ballot. Supporters say the amendment will keep groups from buying time with nonvalid signatures. Opposition to the amendment has made unlikely bedfellows of the Arkansas ACLU, the Family Council, the AFL-CIO and Republican Rep. Bob Ballinger (who was quoted as saying, "This is one area where people can touch government and can affect government and the only reason for this is to make it harder for them to do that.").

BALLOT ISSUE NO. 3:

The Arkansas elected officials ethics, transparency, and financial report amendment of 2014.

This amendment, referred by the legislature, has pro-term limits folks up in arms — or at least up to rolling around a big wooden Trojan Horse in protest — because it would extend term limits (now six years in the House and eight in the Senate) to 16 years, regardless of chamber. Its main proposals would prohibit lobbyist gifts to elected officials (already codified, but not in the state Constitution), create an independent commission that would determine legislative salaries and per diem reimbursement (so lawmakers don't have to take the heat for voting to increase their pay), and would require a two-year wait for lawmakers whose terms have expired to register as lobbyists. If approved, the amendment would go into effect 30 days after the election.

BALLOT ISSUE NO. 4

The Arkansas alcoholic beverage amendment

A vote for Ballot Issue No. 4, proposed by petition of the people, would mean you could buy beer, wine or liquor in Jasper or Searcy or Hamburg — any place at all, in fact, in Arkansas (provided you could find a liquor store) — by ending local "wet" or "dry" elections. Opponents, including county line liquor stores, tried to knock the issue off the ballot, arguing that the state allowed the petitions to be filed past deadline, but the Supreme Court ruled unanimously Oct. 16 against them. Arkansas is a hooch checkerboard: There are 37 "dry" counties in Arkansas and 38 "wet," but some towns in wet counties are dry and some businesses in dry counties are wet, having gotten "private club" licenses to sell drinks. Supporters, including convenience and grocery stores, say statewide sales of alcohol would be good for the economy and could reduce the risk of drunk-driving accidents by folks driving a distance to pick up legal booze. The state Alcohol and Beverage Control Board will continue to regulate the sale of alcohol.

There are county alcohol sales votes in Columbia and Saline counties on Election Day (though the Saline County measure may be removed by the Arkansas Supreme Court, which had not ruled by press time), but if Ballot Issue No. 4 is approved, it would supersede the outcomes of those votes. The amendment would go into effect July 1, 2015.

BALLOT ISSUE NO. 5

An act to increase the Arkansas Minimum Wage

A vote for Ballot Issue No. 5 (by petition of the people) would raise the state minimum wage of $6.25 to $7.50 an hour on Jan. 1, 2015; to $8 an hour on Jan. 1, 2016, and to $8.50 on Jan. 1, 2017. That means a 25-cent bump up from the federal rate of $7.25 in January, which would put Arkansas in league with the 23 states and the District of Columbia whose minimum wage is higher than the federal government's. Seven states, including Arkansas, currently either have rates below the federal minimum or no laws, meaning the federal rate applies. A bill in Congress that would have raised the federal rate to $10.10 over 30 months failed this year.

The measure is supported by Give Arkansas a Raise Now coalition, the Arkansas Interfaith Alliance, the NAACP, the AFL-CIO, the Hunger Relief Alliance, most candidates for higher office and 79 percent of Arkansans, according to a Talk Business-Hendrix College poll. It was opposed by multimillionaire Club for Growth head Jackson T. Stephens Jr. (who is unfamiliar with trying to live on $7.25 an hour). He believes paying living wages will bring businesses to their knees or result in big layoffs. That has been the argument against since the idea of a minimum wage, at one time meant to be a living wage, was first proposed.

Stephens unsuccessfully petitioned the Supreme Court to take the minimum wage off the ballot, saying petitions were submitted past deadline (Monday, July 7, since the official deadline fell on the Fourth of July holiday this year). He also challenged the sufficiency of the signatures. The court denied Stephens' challenge on Monday.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

When it comes to rank demagoguery and fear-mongering, this one is hard to top: U.S. Rep. Tom Cotton told a tele-townhall that ISIS was going to join forces with Mexican drug cartels, "infiltrate our defenseless border," and attack Arkansas. Terrorism! Illegal immigration! Obama! The claim, which Cotton's camp later said was based on blog posts from various right-wing websites, is completely without merit (and leads one to wonder if ISIS could even find the landlocked, sparsely populated state of Arkansas on a map). When called on it, Cotton's rapid response team didn't even bother trying to defend the original claim — they had already done their work in sewing panic for political profit. Cotton talks a lot about being a statesman, and has written about the special role of the elite representatives in a republic providing calm and sober leadership without being inflamed by the passions of the populace. He talks a lot about being senatorial. He can do better than this. 

***

No one has a better instinct for appealing to people's ugliest instincts than Sen. Jason Rapert (R-Conway), the camera-loving lawmaker being challenged by a surprisingly frisky young upstart, Tyler Pearson. Rapert's immediate response to the tragic murder of real estate agent Beverly Carter was to call for parole to be abolished entirely. When Pearson pointed out that Rapert's proposal "would likely bankrupt our state," Rapert responded only as demagogues can: "I'd like you to ask Mrs. Carter's family today if she wished that that man who should have been in prison was there when he killed her."

***

Oppo research this cycle has shown an ugly disdain for due process. Witness Republican House candidate Stacy Hurst campaign's attempt to slime her Democratic opponent, Clarke Tucker, for the only criminal case he ever handled in his legal career, a pro-bono case he took as a favor to his mother. The case involved a man accused of shoplifting a $9.99 piece of merchandise at Kmart, a guy the Hurst team sought to turn into Willie Horton. Rep. David Meeks went the same route against his Democratic opponent, Conway lawyer Frank Shaw. Because Shaw asked for probation for a client, Meeks' mailer said he was "soft on crime." The notion that a lawyer is soft on crime for providing legal counsel to the accused, something guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, is frankly un-American. The same reprehensible smear was used by dark money groups against Tim Cullen in his unsuccessful bid for the Arkansas Supreme Court. Gubernatorial candidate Mike Ross even mixed in some McCarthyism, attacking Asa Hutchinson for having represented a Pentagon employee convicted of espionage. "You know, attorneys can pick their clients," said Ross, who said he didn't know any other lawyers "who would represent a spy for communist China." Shameful stuff.

***

Those seeking to stoke fear in the American public had the perfect outlet this election season: Ebola panic. A handful of cases on American soil was enough to send the media into a frenzy and politicians predictably tried to up the fear factor rather than, you know, think through the best policy response. For simplicity of messaging, pretend politician Donald Trump took the cake: “Obama’s fault,” he tweeted. Here in Arkansas, Rep. Tom Cotton and the rest of the GOP congressional delegation predictably called for a travel ban from West African countries. Just as predictably, Sen. Mark Pryor -- who had previously used Ebola in an attack ad against Cotton -- followed suit straightaway with his own call for a (somewhat modified) travel ban. Never mind that most public health experts believe that travel bans are not just ineffective, but tend to make problems worse. In a state where a junior high football game got cancelled because of an unfounded Ebola rumor, panic rules.

***

The ghosts of Orval Faubus: In a perfect marriage of the modern Republican Party's fetish for eff-you federalism and Obamacaranoia, 18 Republican legislative candidates said in response to a survey from the Campaign for Liberty that they would "support legislation to nullify ObamaCare and authorize state and local law enforcement to arrest federal officials attempting to implement the health care scheme, known as ObamaCare." Again, that's arresting federal officials for enacting federal law in Arkansas. Among those who said yes: three sitting GOP legislators — Sen. Missy Irvin of Mountain View and Reps. Richard Womack of Arkadelphia and John Payton of Wilburn (Irvin later said she didn't remember filling out the survey and that the notion of arresting federal officials for implementing Obamacare was "ridiculous"). A number of Republican lawmakers and candidates declined to respond to that question. None said no.

***

Finally, if there's going to be populist rabble-rousing, you know old friend Mike Huckabee (not running for anything at the moment, but eyeing the 2016 Iowa presidential caucus) will be in the mix. Perhaps imagining himself as Faubus staring down National Guardsmen handing out marriage certificates, Huckabee said that states should simply ignore court rulings invalidating same-sex marriage bans, which he dismissed as merely "the court's opinion." Said Huck, "It is NOT the 'law of the land' as is often heralded." When other GOP leaders began slowly bowing to the inevitable, Huckabee said that if Republicans didn't go back to full-throated discrimination against gay people, he'd leave the party. "If the Republicans want to lose guys like me and a bunch of still God-fearing, Bible-believing people, then go ahead and abdicate on this issue," Huckabee said.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

1. She has a sketchy job record with little relevant experience. Since graduating from law school in 2001, she's had at least nine jobs, lasting two years or more at only two. Apart from 14 months as a deputy prosecutor in Lonoke County, a few months in private practice in Jacksonville and her establishment of a personal law firm in Little Rock when she returned from Washington after the 2012 election, her jobs have almost entirely been in service of partisan politics (for national Republican groups and Mike Huckabee's presidential campaign) or government positions she landed through nepotism (as law clerk for family friend Jo Hart, when Hart was on the Court of Appeals, and as deputy counsel for the Huckabee administration, in which her father served as drug czar). Although Huckabee has endorsed her for attorney general, she only lasted 10 months working for him as governor and left for a lower-paying job. A former staffer has told the Times controversy surrounded her departure.

2. One of the largest state agencies, which she would represent as attorney general, wouldn't rehire her. Following her resignation, after 14 months, as staff counsel for the Division of Children and Family Services for the Arkansas Department of Human Services, agency officials put her on a "do not rehire" list because of "gross misconduct." DHS files contain accounts of Rutledge mishandling cases. An examination of her personnel file is limited by state law, but Rutledge could allow records to be released. She's refused.

3. She doesn't think there's anything wrong with forwarding a racist email. Perhaps a hint at what "gross misconduct" might mean: While working at DHS, she forwarded an email written in grotesquely offensive dialect. A sample passage: "baby's momma done turn into a ho and a stripper an she be raisin' fusses and kickin' and bitin' and whoopin dis man ..." After releasing a statement saying she'd merely forwarded the email "without comment," she told a TV reporter that whether one sees racist overtones in the email is determined by "the heart of the reader." She also said several "black individuals" told her the email sounded like "country talk." That she could make such a statement alone should discredit her for public office.

4. She supported Arkansas's unconstitutional voter ID law, committed voter fraud herself and was tossed from voter rolls for being simultaneously registered to vote in three states. Before the Arkansas Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional, Rutledge pledged to defend Arkansas's voter ID law. In the May primary, the law disenfranchised more than 1,000 Arkansas absentee voters whose ballots would have been counted if not for the unnecessary and politically contrived law. One vote that shouldn't have been counted? Rutledge's in 2008. After moving to work for the Huckabee presidential campaign, she registered to vote July 3, 2008, as a permanent resident of Washington, D.C. Then on Sept. 15, 2008, she requested an Arkansas ballot to vote absentee in the 2008 general election. She had to affirmatively swear on the absentee ballot application: "I reside within the county in which I am registered to vote." Her explanation? She said she voted where she knew she was registered. Rutledge's voter history came under scrutiny after Pulaski County Clerk Larry Crane canceled Rutledge's voter registration after learning she was simultaneously registered to vote in Pulaski County, Washington, D.C., and Alexandria, Va.

5. When she screws up, it's always someone else's fault. She has suggested her poor review at DHS was politically motivated, even though in 2007, when she held the job, she was politically unknown. She refused to apologize for forwarding a racist email, calling reporting on it a "desperate attempt by leftist bloggers to misattribute someone else's words to me." After Crane followed the law and canceled her voter registration — which simply meant that she had to reregister — she said he had "displayed a total lack of integrity by using desperate Chicago-style, partisan politics to disenfranchise me ... in an attempt to illegally secure the election for the Democratic Party." She also scurrilously said Crane had violated state and election law.

6. All she wants to do is fight the feds. Like many in her party, she has tried to distill her campaign message to one word —"Obama." Also like many in her party, she's running for an office that has little to do with the federal government. We'd be tempted to write this off as cynical campaigning, a lesser sin than forgetting the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution (hint: it's what keeps the United States united). But Rutledge gives every sign that, if elected, she'll focus on fighting every federal law and regulation she objects to.

7. She coordinated with a dark money group. When a 501(c)(4) "stealth" PAC went after her during the Republican primary, she called the ads "manipulative" and "the worst of dirty politics." She also said anyone who didn't denounce the ads was "dishonest." So when the Center for Individual Freedom — a secretive 501(c)(4) nonprofit with a history of spending money to protect rich people's ability to contribute unlimited amounts in secret to political campaigns — pumped $1.8 million into attacking her opponent, Democrat Nate Steel, she denounced the group, right? Nope. She even went a step farther with the Republican Attorney Generals Association, a tax-exempt 527 Super PAC whose mission is to support Republican candidates financially and with message support. Federal law bars 527s from coordinating advertising with candidates, but Rutledge appeared in one of the group's ads. She maintains state law allows it. Though the ad didn't include any "express advocacy" words (such as "vote for" Rutledge), the value of it to Rutledge should surely be required to be reported as a campaign contribution and the laws on contribution limits and disclosure of donors should apply. The Arkansas Ethics Commission is currently investigating the matter, though it won't rule before the election.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

"This election in this Senate district is going to determine the future of the private option," said Rep. James McLean (D-Batesville), vying for an open state Senate seat against Republican Linda Collins-Smith of Pocahontas, a Tea Party stalwart and diehard opponent of the private option.

McLean could be right. Most local politicos are focusing on the tight race for control of the Arkansas House (see our story on p. 19). The Senate won't be changing hands, with just a handful of contested races and Republicans with a healthy 22-13 majority. But Democrats are defending a couple of seats in the northeastern corner of the state that could have a huge impact on the private option, the state's unique policy that uses Medicaid funds to purchase private health insurance for low-income Arkansans.

It takes 75 percent supermajorities in both the House and Senate to appropriate the federal funds that pay for the private option. The policy barely got over the finish line in both 2013 and 2014 after protracted battles; it passed in the Senate this year with no votes to spare. Two Senate seats held by pro-private option Republicans were seized in the GOP primaries by candidates who campaigned explicitly on opposition to the policy. That doesn't mean it's over; most believe that it's at least possible to flip two votes to reauthorize the policy again next year. But if the private option loses another Yea vote? Or two? Yikes.

In the House, regardless of what happens this November, things have a way of working themselves out. Finding 75 votes in a big body, with plenty of places to hide, and lots of fence sitters to aim for, is an easier task than in the Senate, where just nine votes can derail the private option (and where the "Hell No" caucus is anchored by at least half a dozen immoveable opponents).

The private option's survival, then, could depend on whether 1) McLean can win a tossup race against Collins-Smith for the District 19 seat vacated by Democrat David Wyatt, who opted not to run for re-election, and 2) potentially whether District 20 Sen. Robert Thompson (D-Paragould), who won a squeaker in 2012, can fend off a rematch challenge from Republican Blake Johnson, whose position on the private option remains somewhat murky.

"[Collins-Smith] doesn't have anything to run on except Obamacare," McLean told the Times (like the private option's Republican proponents, McLean draws a distinction between the state's policy and the federal law that funds it). "She has said that she is bitterly opposed to the private option, and she's committed to ending it. Which is a vote against the largest employer in this Senate district."

This is a point that McLean hammers home a lot: White River Medical Center and affiliated hospitals and clinics in 10 communities in the area employ more than 1,200 people.

"It has been the engine that's floated our boat for the last 10 years when we've lost industry," McLean said. "I have a hard time understanding someone who is pro-business and claims to want to invest in the economy and grow jobs can immediately, on day one, vote against the largest employer in the Senate district. She has no answer to that. She cannot go and explain to the employees of White River Medical Center and their families why she's going to vote against it except for purely ideological reasons. That's where we're at and that's what this election is going to be about."

The private option has helped to get struggling medical facilities on their feet, McLean said.

"Prior to the private option they were losing millions of dollars each year," he said. "Because of the private option they've been able to build a stand-alone emergency room in Sharp County, which was badly needed, they're continuing to provide service at Stone County with the hospital up there, and they have a multitude of small clinics spread throughout this five-county area. This is a big deal. She is putting the hospitals and small clinics providing people health care in small communities at risk. She is committed to putting politics before people. She is putting a rigid, radical ideology before the people that she professes to want to represent. To me, that's just unconscionable. Linda Collins-Smith has said 'I'm going to vote against the private option and I don't care.' She needs to be held accountable for that. She needs to explain to the business community — is she going to be someone who has your back, or is she somebody who's going to be committed to the Tea Party talking points and cut off your nose to spite your face."

The right-wing Collins-Smith, a former state representative who owns a Days Inn in Pocahontas, was ostensibly a Democrat until flipping to the GOP in a failed bid for Senate District 19 in 2012. She did not respond to numerous requests for an interview.

Meanwhile, another decisive race is playing out next door in Senate District 20, a rural area nestled against the Missouri bootheel. Thompson, one of the Senate's strongest supporters of the private option, is facing a tough challenge from Johnson in a rematch of a 2012 race that Thompson won by a margin of fewer than 500 votes.

Johnson, a soybean farmer, is not a fan of the private option, but he won't say whether or not he'd vote the policy down in 2015 if he should win.

"It is not a good system as it is ... it is not sustainable as it is," he stated. "You don't know if the federal reimbursement is going to stay until the end of the three-year period ... we're over those federal caps, we're almost $20 per person [over], and that is a concern." Johnson also cited the Government Accountability Office report this fall that indicated expansion of traditional Medicaid would have cost less than the private approach. Does that mean he would have pushed for traditional Medicaid instead in 2013, if he'd been in office then? "I probably would have," he said.

When pressed to state whether he'd vote the private option up or down, though, Johnson said, "It's not an action of today," and the answer was "not as simple as yes or no." Still, he indicated that he does not see the private option itself as a necessity, and asked, "Do you put the wants before the needs as a state?"

Given the great pressure that legislators will be under in 2015 to vote yes, it seems like Johnson might not be a solid no; on the other hand, he's been supported by Conduit For Action, the "dark money" conservative group created for the express purpose of opposing the private option. It's hard to know which way Johnson is hedging: Is he placating Conduit and the hardliners, or is he placating the powerful hospitals in his district that want the private option?

Thompson, who practices law in Paragould, said he's met with administrators from all four hospitals about the private option. "To the one, every administrator said not only has it been an unqualified success in terms of providing care through our hospital, but also taking it away would be devastating. So, I'm proud to support it." Thompson also believes perception of the policy in conservative rural Arkansas is slowly but surely changing.

"I do think the importance of the private option is sort of seeping down to people — especially people who work in health care, but also the general public," he said. "I spoke with one woman who is in her early 30s. She's had a back condition her entire life and didn't understand what it was. She never had health insurance. She received insurance through the private option and now she's receiving treatment for a congenital problem with her spinal cord. I've heard a number of anecdotes like that."

So where are things headed in the legislature in 2015, then? "I'll let you know on Nov. 5th," Thompson said.

McLean is adamant about the stakes in this election, saying that if Collins-Smith wins, he believes "the private option is dead. You're going to have too many radicals in the Senate to do anything. It's over with."

The private option has been declared dead before, so even if the aginners gain another vote in the Senate, it remains to be seen whether a rump minority of legislators will succeed in blocking billions in federal money flowing into the state and kicking more than 200,000 Arkansans off of their health insurance. Still, if either McLean or Thompson loses, reauthorization becomes a much steeper climb and the future of the private option would be very much in doubt.

"I'm going to vote for the private option," McLean said. "She is not. The impacts are huge."

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

The presence of big money in campaign finance is nothing new. As the saying goes, cash flows toward power as surely as water flows downhill. What's changed in American elections in recent years is the dizzying rise in the level of outside spending — that is, money intended to influence an election but that is not given directly to a candidate.

To circumvent legal limits on the size of the direct campaign donations, wealthy individual donors — think the Koch brothers or Michael Bloomberg — give generously to groups such as super PACs and 501(c)(4) "social welfare" nonprofits. These outside groups then support their favored candidates by spending their vast pools of money on advertising blitzes that are, in theory, entirely separate from the candidates' campaigns themselves. The Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), which tracks such figures, projects that outside groups across the country will spend about $900 million in the 2014 midterms, while the candidates and parties themselves will spend around $2.7 billion. That is, about a quarter of all spending in federal elections this cycle will come from outside groups. The largest have essentially become auxiliary political parties.

In Arkansas's hotly contested U.S. Senate race, spending by outside groups such as Crossroads GPS and Patriot Majority USA is on track to exceed the spending of the Mark Pryor and Tom Cotton campaigns. As of Sept. 30, according to CRP, Pryor had spent over $12 million and Cotton had spent about $8 million; outside ads that aided the Pryor campaign cost around $14.5 million, while spending friendly to Cotton topped $21 million.

The glut of outside money gives a disturbing amount of influence to wealthy donors in big ticket contests like the Pryor/Cotton race, but it potentially poses a graver danger within another set of races: those at the state level. Elections for state office — including governor, attorney general, the legislature, the judiciary, etc. — abide by laws that differ from federal elections regulations. Arkansas has its own statutes concerning campaign finance and reporting, and they have yet to catch up to the new world of outside spending.

Federal watchdog groups like CRP often criticize the role of "dark money" in federal elections, which refers to spending by 501(c)(4)s, such as Americans for Prosperity. Unlike super PACs, such nonprofits don't have to disclose their donors. But in Arkansas's state-level races there's an additional layer of opacity: Not only can outside groups keep their donors secret, they often don't have to disclose their spending, either.

Arkansas does require reporting of "independent expenditures" made by outside groups — but if an ad doesn't explicitly tell the public to vote for or against a candidate, it's not considered an independent expenditure. For example, an outside ad can smear a candidate as being "soft on violent crime," as happened to House District 35 hopeful Clarke Tucker this fall, yet if it never mentions the election itself, the ad is entirely unregulated by the Arkansas Ethics Commission.

In federal races, ads that mention a candidate have to be disclosed to the Federal Election Commission if they take place in the 60 days before a general election. In Arkansas, though, ads are reported to the state only if they expressly advocate for a candidate; others, like the Tucker mailer, fly completely under the radar. That makes it impossible to tell just how much money is being spent on state races in which an outside group gets involved in a big way.

The best example this cycle may be the race for attorney general, in which Republican Leslie Rutledge has received untold support from an organization called the Republican Attorney Generals Association; her opponent, Democrat Nate Steel, has been assisted by ads from a group called the Committee for Justice and Fairness. Rutledge herself was attacked in the GOP primary earlier this by the Judicial Crisis Network, a 501(c)(4) organization that supported her opponent. But until the legislature takes steps to update Arkansas law to account for the new realities of outside spending, it's impossible to know exactly how much cash those groups and others are spending to influence our elections.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

A few weeks ago, the University of Arkansas's football program released its 2015 schedule. Also released: any enduring hope among Razorback fans that Little Rock and its no-longer-grand-enough War Memorial Stadium will remain a second home.

The process of ushering the doddering old man out the door has been ongoing for about 15 years now, ever since Fayetteville's Reynolds Razorback Stadium expanded from 51,000 to 72,000 seats. This means Arkansas leaves nearly a million dollars on the table every time it plays a home game at the 55,000-seat War Memorial Stadium, Arkansas athletic director Jeff Long told the Associated Press last year. Driving up the cost of select War Memorial tickets to $100, as the UA recently did with a mandatory $35 donation to the Razorback Foundation for nonmembers, can only absorb so much of the difference.

Razorback home games at War Memorial are a 66-year-old tradition that reached a zenith in the 1970s when Arkansas often played more games in Little Rock (4) than Fayetteville (3). Most years, the Hogs played three games in Little Rock, but by 2003 Little Rock games had dropped to two a year. Then, last November, school and stadium officials announced their most recent contract had been revised to one game in Little Rock starting in 2014 and continuing through 2018.

The Oct. 18 game in Little Rock against No. 10 Georgia, which Arkansas lost 45-32, might have been the last time a marquee foe comes to town. One more SEC game is scheduled to be played in Little Rock before Arkansas's contract with War Memorial Stadium runs out. That foe could very well be a cellar-dwelling Vanderbilt, or a sorry-again Ole Miss.

In the meantime, fans can look forward to the University of Toledo as the Hogs' single War Memorial game in 2015, the first time since 1947 (when UA played North Texas) Arkansas hasn't played a conference home game in Little Rock. This Mid-American Conference program, which plays against the likes of UMass and the University of New Hampshire, has lost all three games it has played against SEC competition. It is not a foe to get the blood pumping.

Some are optimistic that the Sept. 12, 2015, matchup will still be a sellout; the Georgia game fell a couple hundred tickets sold shy of a full house. "I would be surprised if it's not," said Nancy Monroe, board member of the War Memorial Stadium Commission and Little Rock resident. "They're early in the season. The weather should be good."

Others aren't so optimistic, given the opponent isn't in one of the major conferences. "As far as I'm concerned, the debate is over and the games are leaving Little Rock,"ArkansasFight.com's Doc Harper wrote. "We're just running out the contract like when Prince released a couple of quick crap albums in the '90s to get out of his Warner Bros. deal."

Plenty of fans feel remorse that Little Rock's once central place in the Razorbacks' schedule has been knocked down so many rungs. After the new one-game-a-year schedule was settled, "we were very disappointed," Monroe said. Little Rock games are a "great unifying thing for us, for the state of Arkansas. There are a lot of people from Little Rock and southward who just logistically aren't gonna make it to Fayetteville."

Still, it shouldn't be forgotten the main motives behind this demotion —"brand building" and revenue generation — are the same reasons Little Rock was used as a second home in the first place. In the early 1930s, Arkansas leaders knew if their program was ever going to become nationally competitive it needed to have more support from its entire state, to stop losing the likes of Ken Kavanaugh (Little Rock High grad) to LSU and Don Hutson (Pine Bluff High) and Paul Bryant (Fordyce High) to Alabama. So Arkansas leaders, like those at universities in Alabama and Mississippi, decided to take their team away from its rural campus and parade it in a bigger, in-state city in front of more media and fans.

Oregon did the same by traveling from Eugene to Portland. Washington State traveled from Pullman to Spokane, while Ole Miss traveled to Jackson and Auburn traveled to Birmingham. Each of the programs pulled out of these metro areas at different times; one overriding reason was the same as in Arkansas's case — the campus' stadium simply outgrew the metro area's stadium.

This especially came to the fore in the late 1980s as Auburn jockeyed to stop playing Iron Bowl games at 75,000-seat Legion Field in Birmingham, to take advantage of the 10,000 extra seats in Auburn's expanded Jordan-Hare Stadium. Quoting former Auburn athletic director David Housel, the New York Times reported that, "It got to the point that even Auburn fans living in Birmingham were so ready to drive the 120 miles to campus, they would 'refuse to buy tickets to the Auburn-Alabama game if it was in Birmingham.'"

Every team, as you see in this chart, has dropped its dual home arrangement in the last 50 years. Programs like Oregon, Virginia Tech, Alabama and Auburn have gone on to contend for or win national championships since they stopped. Yes, War Memorialists, it's true: Arkansas has become unique in the sense that it appears to be the only program still hanging on to this practice.

But is that something to be proud of?

It's better to be proud of winning at a high level, a la Oregon, Auburn and Alabama. Hanging on to War Memorial hasn't recently helped Arkansas get to this level. Its function was served in helping lift Arkansas to the nationally elite level it enjoyed through much of the 1960s through 1980s. But it will not serve in getting Arkansas to the level Jeff Long, Bret Bielema et al. expect it to reach in the later 2010s and 2020s.

In the 1930s and '40s, the smartest rural programs traveled 30, 50, 100 or 150 miles to the in-state stadiums that would give their teams the most bang for their buck in terms of exposure and revenue. In today's world, where cable television and the Internet make distance far less of an obstacle for fans to follow their teams, the smartest programs realize that "neutral site" games in Texas metro sites often provide the best return.

Do you think any Notre Dame fans complained in 2009 when their Fighting Irish decided to play Washington State not in Indianapolis, but in San Antonio? No, because a) Notre Dame is a national brand and caters to a national audience and b) no program can thrive in today's competitive recruiting market without spreading its nets as wide as a Texas sunset. If Arkansas wants to be a national powerhouse, wants to sign the best players nationwide and wants nationwide respect, it has to better and more consistently take advantage of its proximity to Texas. That's why Arkansas has started an annual series with Texas A&M in Arlington at the Dallas Cowboys' massive AT&T Stadium. That series, which would encounter scheduling complications if Arkansas were to keep two games in Little Rock, is also a major factor why Jeff Long decided it was best to drop War Memorial games to one a year and gain flexibility.

Arkansas is special in that it still clings to a 20th century business practice long ago abandoned by competitors. That fact in and of itself is nothing to waste a Hog Call on.

***

The University of Arkansas pays War Memorial Stadium $75,000 of rent per game it plays there, but those payments will stop after 2016. It must develop other revenue streams. It still hosts small college and high school football games and its renovated press box and luxury suites helped it attract about 200 events in the last year, including weddings, wedding receptions, business meetings, class reunions, hospital fundraisers and birthday parties, stadium manager Charlie Staggs said.

While plenty of small events help pay the bills, the stadium's blockbuster events appear to be dwindling. Last year, it was a candidate for a new bowl game but the bowl's organizers opted instead for Montgomery, Ala., where next month it will debut in a 25,000-person stadium as the Camellia Bowl. In past decades, headliners like The Rolling Stones and Elton John performed at War Memorial but such marquee acts are waning, too. Staggs said he was optimistic a big concert was coming in May 2015 after an event company had told him to reserve a date for a not-yet-announced act, but recently "they called up and told us we'd been removed." No reason was provided.

Should soccer be a bigger part of War Memorial's future?

American and Mexican national teams, as well as internationally renowned clubs like Real Madrid and FC Barcelona, have proven to be hits at the University of Michigan, Birmingham's Legion Field and AT&T Stadium in Arlington. Given Arkansas's growing Hispanic population and the state's growing number of soccer fans, bringing in a similar caliber of soccer stars might sell out War Memorial.

Its staff has already begun preliminary discussions with some professional soccer clubs, but nothing has advanced beyond that, assistant stadium manager Jerry Cohen said. But to host major soccer matches, War Memorial needs to be permanently modified. Currently its field's four corners, near the goal lines, are appropriate for football but aren't wide enough for soccer. "We would have to take out a couple rows of seats to make a regulation soccer stadium in there," Staggs said. Such a change made to the seats on the east and west sides would cost at least $500,000, he added. "Later on, I think this is a question the commission might want to look at so that we could get some high-profile soccer events in here since soccer is getting so popular now."

While War Memorial's Razorback football glory days are fading, futbol might help it remain a major sports venue.

This article originally appeared in modified form on the author's site, thesportsseer.com.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Oregon

Home campus: Eugene

Home away from home: Portland

Years played there: On and off until 1924, then every year through 1966.

Last game: 1970

Distance between homes: 110 miles

Big win: Oct. 5, 1957: 21-0 over a UCLA team that would finish 8-2

Sample decade: 1952-62: Record of 11-11*

*Includes rivalry games with Oregon State

Oregon State

Home campus: Corvallis

Home away from home: Portland

Years played there: On and off until 1941, then every year through 1973 (with exception of two WWII years in which team wasn't fielded).

Last game: 1986

Distance between homes: 82 miles

Big win: Oct. 16, 1971: 24-18 over an Arizona State team which would finish 11-1.

Sample decade: 1963-73: Record of 11-4

Washington State

Home campus: Pullman

No. 1 home away from home: Spokane*

Years played there: 1950-1983

Last game: 1983

Distance between homes: 75 miles

*In 1970, WSU's home stadium burned due to suspected arson (possibly involving a perpetrator from the rival University of Idaho only eight miles away). As a result, WSU played all its home games in Spokane in 1970 and 1971.

Big win: Sept. 23, 1978 — 51-26 over an Arizona State team that would finish 9-3.

Sample decade: 1973-83: Record of 8-12

No. 2 home away from home: Seattle (the Seattle Seahawks' stadium, Centurylink Field)

Years played non-UW opponents there: 2002 through 2008; 2011; 2012-14*

Last game scheduled: 2014

Distance between homes: 286

Big win: August 31, 2002: 31-7 over Nevada to set the tone for a 10-3 season that ended in the Rose Bowl.

Record since 2002 at what's now Centurylink Field: 6-5

*The campus of this program's rival — the University of Washington — is in Seattle. So WSU often plays WU there. Washington State had also played three home games in Seattle against out-of-state powerhouses (USC, Ohio State) in the 1970s. It lost them all.

Ole Miss

Home campus: Oxford

No. 1 home away from home: Memphis

Years played there: 1935-1968 (except for during WWII in 1943 and 1964)

Last game: 1996

Distance between homes: 83 miles

Big win: Nov. 13, 1965: Gave Tennessee its only defeat of the season 14-13. The Volunteers finished with an 8-1-2 record.

Sample decade: 1958-1968: Record of 12-1*

*Includes games with the University of Tennessee and Arkansas.

No. 2 home away from home: Jackson, Miss.

Years played there: On and off until 1964, then 1964 thru 1993*

Last game: 1996

Distance between homes: 163 miles

Big win: Sept 17, 1977: 20-13 over a Notre Dame team that would finish 11-1.

Sample decade: 1972-1982: Record of 16-23-1

*Includes annual rivalry game with Mississippi State; in 1973 and 1979, Ole Miss played five games in Jackson and two in Oxford. Also regularly played Southern Miss (with a campus 87 miles away) in Jackson.

Mississippi State University

Home campus: Starkville

Home away from home: Jackson

Years played there: On and off until 1961, then 1961 through 1990*

Last game: 1990

Distance between homes: 129 miles

Big win: Nov. 1, 1980 — 6-3 over an Alabama team that would finish 10-2.

Sample decade: 1975-1985: 18-18

Includes annual rivalry game with Ole Miss; in 1973 and 1979, MSU played five games in Jackson and two in Starkville. Also regularly played Southern Miss (with a campus 89 miles away) in Jackson.

Alabama

Home campus: Tuscaloosa

No. 1 home away from home: Birmingham

Years played there: 1900-2003*

Last game: 2003

Distance between homes: 57 miles

Big win: Oct. 21, 1989 — 47-30 over a Tennessee team which would finish 11-1.

Sample decade: 1984-1993: Record of 21-11-1

*Includes annual rivalry game with Auburn and SEC championship games. In 1987, played all home games in Birmingham because of major renovation of home stadium.

No. 2 home away from home: Montgomery

Years played there: Annually 1922 through 1934; on and off until 1954

Last game: 1954

Distance between homes: 104 miles

Big win: Nov. 14, 1925 — preserved an undefeated season by beating Florida (which would finish 8-2) 34-0.

Sample decade: 1922-1931: Record of 10-1

Auburn

No. 1 home away from home: Birmingham

Years played there: 1904 through 1988

Last game: 1998

Distance between homes: 112 miles

*After 1974, only played rivalry games there with Tennessee and Alabama

Big win: Sept. 39, 1972 — 10-6 over a Tennessee team which would finish 10-2.

Sample decade: 1967-1975: Record of 10-7

No. 2 home away from home: Montgomery

Years played there: 1920-1951

Last game: 1953

Distance between homes: 55 miles

Big win: Oct. 19, 1935 — 23-0 over a 3-1 Kentucky team.

Sample decade: 1931-1940: Record of 17-3

Virginia Tech

Home campus: Blacksburg

Home away from home: Roanoke

Years played there: Used almost exclusively as site of rivalry game with Virginia Military Institute until 1936, then through 1971.

Last game: 1971

Distance between homes: 41 miles

Big win: Nov. 30, 1922 — 7-3 over a VMI team that would finish 7-2.

Sample decade: 1936-1947: Record of 4-8-3

All records according to jhowell.net, a historical college football database. Follow the history-centric author on Twitter @evindemirel.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Time to welcome our new overlords.

We kid. Arkansas may be the new Oklahoma, but we'll still be here, raising hell. There's no crying in baseball or politics. We are under no illusions that our newspaper can stop the red wave in Arkansas. That doesn't mean we won't be shouting.

We've been shouting, after all, for a long time. Part of this paper's lineage is the Arkansas Gazette, which committed itself to pushing back against demagogues with a D by their name. Our purpose has never been partisan politics. Yes, we expect the new era of Republican one-party rule in the state to do all manner of harm. That's a sobering thought, but it's also not the end of the world.

There's still a state to run — schools, highways, the criminal justice system, social services. Sometimes mainstream Republicans will be on the right side of maintaining health care coverage for the state's poorest citizens; sometimes Tea Party Republicans will be allies in pushing back against the good ol' boy network at the University of Arkansas or advocating for more transparency in government. And sometimes, of course, the GOP majority will be plain wrong. Sen. Joyce Elliott (D-Little Rock) has the right rallying cry: "I know about being in the minority! So, all I can say is — bring it on!"

This is our home, and the fact that our neighbors voted differently from us doesn't change that. Part of loving this place, for us, is shining light on the leaders — regardless of party — who would take us backward, who appeal to our ugliest instincts, who protect the powerful and trample on the vulnerable. It's calling the liars and the corrupt and the bullies to account. It is digging for the truth that might be buried; it is speaking for those who might not be heard and telling the stories that might not be told.

A little after midnight after the election, outside of the GOP victory party at the Embassy Suites, a couple dozen Republican men in suits — lawmakers, politicos, lobbyists — lit up cigars. It was Wednesday, a new day in Arkansas, and they were ready to get to work.

Time for us to get to work, too. Here's a look at the stories to watch. 

The lonely crowd

Here's the thing. Republicans have a clear majority in Arkansas, there's no doubt about that. But more than 40 percent of the state's residents lean toward the D side of the aisle. And there are pockets of the state where Democrats are still the majority. For the most part, these folks are not going to get what they want politically for the next two years, but their voices deserve to be heard, and they deserve vigorous representation from what's left of the Democratic Party.

Being the minority party is no fun (just ask Arkansas Republicans of yesteryear). Well, boo hiss. Elected representatives who are worth a damn do their best work when the chips are down.

To name just a few: House Minority Leader Eddie Armstrong (D-North Little Rock) is a strong-willed leader who will hold the caucus together. Rep. Joe Jett (D-Success) is a well-liked, no-nonsense political operator who's a master of the backroom deal. Rep. Warwick Sabin (D-Little Rock) is a whip-smart, principled progressive who has managed to build coalitions with unlikely conservative partners before. Rep. Deborah Ferguson (D-West Memphis) has been a fearless and pragmatic voice of reason. Recently elected Rep. Clarke Tucker (D-Little Rock) is a rising star who Gov. Mike Beebe called the "best political talent of his generation that I have personally witnessed." Sen. Joyce Elliott always has been, and always will be, a powerhouse.

We'll have our disagreements with all of them, but our point here is that there is political talent on the smaller side of the aisle. To be frank, in the old days of Democratic dominance, there were too many lazy hacks in the legislature. Democrats are the minority now, perhaps for a very long time. Now is the time to be hungry. Now is the time for creativity, guts, procedural maneuvering, deal-making, cajoling. Now is the time to outhustle and outwork the majority, which will have every advantage.

Everyone understands that the Democrats are going to lose more battles than they will win. That doesn't mean that the minority party has to be irrelevant. They can make gains, inch by inch, in committees, in backrooms, in the public dialogue and debate. Sometimes the only option will be powerful and vocal resistance, to go down fighting. That matters, too.

Most Capitol observers are already writing the Democrats out of the story. The question is whether they can find a way, against all odds, to write themselves in. 

The split

Just because Arkansas appears bound for one-party rule does not mean politics will be drama-free. Republicans are dominant, but dig a little deeper and you can almost see a three-way split in the legislature: one-third Tea Party Republicans, one-third establishment Republicans, and one-third Democrats. (An interesting tidbit from an NBC exit poll, by the way: Arkansas voters were split into thirds on their views of the Tea Party, between favorable, neutral and unfavorable.)

One of the most fascinating subplots on election night was how distraught some GOP lawmakers from the establishment wing were despite the sweep of victories. Scanning the faces at the Embassy Suites you could find prominent Republicans with the same white-as-a-ghost look on their faces as the stunned Democrats over in downtown Little Rock. The Tea Party ascendency is a threat to them, too.

That's the story of Arkansas politics for at least the next two years (and maybe the next few decades): Who will come out on top in intra-party squabbles within the GOP?

Democrats have an interesting role to play here. For the most part, yes, they will be the noisy resistance, protesting legislative actions that they're ultimately powerless to stop. But there will be opportunities to build coalitions on certain issues.

In many areas, the Republicans will be united (don't expect any moderate GOP voices on guns, gays or abortion anytime soon). But other issues will find them bitterly divided, none more so than the private option, the state's unique version of Medicaid expansion. That one gets the most attention, but other issues will likely emerge. Just how far should tax cuts go? What is a responsible approach to state budgeting? How much help should local interests get from state government? What is the role of federal money in a state budget? How much money should go to higher education? What's the future of Common Core? What is the role of the legislature with respect to powerful interests in the state, from the University of Arkansas to big business to medical providers?

The lines between these two wings in the GOP are blurry and there will be some overlap depending on the issues. But, broadly speaking, two camps have emerged. Outside groups like Conduit for Action provide institutional support and campaign funds for the Tea Party wing, while old-guard groups like the Chamber of Commerce back the establishment GOPs. (If you want an idea: Walton money backed not only a primary opponent of Tea Party stalwart Rep. Jim Dotson (R-Bentonville), but even a Democratic opponent in the general election; Dotson still won re-election.)

We've already seen Tea Partiers contemplate challenging their more moderate colleagues who dominate the legislative leadership. A few days after the election, hard-right Sen. Gary Stubblefield (R-Branch) announced he'd try to unseat Sen. Jonathan Dismang (R-Searcy), an architect of the private option, as Senate president pro tem. Stubblefield later backed off the challenge. There were post-election whispers that Conduit for Action was pushing a similar challenge for Speaker of the House, but the GOP leadership will remain in place there as well — for now.*

At times, the complaints from the establishment wing are as much about competence or leadership style as ideology. We heard from dozens of prominent Republicans who told us privately that they voted for Nate Steel for attorney general over Leslie Rutledge. Of course they were mum publicly, and Rutledge won, though by a smaller margin than other statewide Republicans on the ballot. Honestly, it might have been even closer in a straw poll at the Embassy Suites GOP party. (Likewise with newly elected Treasurer Dennis Milligan, who chose a Krispy Kreme donut shop as a meeting place to blackmail his primary opponent, well-liked establishment GOP Rep. Duncan Baird (R-Lowell); the threat, based on a less-than-damning video, enraged many lawmakers within the party.)

The division has become increasingly personal. Hearing Republicans in Arkansas — from either side of the divide — complain about other Republicans in Arkansas sounds a lot like the way they used to talk about Democrats.

This is, of course, the natural result of success. The Republican Party is bigger and has more power than ever before. That breeds conflict and division.

Democrats will seek to use that conflict to find their own space for deals. They can, with luck and pluck, win on a few issues or contain the damage at the margins. But the battles between R and D will often barely register. The future of Arkansas will be decided by R vs. R.

The unthinkable option: Will the newly elected legislature kick 200,000 people off their health insurance?

Make no mistake: One clear and immediate result of the election is that the private option — the state's unique version of Medicaid expansion, which uses funds available via the federal Affordable Care Act to purchase private health insurance for low-income Arkansans — is in real trouble. More than 200,000 Arkansans have gained insurance via the policy since 2013, meaning the state's rate of uninsured persons has been cut in half. (Here's Dave's more detailed roundup on where the private option stands.)

According to various Republican insiders and players in his inner circle, Republican governor-elect Asa Hutchinson, who did a lot of hedging on the issue during the campaign, had planned to continue the policy and would sign it if the private option made it to his desk. The problem is in the legislature, where reauthorization requires three-fourths approval from both the Arkansas House and Senate. The private option passed by bipartisan supermajority in both chambers both in 2013 and 2014, but just barely, and only after long and protracted political struggles. Getting over the 75 percent threshold for a contentious policy will always be an incredibly steep climb.

That steep climb just got a lot steeper. Some even fear it's impossible. The math is now brutal — the Senate, where the private option passed with no votes to spare in 2014 — is likely now four votes short. A fifth vote is in jeopardy because Sen. Michael Lamoureux (R-Russellville), a strong supporter of the private option, has been tapped to be Hutchinson's new chief of staff. The House may be an even harder slog. The private option passed with one vote to spare last year in the House; now Republicans have gained 13 seats, most of whom expressed opposition to the private option during the campaign. Vote counts in the House are unpredictable and fluid, but the private option might well be 10 votes or more in the hole.

One hope for the private option is that Hutchinson will be able to persuade Republican lawmakers to come on board in ways that a Democratic governor could not. But that assumes that Hutchinson is willing, as Mike Beebe was, to aggressively push all of his chips onto the table to get the private option passed. Ever cautious, Hutchinson said last week that he wouldn't announce his own position until late January. He said he'll be studying the policy, but he'll also be keeping an eye on which way the wind is blowing in the legislature. Many in his inner circle believe that he has to have the hundreds of millions in federal money coming in with the private option for budgetary reasons, but Hutchinson is a careful politician who may decide the politics are just too ugly. There's no guarantee Hutchinson the Hedger will lead the charge.

Even if he does, there's no guarantee he can actually convince enough Republicans to come aboard. Remember, many of them campaigned explicitly against the private option. Outside groups, lawmakers and activists opposed to the private option will be threatening any apostates with a primary challenge. Many Republican lawmakers either won't be moved by pressure from Hutchinson, or will face even greater pressure from their Tea Party base.

Things are looking so bleak that some Capitol observers are declaring the private option dead — but it's worth noting that the private option (and before that, Medicaid expansion) has been declared dead many, many times before. As difficult as it is to see how the policy could possibly get the supermajorities needed to continue, it's equally difficult to see how the legislature would kill the private option.

Just because the aginners have enough votes to block something doesn't mean they have enough votes to pass something in its place. Even now, they're still likely in the minority. What they have is a constitutional tool: They can block the entire Department of Human Services budget (including funding for children, the disabled and the elderly in nursing homes) unless they get their way on ending the private option. Clearly there are some diehard opponents more than willing to do so, but others may be uncomfortable with this particular game of chicken.

Meanwhile, it works both ways: If a rump group can block the DHS budget unless the private option is eliminated, a rump group could also block the budget unless the policy is kept. There are only 36 Democrats left in the House, for example, but that's more than enough to beat the aginners at their own game. The incentives seem to be lining up to at least get very close to the edge of this cliff.

One way out would be some sort of compromise. Proponents will look for moderate tweaks and new policy reforms (maybe even a new name) to give cover and bring the soft nays aboard. Of course, the strongest opponents of the private option will be unsatisfied with those tweaks and will say so, loudly. Their version of compromise during the last legislative session was no comprimise at all: kill the policy, only with a slightly later end date. We'll probably hear some version of that suggested very soon. If the aginners start talking about the best way to "transition" or "wind down," rest assured: That means ending the private option. It means low-income people in Arkansas once again have no options for affordable health insurance.

Ending the private option would mean kicking more than 200,000 people off their coverage, rejecting billions in federal dollars, and screwing hospitals that have already saved tens of millions in savings on uncompensated care. That's to say nothing of the tens of millions that would be immediately lost in the state budget — in Medicaid savings, lower state spending on uncompensated care, revenues from the state tax on private option premiums and revenues from state taxes on the federal dollars flowing into the state.

Campaigning against Obamacare is a clear winner, but taking people's health insurance away and saying no thanks to billions of dollars is easier said than done politically. It's a big reason why, for all of the shouting, the private option survived last year.

The nation will be watching Arkansas. Home to an innovative and unique version of Medicaid expansion, attention will now center on whether it will become the first state to implement expansion only to abandon it. The state was one of the few in the South to do right by its neediest citizens; now it may be sending out more than 200,000 letters telling those citizens that their coverage is gone.

Paying for the future: Will tax cuts trump the needs of public schools?

This January, as the 2015 legislative session begins in Little Rock, keep one eye on what's happening in the statehouse in Topeka. That's when Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback will present a budget to his state's legislature — a budget that now faces a shortfall of $279 million** over the next seven months, due to aggressive tax cuts championed by Brownback. The Republican took office in 2010 with promises that vigorous economic growth would proceed naturally from the institution of his austere budget plan. But the cuts, which have mostly gone to wealthier households and business owners, have yet to create a significant boost in new jobs when compared to surrounding states.

Instead, Kansas is having trouble paying its bills, which means public spending must be cut dramatically — and immediately. The shortfall of $279 million is only for the remainder of the state's current fiscal year, which ends in June 2015. Projections indicate Kansas must cut an additional $436 million in the following fiscal year.**

Will Arkansas's newly empowered Republican majority take us down the same road? It's too early to tell what the Hutchinson administration is going to be like, but we know that lowering taxes will be a big part of its story. In his first press conference, the governor-elect responded to a question about impending budget decisions by saying, "Obviously, tax cuts are important to me. My highest priority is the middle class tax cut — reducing the tax rate that I talked about during the campaign."

Yet Hutchinson has a pragmatic streak as well. To his credit, he admitted before the election that his pledge to cut taxes by $100 million might have to be delayed for a later fiscal year in light of the immediate realities of the Arkansas budget. State revenue has grown more slowly than expected in the past few months — and, more importantly, the needs of the state are legion. The jail and prison system has been pushed to the breaking point due to chronic underfunding and stricter rules for parole; correction officials say addressing the problem will require building a new prison with a price tag of $100 million. State employees, who have long been denied a raise, are getting a small one from outgoing Gov. Mike Beebe; a 1 percent cost of living adjustment will cost $2.7 million this year alone.

The most urgent deficiencies are found in our public schools, which already absorb nearly half of all state revenue. The chronically troubled teacher insurance system simply can't be fixed without a major new investment of cash, which would run into the tens of millions of dollars. A legislative committee just recommended the state boost its funding for teacher salaries — shamefully low in many districts — by about $16.5 million. A one-time reservoir of facilities money used for fixing school buildings in critical disrepair has now run dry, leaving the state on the hook for perhaps $60 million in the coming year. Many rural schools lack sufficient broadband Internet, and even if the legislature rewrites law (as it should) to allow districts to connect to the state-owned fiber optic network, ARE-ON, building connective infrastructure will still cost millions. Arkansas's pre-K system has gone without a cost-of-living increase for years and must receive additional funds this year to continue operating at its current volume and quality. Hutchinson has promised he'll fully fund the existing pre-K program — but it remains to be seen which will take priority, preschoolers or tax cuts.

Meanwhile, elsewhere on the education front, expect the 2015 session to also include talk of two other issues not directly related to spending: Common Core and charter schools. Tea Party conservatives want to dismantle the higher academic standards dictated by Common Core, while establishment Republicans generally like them — another intra-party flash point that may mirror GOP squabbling over the private option. The Hutchinson administration is sure to push to allow more charters in the state.

Still, the biggest question in education is one of funding: Will the state hold firm on its commitment to pay for an adequate and equitable school system? The answer depends on whether Republicans can curb their appetite for slashing taxes. One explanation for Gov. Beebe's sky-high popularity ratings is that he's always been much more interested in keeping the budget stabilized than investing energy in either cutting taxes or expanding services. His stewardship of the budget before and during the recession spared Arkansas the pain of drastic cuts seen in many other states, even while public education continued to make steady, incremental improvements. What Arkansas really needs — a boldly progressive tax policy that funds even better public schools — it won't be getting from Hutchinson, but then it didn't get that from Beebe, either.

If Hutchinson really wants to be a pragmatic, fiscally conservative governor, he's got a model to follow. He'd do well to study his predecessor's popularity as he sets his own priorities for the next four years.

Team Asa

The intrigue has already begun on the new Asa Hutchinson regime. Will term-limited Rep. Duncan Baird wind up at the Department of Finance and Administration? Which former staffer for the Farm Bureau will be tabbed for the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality? Will Democratic hack Tracy Steele, a quid pro quo pro if there ever was one, get a cushy public job in exchange for his (meaningless) endorsement of Hutchinson? Will term-limited Rep. John Burris end up at the Department of Human Services? (Can you imagine the head of arch-enemy Sen. Bryan King of Green Forest exploding if Burris, one of the key architects of the private option, was showing up to committee meetings to testify on behalf of DHS?)

The big one, since we've suffered through the mystery meat at the Governor's Mansion: Will former Capital Hotel Chef Lee Richardson be Asa's new First Chef?

OK, but everyone knows that the true media bias is that we just care about ourselves. So what we really want to know is who the new governor's spokesperson will be. Matt DeCample was one of outgoing Gov. Beebe's secret weapons, a smooth politico who could channel Beebe's brain (if not Beebe's voice "like molasses" that the New York Times swooned over).

DeCample was plucked from KATV, Channel 7. Where will Hutchinson go searching for the Voice of Asa? Here are the odds; place your bets:

3-2 J.R. Davis

Hutchinson's campaign spokesman. Davis did well so why rock the boat? The former KNWA reporter also served a stint as communications director for Arkansas Congressman Steve Womack.

5-2 Some D.C. flak we've never heard of

As fun as this guessing game is, Hutchinson is as likely to pick a familiar party hack from his other home base as he is to cull from local talent. 

15-1 Janelle Lilley

The KATV reporter and anchor loves the private option and she earned her GOP bona fides by chasing Mark Pryor to ask him why he wasn't participating in a debate.

20-1 David Ray

The rough-and-tumble spokesman for the Cotton campaign says he's staying in Arkansas and he'll need a new gig. This is a worst-case scenario for the local press (save Jason Tolbert) as Ray has the political pro's paranoid mistrust of the press (presumably the governor's schedule would be kept top secret). Ray, who previously worked as a spokesperson for Tim Griffin, would offer the upside of keeping an eye on his old boss lest the lieutenant governor stab Asa in the back with a primary challenge in 2018.

50-1 Andrew Demillo

The ultimate straight man. Grabbing the local Associated Press reporter everyone likes and respects would establish a common-sense moderate brand for Hutchinson, the one-time ideologue.

60-1 Brad Howard

The sharp spokesman for the Mike Ross campaign is a former College Republican. Maybe Team Asa could convince him to flip back. If Blue Dog politicians in Arkansas are thinking about swapping parties, why not flaks?

1,000,000-1 Laurie Lee

OK, Hutchinson is not realistically going to tap the unhinged Tea Partier and book-banner, but she was the only one in Arkansas politics who kept claiming with a straight face that there was nothing offensive about that racist email Leslie Rutledge forwarded (beside Rutledge herself). Chutzpah helps!

*This paragraph has been updated. The day after this story went to press, Sen. Stubblefield withdrew his challenge for Senate leadership.

**This paragraph has been updated to reflect the new revenue estimates from Kansas released on Nov. 10.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

This is the second cover-length installment of the Arkansas Times' Homicide Diary series, in which we feature the voices of those touched by murder in Little Rock — those who have lost someone to violence, those who deal with the aftermath, or those who try to keep young people alive by urging them to find a way to solve their differences other than a bullet. The project arose out of a sense of frustration, the feeling that there were vast numbers of people in this city who just didn't seem to care. Over the past year, we've found people who do. We've tried to share their stories, in their own words. We plan to continue with the series indefinitely, printing new installments as we're able.

So far this year, there have been 39 homicides in Little Rock. Six of them remain officially unsolved. The vast majority of the victims were young black men killed with handguns in the neighborhoods south of Interstate 630.

It's easy to be cynical about some of these killings — especially when it comes to those victims who may have been caught up in crime and paid for it with their young lives. When stories like that appear online, the anonymous comments inevitably include variations on one tired line: "Live by the sword, die by the sword." Nobody, it seems, ever stops to wonder who put the sword in that young man's hand, or why he might have seen living by it — even though he surely knew that death and ruin walked with him every step — as his only option.

Rickey Jackson

Great uncle of Braylon Moore, who died on Oct. 19 after being shot the previous night.

An 11th grader at McClellan High School, Braylon Moore, 16, was shot in the head at the corner of 24th and Schiller streets near the Arkansas State Fairgrounds on Oct. 18, during what appears to have been an altercation that started at the State Fair and spilled over into nearby streets. Moore lingered on life support for several hours before his family made the decision to turn off the machines. His death marked a bloody night in Little Rock, which also saw the murder of Brandon Fountain, 21, who was found shot to death in the back seat of a car near 28th and Wolfe streets, a few blocks from where Moore was shot. Moore's family later told a local TV station that Moore and Fountain were raised "like cousins." Fountain was the city's 37th homicide of 2014, and Moore was the 38th. At this writing, there have been no arrests in either murder. Braylon Moore's great-uncle, Rickey Jackson, was cooking supper when we knocked at his home on South Battery Street, standing in his warm kitchen and keeping an eye on his grandson, a doe-eyed toddler who seemed intent on getting into everything. Jackson had done the same for both Braylon Moore and Brandon Fountain when they were that age.

He was a good kid. Very active in church, and in his school activities. He did well in school. Everybody liked him. You could tell that by the attendance at the funeral.

I don't know how many people came out for the funeral exactly, but the church was full. I don't know the capacity of First Baptist Church at Ninth and Calhoun. That's where he was a member. He was active in the Sunday school and the youth choir. I never talked to him about what he wanted to be once he finished high school and college, but he had the potential to be anything that he wanted to be: doctor, lawyer, psychologist, whatever. I feel like he could have done that. But he won't have that opportunity now.

We'd had a talk with Braylon the weekend before he was shot, about being with the wrong crowd. I got a call at 11 p.m. on that Saturday night saying that he'd been shot and that they were taking him to the hospital. His mom called me. I got another call at about 3:15 that Sunday morning, telling me that he'd passed away. There was nothing they could do for him. He was probably already dead, with them shooting him in the head. I think it hit his brain stem.

I don't know exactly how all that came about the night that he was shot. I'm just going by what people are telling me: that he got into some kind of fight inside the fairgrounds and from there they went outside the fairgrounds, over to 24th and Schiller. They said he was fighting somebody, and somebody walked up and shot him in the head. Now, with all these people standing around, somebody saw the person that shot. But nobody is coming forward.

My godson, Brandon Fountain, was also shot that night — at 28th and Wolfe. That same night, within 30 minutes of my nephew. I kept Brandon from the time he was a baby until he was a teenager. I always kept him. I don't know what he may have been into. I don't know what either one of them may have been into in the streets, because we don't ever know. But we do know that we try to teach them and we try to talk to them and whether they take heed to it or not is on them.

They haven't made an arrest in either one of those shootings. I'm very concerned about that. I don't really believe they're investigating like they should. Whoever it was needs to be arrested, because I feel like that person is going to do some more shooting and killing. I feel like they may be connected. It happened too close, and it happened in almost the same area. We just don't know.

There's so much crime happening in the south end of Little Rock. They don't act like they care about this part of town anyway. If it's not West Little Rock, then nothing is being done. That's the way it's always felt to me. When things happen on this side of town, they sweep it under the rug. They forget about us.

Braylon's death is something that never should have happened. But you can't control what goes on. If I could, I'd put a stop to all of it. Not just for my family, but for all the families, because somebody else is going to be hurt the same way we are. There should be a message in Braylon's death for all young people. They should take heed to what happened to him, and try to steer their lives in a different direction. Don't get involved with all these different people — street people, gang people. Whatever they are, they need to stay away from all that.

It wasn't like this in my time. It's a totally different day now. I don't know what happened. Changing with the times, I guess. I was raised the right way. I believe in God. I believe in "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Everybody needs to have that attitude. The world would be a much better place.

I'm not sure how you fix this. I think law enforcement needs to get more involved than what they are. We pay taxes for them to ride around in their cars all over town and run red lights. So I feel like they should channel that energy into finding these individuals.

I plan on going down to the Little Rock Police Department next week and talking to somebody in their detective unit, just to find out what they're doing to investigate this and find who this killer is. I don't feel like they're doing much. Sometimes I believe they just think, "OK, that's just another one gone. Next."

Carter Ferguson

Pastor to Marcus Tidwell, who was murdered on Oct. 17

After every service at Canvas Community United Methodist Church on Seventh Street, after the sermon, after they sing, after they pray for the leaders of the country, the state, the city and the church, the homeless gathered there pray for the souls who have gone on to glory, including Marcus Tidwell. Tidwell, 39, had been among downtown Little Rock's homeless for years when he was killed on Oct. 17 at 100 N. Chester St. Police say that during an altercation, Eric Leon Green, 45 — another homeless man who had attended events at Canvas from time to time — bashed Tidwell's head into the pavement until he died. Green was soon arrested, and remains in the Pulaski County Regional Detention Center, on a single count of first-degree murder.  

I think I first saw Marcus down at the corner of Cross and Third. He was this gigantic African-American man. He always stayed outside there. I never saw him inside the Sally [Salvation Army], but always down there. I remember wondering about him, because he always had this childlike innocence about him. After we got to know him, we found out that there were some severe mental handicaps there. That appearance of being childlike was probably pretty authentic. He was very childlike. 

We called him Big Juicy. I don't know who started calling him that, and I don't know if I really want to look into why he was called that. I don't know if it was his willingness or his ability to be clean, but he had some pretty significant bowel issues. Marcus smelled very, very bad all the time. That's something we're used to. 

My first real memory of Marcus was that I was preaching, and he had fallen asleep and he was snoring. I remember seeing him and thinking, "Gosh, I really feel like I'm better than that. I feel like I'm more engaging than that, but I guess I'm not." [Laughs.] From what I heard, he was falling asleep because he was spending most of his nights protecting himself. Not a lot of sleep involved in that. 

We've got a lot of people who come in who are really difficult to handle — belligerent, drunk, angry. Marcus was always pretty nice. He never caused any problems. But he was always around. Any time I'd come to the church, he was always standing around outside. This is going to sound really, really bad, but after a couple of months of that, it started to get on my nerves. He was always around and he was never doing anything to help himself. I really started to build up a resentment toward him, and then I realized I was a jackass for that. So, one day, I was out front and I stopped, turned and looked at him and I said, "Marcus, what are you doing here? Why are you outside on the street?" He gave me some reasons. He'd been kicked out of some shelters and things like that, and I said, "You know what? I'm going to help you. I'm going to do everything I can to get you off the street. Do you have an ID? Do you have any felonies? Do you have anything? Be completely honest with me." 

That sent me on about a month or two-month journey to try to help Marcus, because I realized that my job is not to be irritated. It's to do what I can to sort of sacrifice myself to help people. So it was sort of a learning point for me, to help me get over myself. I spent a significant amount of time talking to Marcus, trying to figure out what he was all about, trying to figure out his story, trying to figure out why he was on the street, trying to figure out why he wasn't getting off the street.

I think Marcus had been treated in such a way that I'm not certain that he was willing to be vulnerable enough to really reveal who he was. It seemed, based just on the way that he talked and the things he said, that he hadn't ever been widely accepted. To truly reveal yourself is to open yourself up to a lot of pain. There was this distinct feeling that I wasn't getting straight answers a lot of the time. That's a normal thing for us, but it was particularly heartbreaking with Marcus because there was this distinct sense of isolation there. 

I remember the last time I saw Marcus, he was here at church, using the bathroom, and he was in there for probably 25 minutes. We had people waiting. We were trying to shut down from dinner and a movie, and he just wouldn't come out. I finally got him to open the door, and he didn't have his shirt on. He was in there taking a bath in the sink. I said: "Man, come on, let's wrap this up, we want to get out of here." That was a Wednesday, and I want to say it was either that Thursday or the next Thursday that he was murdered, by another guy that we knew.* Eric's been here several times, and there were people in our church who knew him even better. If I remember him correctly, Eric was kind of a tough dude. We don't have anybody in here who I'd say I'd just never be around. Once you sort of get past those first couple of layers, it's really easy to get to know who a person is. I can remember Eric being here. I think I can remember him playing dominoes. 

It was an unfortunate end to that. It really bothered me that I wasn't able to help Marcus. It's frustrating, because I spent so much time getting to know him and trying to get him off the street. And then for that to happen is heartbreaking. It haunts me. There's sort of a two-way street there. You can't force somebody to get better. I have to be willing to give what I can give to help someone, but that person also has to be willing to accept help. So I put forth a fair amount of effort with Marcus to get a straight answer on who he was and what he needed. I'm not sure how much of what I got done was helpful at all. Sometimes I feel it wasn't helpful at all because Marcus isn't with us anymore. It was difficult when I found out about his death. I kind of felt like I'd failed him. 

We have a lot of people we pray for in this church, because we have a lot of people who have committed suicide and a lot of people who have died. We haven't had many homicides since I've been here. We have had many suicides, however. We try to do moments of silence or funerals for people that we've lost, because if not us, then who is going to remember that they were part of this world? You know what I mean? If not us, who is going to ever remember that Marcus Tidwell ever existed? I think if he had been a state senator, or a well-spoken newspaper reporter, or a photographer or a pastor — had it been me — I think people would have paid a lot more attention to it. But because he was a low-income, African-American homeless person, by and large the city of Little Rock has moved on. Because it was a person from a group that we're more comfortable ignoring because of how uncomfortable it is to think about them, I think it's more digestible. The death of somebody like Marcus sits easier on our stomachs that the death of somebody like me or you. I think that, in and of itself, is very dangerous. I think our priorities are a little askew. 

Martin Buber, the great German theologian, wrote a book called "I and Thou." It's a profoundly difficult book to understand, but the basis of the book is that there are basically two types of relationships. There's the I/Thou relationship and the I/It relationship. The I/Thou relationship is what you and I have. I recognize you as David and you recognize me. Then there's the I/It relationship. If we had that, I wouldn't recognize you as a Thou or a peer. I'd recognize you as almost inhuman. I think the ability of Little Rock to move on so easily from deaths like this shows that there's an I/It relationship between people in Little Rock. I don't think that's just the upper class. That spans into the lower class, across all people. There are just some people that we don't see as Thou. We see them as It. Usually, they're people we don't feel like dealing with. 

Marcus was an empty glass, and there didn't seem to be any capacity to pour back in. He always took. One of the things we believe here is that we're being filled when we worship. We're allowing ourselves to be filled. That's one of my biggest problems with Christianity: There's a whole lot of "fill me up" and not a lot of pour out. That's a whole bunch of crap. 

With Marcus, I can't help but question myself and whether I poured enough. I don't know that there's any benefit to speculating about that. I know I poured a lot more than others would. But I don't know if what others would do is any kind of standard. 

*EDITOR'S NOTE: After this article went to press, Ferguson contacted Arkansas Times to say that he is reserving judgment on Eric Green's guilt or innocence until the matter is decided in court, and didn't intend to imply he believes Green is guilty of the murder of Marcus Tidwell.

Kia Ervin

Daughter of Kenneth Patterson, killed on April 18 at 224. E. 7th St. 

The murder of Kenneth Patterson, 61, came in the middle of the bloodiest month Little Rock has seen in decades — 11 homicides in 30 days, starting with the killing of Ronald Johnson on April 3 and ending with the death of Jason Harris on April 29 (another April victim, Bryan Fountain, was shot on April 25, but didn't pass away until May 5). According to a police incident report, Ervin called police after finding her father's body in a bedroom, his throat slashed. Her mother, Marilyn Patterson — who Ervin said had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and bipolar disorder years before — was on a couch in the living room with a self-inflicted wound to her right wrist. Marilyn Patterson survived, and is currently being held in the Pulaski County Regional Detention Center. 

My first memory of him was probably when I was 2 or 3. We lived in a house on Abigail Street. I remember running to my dad and he picked me up in the air. He kept his hair in an Afro and he always had a beard. I've never seen him any other way in my life, and that's the way he is in that memory. 

My memories of him are of music. Always some kind of music. A guitar in his hand, or he's practicing, or he's rehearsing. When I think of my childhood, I think of music. He went to the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville for a couple of years, and while there in Fayetteville, he was in a band that he continued to be in through his young adult years. Joy. J-O-Y. Joy Band. They were popular. They even opened for Chaka Khan. 

He loved music. He played the guitar and could sing. He could play the piano a little bit, but guitar was his main thing. He and his brother and some guys who were like brothers started the band. They were all at the funeral and told all about it. When I was a little girl, I used to go to the rehearsals and everything. My mom loved music, and I was always around it. Later on, he went on to work for AP&L in the '80s, climbing utility poles. He took pride in his work. Then, he kind of retired from everything to be a full-time caregiver to my mom when I was a little girl.

My mom was his heart. He loved her. I think they met in college, but don't quote me on that. You'd have to ask their friends. They were married for 40 years, and he would do anything for my mom. Back in the early '80s, before my memories, my mom had a nervous breakdown. She used to be a teacher, but she had a nervous breakdown and was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. She was unable to work and function in a regular setting, so that was why my dad quit AP&L to stay home with her. All my life, I've known her with mental illness. It's hard. 

My dad was very caring. I was a daddy's girl. He would call, and we'd talk about the Razorbacks. He really loved the Razorbacks. His laugh could fill a room. It's funny because my son laughs a lot like him. He reminds me of him. He was a good person with a great sense of humor. He kept a positive attitude. He was talented as a musician and he was the type of person to stand by his spouse. Just a good man overall. You'll only hear good things about him from the people who knew him. 

I'm a person of faith, and I know that everything happens for a reason. I'm a believer in that, and that eventually the reasons are revealed to us some way. I know my dad is doing fine, wherever he is. I've spoken to him in my dreams. I just have to pray to God for peace. 

There's too many happy memories of my mother and father to name. Them singing together, and laughing together. Cooking dinner together and inviting me over to eat. I used to take them to the store every fifth of the month, because they didn't have a vehicle. Together is just synonymous with who they are. "Together" is just them.

My happiest memory of them is: Every year they'd call me on my birthday, and they'd sing. If I wasn't there, they'd leave a message. They'd sing in harmony. It always tickled me. It was good! But it tickled me because they'd sing so seriously. They didn't have a lot of things financially. But they were content with each other.

Patrick Benca

Criminal defense attorney

Originally from Allegheny, N.Y., Patrick Benca is one of Little Rock's better-known criminal defense attorneys. An Air Force vet who came to Little Rock to stay in touch with his children after his former wife was transferred to the Little Rock Air Force Base in Jacksonville, Benca stayed, graduating from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and later from the UA's William H. Bowen School of Law. Since passing the bar in 1999, he has defended over 30 clients accused of murder. Benca's first homicide trial was as a law school student, when he was asked to help prepare the defense of Chevy Kehoe, a white supremacist who was eventually sent to prison for life after being convicted in federal court of racketeering and the 1996 murders of Pope County gun dealer Bill Mueller, his wife, and her 8-year-old daughter. Kehoe's partner, Danny Lee, was sentenced to death in a separate trial.

I got a lot of second chances growing up. I won't say a lot, but I got enough to where I could see the benefit of someone getting a second chance. I guess I was mischievous. I hung out with the wrong crowd. I got in fights. I got speeding tickets all the time. But there were just people in my life who were there for me. So I like the idea of people getting second chances.

My job is to make sure that the system has been fair. Have the officers that have taken an oath done their job right? The interviews that took place: Were they correct, appropriate and constitutional? I just make sure that all the t's are crossed and all the i's are dotted, up to the point that someone was charged. If that's the case, then it makes my job easier in trying to explain to the client why they should consider a deal or not. That's the drive for me: to make sure the process is fair. No matter what side of the courtroom you're on — whether you're a judge, a prosecutor or a defense attorney — that's the goal of everyone involved, I would hope.

I enjoy it. It isn't very lucrative, but I enjoy it. For the most part, I can find either myself or someone I grew up with in that person, so there's a connection there. I could make more money doing something else. My wife says it, my mom says it, everyone says it. And I could. I just don't know if I could do anything else. Civil stuff? Doing personal injury stuff? Having all these rules with regard to sanctions and interrogatories and depositions? I can't wrap myself around that. Good for those who can. But I can't.

Have there been some people I have defended who were likely guilty, or who felt that they were guilty, and I was able to walk them? Yes. But I did my job, and someone along the way didn't do their job. Or — in all fairness to the other side and the officers — there just wasn't enough evidence there to close the door on the issue. Again, it goes back to my obligation and my oath. I have an obligation to do everything I can for that client. Lawyers, judges and appellate judges, they understand that. Good prosecutors understand that. They understand what my job is.

Again, it's not about what my client did. I think if you get yanked into that and start looking at it from a judging point of view, you're going to have problems. I go back to what I was taught and what my oath is: Look at the evidence. Make sure everything was done correctly. Will the state be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that my client is guilty of all the offenses? If we get to that point, then it gets to me having a candid conversation with my client about what he or she should be doing from this point forward.

With murder cases, most of them plead. What I do is, I sit down with them. I know that case backward and forward, and I say, "Here's what the elements are. They've got to prove this, that and this." I lay all the elements out and say they've got to prove these beyond a reasonable doubt. Then I start talking about the case file — the witnesses. "Witness A is going to say this. Witness B is going to say this. Witness C is going to say this. The state is going to put on evidence of that, maybe DNA. They're going to put on evidence of your statement. They're going to put on this and that." I lay it all out. "This is the prosecutor. This is a good prosecutor, who is very thorough. Here's the offer on the table. You'll be out in 14 years. Here are the possibilities if you decide to go to trial. You could get a life sentence." If I stay focused and pigeonhole it that way, I feel like I've done my job. It's my job to make sure I do a good presentation of the case so they can make their best decision possible for them, regardless of their guilt or innocence.

When they take a deal at 14 years, I'm sitting there thinking: OK, I have a 1-year-old right now. He's going to be 15 years old and telling me what time it is before this guy gets out. But that's not my decision.

I don't prefer doing homicide trials. Let's be real. It's pretty scary for anyone to get prepared to go in there and actually litigate a case where their guy is sitting there accused of murder. Would I rather have someone who is accused of committing a less serious offense? Sure I would, because there are a lot of things for a jury to overcome when you're talking about murder. You wonder, "Are they really going back there and saying, 'OK, I think he may have done it but I'm not all the way there to "beyond a reasonable doubt." But I don't feel good about him walking out of here if he may have done it, though'?" That's kind of a scary area. Do they really understand reasonable doubt, and will they really apply it? That's what you hope. When you're analyzing a case as an attorney, that's what you're thinking: "There's a 'might have' here, and 'might have' is not beyond a reasonable doubt. I get the concept, the prosecutor gets the concept, the judge gets it. But will those jurors get that concept?"

A lot of times, defense attorneys have to deal in mercy. I may never say the word "mercy" in a courtroom, but that's what I'm really asking for sometimes. That's the only way to explain it. Mercy is not something you earn. You can't earn it. You just hopefully get it sometimes. Is a lifetime in prison really necessary? You and I are different than we were 15 years ago. I'm a different person, and 10 years from now, I'll be a different person again. You just hope the jury understands that concept, and that the parole board will figure that out 10 years from now or 15 years from now. That's the best you can do. You hear people say: "I'm a Christian. Eye for an eye." I've read the Bible and I'm a Christian. And that's totally inconsistent with the teachings of Jesus.

I don't know. You have a choice. I don't get it. I don't have the desire to kill anyone, and I would never have that desire, ever. So how do you explain that in someone else? I don't know. It's hard.

I'm just here to make sure the system works. That's essentially my role. That's what helps me come in every day and not get caught up in it: I'm just here to make sure the system works. And if something along the way gets screwed up, it's my job to point that out — point it out to the judge, the jury, the prosecutor. I'm obligated to do that. Whatever happens after that, I just hope I've done the best I can. Just don't half-ass it. That's what my stepfather told me: If you don't half-ass it, everything will work out OK.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

In the coming weeks, you're likely to gather with friends and family to eat and celebrate the holidays and another year come and gone. You could make the same thing you make every year — maybe marshmallow-topped sweet potatoes? Or cheese dip? Or Kroger's rotisserie chicken? We're not knocking it: There's something to be said for tradition. But sometimes you get tired of tradition. Sometimes you want to step out a little bit and make something special, a holiday feast to remember. If this is that year for you, here's how to shock and awe with recipes from a handful of local chefs and a bartender. All are easily doable at home, though in a couple of cases you may have to buy a few ingredients you aren't used to. Happy cooking!

Lisa Zhang
Three Fold Noodles and Dumpling Co.

Lisa Zhang has turned a passion into a career. After spending years in management in manufacturing, she's become a restaurateur, using her experience cooking and eating throughout China, where she was born and lived until she and her family immigrated to the United States in 1999. On Dec. 18, she's holding the soft opening of Three Fold, a fast casual, authentic Chinese restaurant specializing in handmade dumplings, steamed buns and hand-stretched noodles. Up until then, Three Fold is offering a catering menu that includes items like turkey dumplings and Wuhan noodles (see the full menu at arktimes.com/threefoldcatering).

"Red braising, or hong shao, is a traditional Chinese cooking method that involves braising meat in equal parts soy sauce, cooking wine and sugar until it is very tender and coated in a thick, caramelized sauce," Zhang said. "Used throughout the northern, eastern and southeastern regions of mainland China, it is a method that can be used to prepare a variety of meats, such as pork belly, duck and ribs."

Zhang also provided a method for folks without easy access to a store that sells Chinese products.

RED BRAISED PORK RIBS

3 to 4 lbs. (12-15 pieces) pork ribs

Herbs

1 piece of fresh 1 1⁄2 inch-long ginger, peeled and smashed

4 to 5 medium cloves of garlic, peeled and smashed

White parts of 2 scallions, roughly sliced

Chinese ingredients

1 C. Chinese cooking rice wine

1 C. soy sauce

1 C. granulated sugar

1 T. dark soy sauce

Alternative ingredients

1 bottle dark beer

2 C. ketchup

4 T. of brown sugar

1 T. salt

Fill a large bowl with cold water. Submerge the ribs and soak for 2 to 3 hours.

Heat 3 tablespoons of oil in a large saute pan over medium-high heat. Drain the ribs and dry thoroughly with a paper towel. Place the ribs in the pan and brown on all sides. Add garlic, ginger and green onions to the pan and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds, being careful not to burn them.

Carefully pour in the cooking wine and, after about 5 seconds, pour in the soy sauce. After another 5 seconds, add the sugar to the pan and stir. Add boiling water to the mixture — the amount should be enough to just cover the ribs, about 4 cups. Turn the heat to high and bring the mixture to a boil. Skim the surface to remove the mixture of any impurities.

Once boiling, reduce the heat and bring to a simmer, then cover and continue cooking on the stove until the meat falls easily off the bone, about 1 hour.

Remove the lid from the pan and simmer the liquid and ribs over medium-high heat until the mixture is significantly reduced and is thick and bubbly. Turn off the heat and transfer the ribs and sauce to a serving dish.

To garnish: Sprinkle with roasted sesame seeds and finely sliced scallions (green part). For a different flavor, sprinkle with an herb of your choice, such as basil or cilantro.

For a little heat, chop two dried hot peppers and stir into the sauce when simmering.

Brian Deloney
Maddie's Place

Brian Deloney knows Louisiana-style cooking. The Little Rock native spent years as Emeril Lagasse's executive sous chef in New Orleans and Las Vegas, before returning home to help Lee Richardson, another vet of Lagasse's restaurant empire, reopen the Capital Hotel's restaurants. Deloney opened Maddie's Place in 2009, quickly earning a dedicated following for his from-scratch takes on Cajun/Creole-inspired comfort food. For our recipe round-up, he offers two gumbo recipes to pick from depending on how long you have and how big your crowd is.

BRIAN'S GUMBO

Chicken stock (make night before making gumbo)

Bones from whole smoked chicken

1 large onion, chopped

1 C. medium diced carrots

1 C. medium diced celery

4 cloves garlic

2 bay leaves

fresh thyme sprigs

1 tsp. crushed red pepper

8 C. water

Bake chicken bones at 400 degrees for 20 minutes. Saute coarse cut onions, celery and carrots in oil in large stockpot over medium heat. Add bones and seasonings and cold water to cover. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to medium low and simmer 3 to 4 hours. Cool completely. Strain and set aside.

Roux (make night before making gumbo)

1⁄2 C. canola oil

1 C. flour

Worcestershire sauce

Crystal hot sauce

1 dark beer

Creole seasoning

Heat oil in cast iron skillet. Add 1 cup flour and stir until brown. Turn down heat and continue to brown roux 20 to 40 minutes. Remove from fire and take outside: Add Worcestershire sauce, hot sauce, beer and creole seasoning. Be careful! Stir and let cool. Refrigerate overnight.

Gumbo

One 4- to 6-lb. smoked chicken (remove meat, save bones for stock)

2 lbs. andouille (or smoked) sausage, sliced 1⁄4 inch thick

2 T. canola oil

3 C. onion, diced ¼ inch

2 C. green bell pepper, seeded, 1⁄4-inch diced

1 C. celery, 1⁄4-inch diced

12 cloves garlic, chopped

Salt and pepper to taste

16-ounce can of diced tomatoes, drained

1⁄2 C. chopped green onions

1⁄4 C. Worcestershire sauce

Emeril's essence

Crystal hot sauce

Tabasco hot sauce

1 dark beer

Into a small amount of canola oil add chopped onion and cook until translucent and tender. Add celery, bell pepper, garlic, salt and pepper. Saute until tender, stirring frequently. Add drained diced tomatoes, Emeril's essence and let heat up. Whisk in 8 cups cold chicken stock. Cover and bring to boil. Add andouille sausage and chicken meat. Turn down heat and simmer uncovered 30 minutes. Skim to remove grease. Whisk in roux. Add Worcestershire, salt, pepper and Tabasco to taste. Cook roux out, 1 hour at high simmer. Serve over rice and garnish with chopped green onions. Serves 10-12.

CREOLE GUMBO

½ C. oil

½ C. flour

2 boneless chicken breasts OR 1 Sam's chicken

2 T. oil

1 T. bacon fat

1 lb. andouille sausage, sliced

1 C. diced onion

½ C. diced bell pepper

½ C. diced celery

1 quart rich beef stock

¼ T. liquid smoke

¼ T. Tabasco

1 T. Worcestershire

½ T. Creole seasoning

½ T. black pepper

½ T. garlic powder

Make a roux with the oil and flour. Set aside. Cut chicken breasts into 1-inch pieces. Brown the chicken in the oil about 5 minutes; add sausage and brown 5 more minutes. Stir in the vegetables and cook 5 minutes or until they are transparent. Add stock, liquid smoke and Tabasco. Stir slowly until thoroughly mixed. Stir in Creole seasoning, black pepper, garlic powder and roux. Simmer on low for 45 minutes. Serve over rice. Makes 6 to 8 servings.

Jack and Corri Sundell
The Root Cafe

Some restaurants talk about sourcing local foods more from a marketing standpoint than philosophy. But local food truly is the reason for being for The Root Cafe. The homey, popular South Main restaurant almost exclusively uses local vegetables, meats and cheeses. Owners Jack and Corri Sundell offered two recipes that rely heavily on produce that's available locally this time of the year. Jack noted that Arkansas black apples, used in one of his recipes below, stay fresh in the refrigerator for up to five months. He recommends getting them from Drewry Orchard in Dover, which sells through the Arkansas Local Food Network at littlerock.locallygrown.net. Also, he suggests finding "beautiful" local collard greens at the Hillcrest Farmers Market on Saturdays. "Just look for Barnhill Orchard's booth and talk to Bob," he said.

BRANDIED SWEET POTATOES WITH ARKANSAS BLACK APPLES

5 lbs sweet potatoes, washed but not peeled (look for sweet potatoes about the size and shape of a russet potato)

2/3 C. dark brown sugar, firmly packed

1/4 C. heavy cream

2 T. butter

1/2 C. peeled, chopped apple

1/4 C. cognac or brandy

Wash the sweet potatoes but do not peel. Boil in water to cover until barely soft, about 15 minutes. Drain, cool and peel. Slice 1/4-inch to 3/8-inch thick into a greased casserole, sprinkling kosher salt liberally on each layer. (Sweet potatoes can be boiled and refrigerated unpeeled for the next day).

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a small saucepan, bring to a boil the brown sugar, cream and butter.

Add the cognac and apples, simmer 1 minute, and pour the mixture over the sweet potatoes, making sure the apple chunks are evenly distributed over the top.

Bake uncovered 30 minutes, basting several times with the syrup in the casserole.

Garnish with a sprinkle of crushed toasted pecans.

For a lower-fat version of this recipe substitute 1/4 cup of milk, water or apple cider for the heavy cream.

COCONUT CURRY COLLARD GREENS

2 T. olive oil

1 medium onion, minced

2 T. minced garlic (about 5 medium cloves)

2 to 3 tsp. grated fresh ginger

1 tsp. curry or lemon curry powder

1 1/2 lbs. stemmed collard greens, washed and cut in approximately 3-inch pieces (you'll need about 2 lbs. of greens before stemming)

1/2 C. chicken stock

One 14-oz. can coconut milk

salt and pepper to taste

1 T. lime juice

1 T. olive oil

Heat oil in heavy-bottom pan over medium heat. Stew onions with 1/2 teaspoon salt until softening, about 5 minutes.

Add garlic, ginger, and curry powder and cook until fragrant.

Add half the greens, lower the heat a little bit, and stir until the greens have wilted. Add rest of greens, coconut milk, broth and 1/4-teaspoon salt, cover pot, and reduce heat. Cook, stirring occasionally, until greens are tender, about 30 minutes. Avoid overstirring.

Remove lid and increase heat to medium-high. Cook until most of the liquid has evaporated, about 10 minutes. Remove pot from heat, stir in olive oil and lime juice, and season to taste with salt and pepper.

This recipe also works with any variety of kale, which is also easy to find at the market. We prefer collard greens because they retain their texture a little better, but kale also makes for a great side dish.

For a vegetarian version just substitute a vegetable broth for the chicken stock.

Chris Tanner
Cheers in the Heights and Samantha's Tap Room and Wood Grill

Early next year, Chris and Samatha Tanner will open Samantha's Tap Room and Wood Grill in The Mann at 4th and Main streets, next door to Bruno's Little Italy. The owners of Cheer's in the Heights will be serving up their "No. 1s" from 18 years in the catering business and 14 years at Cheers. That'll include the likes of roasted cremini mushrooms with bacon and parmesan; Argentinean-spiced steak skewers; grilled shrimp and skirt steak, and crisp sweet waffles and fine ice cream. Plus, there'll be a massive bar with dozens of beers and wines on draft, big TVs and charging stations everywhere.

For his recipe submission, Chris Tanner submitted his take on that holiday standard: dressing and gravy.

ANDOUILLE SAUSAGE GRAVY

1 1/2 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper

1/4 tsp. black pepper

1/4 tsp. white pepper

1 tsp. oregano leaves

2 tsp. dried sage

3 T. butter

1/2 C. each diced celery, bell peppers and onion

1 C. finely chopped Andouille sausage

2 tsp. minced garlic

1/4 C. flour

3 1/2 C. chicken stock

2 hard-boiled eggs, chopped

Mix and set aside the seasonings: salt, peppers, oregano and sage. Melt butter in saucepan, add vegetables, Andouille sausage, garlic and seasoning mix and saute for 8 minutes. Add flour and cook for 1 minute. Add chicken stock and simmer for 20 minutes. Then add chopped egg.

CORNBREAD DRESSING

2 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper

1/2 tsp. black pepper

1/2 tsp. white pepper

1 tsp. oregano leaves

1 tsp. onion powder

1/2 tsp. thyme

1 stick butter

1 C. each diced celery, bell peppers and onion

1 T. minced garlic

3 bay leaves

2 C. chicken stock

1 T. Tabasco

7 C. crumbled cornbread

One 13-ounce can evaporated milk

3 eggs

Mix and set aside the seasonings: salt, peppers, oregano, onion powder and thyme. Melt butter in saucepan. Add vegetables, garlic, bay leaves and seasoning mix. Mix and saute eight minutes, then add chicken stock and Tabasco. Bring to a boil, then add to cornbread. Add evaporated milk and three eggs. Put in 13- by 9-inch baking dish. Cook at 350 degrees for 35 minutes.

Tim Morton
1620 Savoy

With 20 years of experience in Little Rock kitchens, Tim Morton knows how to please a crowd. Here, he presents a variation on the ultimate comfort food, baked macaroni and cheese. Use Gruyere cheese and Pernod if available; otherwise, Swiss and white wine will work fine. Bechamel, the classic roux-based white sauce, binds together the seafood and the mac and cheese.

LOBSTER MAC & CHEESE

2 oz. chopped shrimp

4 oz. steamed lobster meat

2 T. butter

1 tsp. minced garlic

1 T. chopped shallot (or minced onion)

3 C. Bechamel sauce

5 T. butter

4 T. white flour

4 C. milk, heated

Salt and pepper to taste

1 T. Pernod (or white wine)

2 T. chopped basil

3 C. grated Gruyere (or Swiss cheese)

1 lb. cooked macaroni noodles

Bread crumbs (optional)

First, cook the macaroni separately (and the lobster, if it's not precooked).

Prepare the bechamel. Warm the milk on low heat until close to boiling. In a separate heavy-bottomed saucepan, melt 5 tablespoons butter over medium-low heat. Add the flour and stir constantly until the mixture just begins to brown, about 5 minutes. Then, gradually stir in the heated milk and whisk the mixture continuously while bringing to a slow boil. Cook for about 10 minutes, stirring or whisking constantly as the sauce thickens. Add salt and pepper to taste, and set aside.

In another large pot, melt 2 tablespoons butter. Add the shallot, garlic and chopped shrimp, and saute for three minutes.

Add the Pernod (or white wine) to deglaze. Then, stir in the bechamel sauce and the cooked lobster. Add the noodles, cheese and basil and let simmer over low heat for 2 minutes.

Spoon the mixture into a baking dish and top with optional bread crumbs, if desired. Bake for 15 minutes at 375 degrees.

Sonia Schaefer
Boulevard Bread Co.

Sonia Schaefer, co-owner of Boulevard Bread Co. and head baker, feels your pain. "The holidays can seem overwhelming, and cooking isn't everyone's strong suit. That in mind, this is a simple holiday recipe that anyone can make without too much trouble and then put pictures of the results on Instagram to pretend they are festive and know what they are doing."

As for Boulevard, look for the addition to the restaurant and bakery mini-chain's flagship outlet in the Heights to open later this year or early next year. The expansion will include a new large dining room, a bar and more outdoor seating.

EGGNOG BREAD

1 lb. butter

1 lb. plus 14 ounces of sugar

8 eggs

1 T. vanilla

2 ½ lbs. flour

2 tsp. salt

1 tsp. nutmeg

2 tsp. cinnamon

2 T. plus 2 tsp. baking powder

4 C. eggnog

3 T. rum

Using a mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar together for approximately 5 minutes on high speed. Add eggs and vanilla to the butter and sugar mixture slowly on low speed and mix them until incorporated.

Sift the flour, salt, nutmeg, cinnamon and baking powder together.

Finally, alternate the dry ingredients and nog-rum mixture into the egg-butter-sugar-vanilla mixture on low speed until completely incorporated.

Place in two greased loaf pans approximately two-thirds full.

Bake at 325 degrees for approximately 1 hour and 10 minutes.

Lauren Harrison
The Pie Hole

This spring, Lauren Harrison moved her sweets-baking establishment from an Airstream trailer in Fayetteville to a food truck in Little Rock. The Pie Hole quickly has gained a reputation around town as one of Little Rock's best new food trucks, and Harrison said the move has been nothing but good for business. She said she's been delighted to find an active, enthusiastic food culture here that has not yet developed as fully in Northwest Arkansas.

Serving a slice or two of sharp cheddar alongside warm apple pie isn't as common in the South as it is elsewhere — especially Vermont, we're told — but it's a sweet/savory combination that everyone should try. In this recipe, the cheese is baked right into a crumbly topping to form an upper crust.

CHEDDAR PEAR PIE

One pie pan lined with pastry crust (frozen or homemade)

Filling

4 large pears, peeled, cored and thinly sliced

1/3 C. sugar

1 T. cornstarch

1/8 tsp. salt

Topping

1/2 C. shredded cheddar cheese

1/2 C. flour

1/4 C. sugar

1/4 tsp. salt

1/4 C. butter, melted

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. In a large bowl, combine sugar, cornstarch and salt. Add the pears and mix well, coating the fruit with the dry ingredients. Then, arrange evenly into the pie shell. To make the topping, combine cheese, flour, salt and sugar and mix well. Drizzle melted butter over the mixture and combine until crumbly. Sprinkle the topping over the pear filling. Bake at 425 degrees for 25-30 minutes, until golden brown. Let cool for 20 minutes before slicing.

David Burnette
South on Main

David Burnette knows how to mix a drink to get you into the holiday spirit. The South on Main bartender, who's regularly picked as one of the Arkansas Times' readers favorite bartenders in our Toast of the Town poll, has won the Historic Arkansas Museum's Nog-Off eggnog competition four years in a row. He's not competing, but his run of victories will be honored at the 10th annual competition on Dec. 12.

But when we asked for a holiday cocktail recipe, he had rum on his mind, namely El Dorado, a 12-year-old variety newly available in Central Arkansas. That's the base for the L'Optimisme, a new cocktail on South on Main's fall/winter menu. The name comes from the French title of Voltaire's "Candide, or The Optimist." The satire's titular character was happiest when he was in El Dorado, Burnette said.

"If a knowledgeable bartender were to read this recipe, he would probably write this one off as a simple rip-off of a basic Old Fashioned recipe, but I feel like these ingredients, when properly proportioned together, sing an interestingly unique song," Burnette said.

L'Optimisme

2 ounces El Dorado 12

1/2 oz. raw sugar syrup (1:1 ratio by volume sugar in the raw to hot water)

2 dashes Peychaud's Bitters

2 dashes Angostura Bitters

2 dashes Regan's Orange Bitters No. 6

3-5 drops Rothman and Winter Allspice Dram

Orange peel (a big fat one) for garnish

A good chunk of ice, preferably made with water from near Hot Springs

Combine the first five ingredients in a pint glass and stir with a spoon for 30 to 45 seconds.

Dash the Allspice Dram into your double Old Fashioned glass, and swirl around, making the glass smell like a cross between Christmas and a honeymoon in Jamaica.

Drop in the good chunk of Arkansas ice, strain your concocted Optimism over it, and twist the big fat orange peel for freshness and zest. Enjoy.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

The years 2013 and 2014 were good years for nonprofits, thanks to increases in foundation and private assets bolstered by a recovering stock market.

If you were to add up the dollar value of grants made by Arkansas's top family foundations in 2013 (the most recent year for which figures are available), you'd come up with around $270 million. That's only part of the picture: That figure accounts only for gifts by the richest charitable foundations in Arkansas. There are many with assets under $20 million (our arbitrary cutoff) that are giving to needy groups here, and many millions more are awarded by corporate foundations, private individuals and other nonprofit grantmakers.

The Walton Family Foundation, the richest in Arkansas ($2.4 billion in assets) and the 39th largest family foundation in the United States, has nearly doubled its giving since 2008; its 2013 tax form 990 shows the foundation awarded $311,475,768 in grants; of that, $32,489,424 went to its "home region."

The Windgate Foundation ($174 million in assets), headquartered in Siloam Springs, also nearly doubled its giving in 2013, with grants of $41 million, up from $26.4 million in 2012. William L. Hutcheson, whose mother, Dorothea, founded Windgate with Wal-Mart stock, and Mary E. Hutcheson of Fort Smith added $79.5 million to Windgate's assets in 2013. (Foundation director John Brown called Windgate "the Walton Family Foundation's little brother.") Windgate has a "modified spend down policy" (it gives more than the required 5 percent with the anticipation that it will not continue in perpetuity), Brown said, but will stay in business "as long as we keep getting additional gifts that are so generous," Brown said.

The amount of private giving, according to the 2013 Generosity Index of the Fraser Institute, ranks Arkansas as the 19th highest in the nation. Arkansas individuals do even better in average charitable giving as a percentage of income: 9th. (Utah, which has a large tithing Morman population, continues to rank first in both.)

Alumni and foundations in Northwest Arkansas continue to shower gifts on the University of Arkansas, which raised more than $100 million for the fourth year in a row, the university announced in August. The school raised $113.3 million in cash, gifts in kind, planned gifts and new pledges for the fiscal year 2014.

The largest single foundation donation in 2013, according to tax returns examined by the Times, was the Walton Charitable Support Foundation's $26.4 million gift to the Arkansas Community Foundation, which manages more than 1,500 funds.

Robert H. Biggadike's estate commitment of $7.8 million to the University of Arkansas's College of Engineering was the biggest individual gift made public in 2014. Biggadike was a native of Newport who got bachelor's and master's degrees in engineering from the UA and worked in the aerospace industry in California.

Approved grants for 2013 and 2014, on which foundations have begun payments, are also big news in giving: They include the Windgate Foundation's $15.5 million pledge for a new arts building at the University of Arkansas-Fort Smith and its $14 million pledge for the proposed Arkansas College of Osteopathic Medicine at Chaffee Crossing in Fort Smith, and the Winthrop Rockefeller Charitable Trust's approval of $9 million for the UA's Winthrop Rockefeller Institute.

One pot that Arkansas will not be able to look forward to in the future is the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation, which has committed all its funds and is no longer taking grant applications. The foundation, which has given around $450 million to Arkansas institutions over the lifetime of the foundation, according to President Steve Anderson, is spending down as those who were personal friends with the media mogul are becoming inactive on the board. "We want to stay as close to the founder as possible," Anderson said. "We wanted to accomplish everything we could while people on the board making decisions had some knowledge or could refer back to Reynolds."

In 2013, the Reynolds Foundation made a contribution of $3.5 million to the Museum of Discovery, and Camp Aldersgate recently announced a $1 million gift from the foundation for a 6,000-square-foot activity center. There may be future grants already approved for Arkansas, but Anderson said he would not be able to announce them now.

Nationally, according to Giving USA, individuals, corporations, foundations and bequests were estimated at $335.17 billion, close to the peak hit before the 2008 recession.

Family foundation grants can be found in a sidebar. What follows is a list of philanthropic gifts of $250,000 or more by individuals made public since last fall:

University of Arkansas alumnus Robert H. Biggadike, a Newport native who made his career in the aerospace industry in California, made an estate gift commitment valued at more than $7.8 million to establish the Robert H. Biggadike Endowment for Teaching in the University of Arkansas College of Engineering.

Wallace and Jama Fowler of Jonesboro donated $2.5 million to the UA's $9.1 million building project for its baseball and track teams and pledged $2.93 million for the second construction phase of the Fowler House Garden and Conservatory, which houses UA Chancellor David Gearhart and his wife, Jane.

The Johnny Allison family made a gift commitment of $5 million to Arkansas State University to expand its Centennial Bank Stadium, which two years ago received $5 million from Liberty Bank, now Centennial.

Alumnus Kevin Brown and his wife, Marie, of Houston endowed the UA College of Engineering department head chair with a gift of $3 million.

Robert and Sandra Connor of Little Rock and Dallas pledged $1.5 million toward the Robert C. and Sandra Connor Endowed Faculty Fellowship to support junior-level faculty in the UA Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences.

A bequest of $1.4 million will create the Dan and Johnnie Winn Memorial Scholarship in the University of Arkansas at Little Rock's College of Social Sciences and Communication. Johnnie Winn was the first licensed woman amateur radio operator in Arkansas. Dan Winn helped create 30 radio stations in Arkansas and established the Arkansas Radio Network.

Racynski Phillips, dean of the Fay Boozman College of Public Health at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, and his wife, Martha Phillips, have pledged a planned estate gift of $1 million to create the Raczynski Phillips Bruce Chair in Social Determinants of Health. The gift was made in honor of the college's inaugural dean, Thomas A. Bruce, and his late wife, Dolores.

Stuart Cobb of Little Rock has donated $1 million to help pay for construction and services at the new breast center of the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute at UAMS.

Alumnus Richard Greene of Lowell will create the Camden E. and Dortha Sue Greene CARE Endowed Scholarship with a $1 million gift to benefit the UA Office of Diversity and Community.

Doug McMillon and his wife, Shelley, donated $1 million to the UA Sam M. Walton College of Business to endow a proposed School of Global Retail Operations and Innovation. McMillon is CEO of Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

The estate of Merrily Purnell Parker made a gift of $800,000 to create the Owen W. Parker Sr. and Merrily Parker Endowed Scholarship at UALR, with a preference for philosophy or music majors.

N.W. "Chip" Buerger of Dripping Springs, Texas, has made a planned gift of $500,000 to endow scholarships to the UA Fulbright College, the College of Engineering and the Sam M. Walton College of Business.

The A.L. Chilton Foundation in Dallas has created a faculty fellowship with a $500,000 gift to the UA College of Education and Health Professions. The foundation's distribution committee includes alumnae Patti Brown and Bonnie Harding.

Alumna K.Denise Henderson of Hot Springs is making a planned gift of $600,000 to be divided between the UA Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences; the Women's Giving Circle, and the Arkansas Alumni Association.

Betty Haga of Riverside, Calif., and her late mother, Merl McKinnon Haga, donated $500,000 to endow a scholarship for the nontraditional students pursuing a degree in the UA College of Education and Health Professions.

Alumni Tom Bercher and Francis Hayes Bercher of Racine, Wis., have created a testamentary trust of $450,000 to benefit the UA Fulbright College.

Alumna Ellen Gray pledged an estate gift of $250,000 to establish an endowed professorship in art history at UALR.

Carolyn Cole and her husband, Nick, have pledged $250,000 to create the Nick and Carolyn Cole Honors College Path Endowed Scholarship for UA honors college students with financial need. Carolyn Cole holds both a bachelor's and master's degree in English from the Fulbright College.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Alex Madison Roberts, 13, has cerebral palsy, which means she is wheelchair-bound and needs what her family calls a "talker" (a Vantage Light device) to communicate.

Alex also swims, dances, goes scuba diving and canoeing. She's ridden a zip line through the woods (the faster the better is her approach to life, her dad says) and made a bullseye in archery. And so do the other kids at Camp Aldersgate— kids with spina bifida, Down Syndrome, autism, cancer, diabetes. Children on respirators. Children who, while at camp, are children, not diagnoses.

Founded in 1947 by Methodist women, Aldersgate, at 2000 Camp Aldersgate Road off Kanis Road, has offered camps for children with medical conditions since 1971, when Dr. Kelsy Caplinger, a pediatric immunologist, organized the first. Since then, Aldersgate's services have grown to include weeklong camps all summer and respite weekends in the fall and spring to give parents a breather from what can be round-the-clock care for their special needs child.

Aldersgate, says Alex's father, David Roberts, "is this natural oasis nestled in the urban fabric of Little Rock. Most people don't know where it is." They don't know, he said, that "it's amazing."

Roberts, director of planning for Crafton Tull engineers, worked with Aldersgate professionally, working on the facility's master plan, before his personal engagement. Aldersgate staff suggested Roberts and his wife, Diane, bring Alex for a day over a weekend to see how she'd like it. Soon, Alex asked to stay for an entire weekend — Friday night to Sunday morning — so she could do all the things the other kids got to do. When the Robertses pulled up on Sunday morning after her first weekend away, "she was beaming," her father said, and wanted to know when she could go back. She was 9 years old; it was the first weekend to themselves her parents had had in a long time. Now, Alex also attends Aldersgate's weeklong KOTA camps for children, camps for kids with CP, Down's and autism. Campers can bring along a sibling or other family member who does not have a medical diagnosis. There is a waiting list for the KOTA (friend in Quapaw) camps.

The experience changed Alex, Roberts said, giving her self-awareness and self-confidence. Alex, who has a good mind and is an A/B student at Maumelle Middle School, began to see herself not just as a dependent, but as a child, one who got to play with other kids, sleep away from home in a cabin with other girls, giggle with friends. "It took her into her teen years," Roberts said. "She has a very different way about her."

Anna Phillips, 20, a student at the University of Central Arkansas who is a lifeguard and counselor at Camp Aldersgate and one of Alex's caregivers, "fell in love" with the camp when she accompanied a younger cousin with Asperger's there about five years ago. "You get to see these kids that have struggles that are a lot harder than yours and they are smiling with them, and taking it day by day."

Over her time there, Phillips has seen kids change, from not wanting to go to camp to "accepting who they are and encouraging other people to do the same. They encourage one another."

Counselors, many of them physical therapists or students interested in a career in therapy, get an intensive weeklong training before working with campers. There are also volunteers, the majority from local high schools, who also receive training but are always supervised by a counselor. The ratio of counselors and caregivers to campers is mostly one to one. There are 55 seasonal paid staff, 15 full-time employees and more than 180 volunteer counselors.

"Camp has been by no doubt the BIGGEST blessing that I could ever ask for," counselor and caregiver Phillips said. "Camp isn't just a place where we all go. It's a home away from home. My co-workers aren't just people I work with, they are family, and the kids aren't just a random group of kids that roll though week after week. It's a family."

Aldersgate has "a beautiful partnership with Arkansas Children's Hospital," development director Kerri Daniels said. "The majority of our nurses come from Children's Hospital. They take a week's vacation and come volunteer, and in turn Children's will reimburse them their vacation time. They are one of our biggest advocates." There are typically two nurses on staff for the summer camps.

Daniels was thrilled that this summer, a child on a respirator who has been coming to summer camp decided to brave the zip line. "Camp is a happy place. Where everyone is the same and the focus is the diagnosis. That's why we live by."

Camp Aldersgate recently benefited from the philanthropy of the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation, which has awarded the camp $1 million to build a 6,000-square-foot activity center. But Aldersgate still needs operating dollars, scholarship support and in-kind contributions.

"We rely heavily on in-kind donations," development director Kerri Daniels said, "whether that's arts and crafts supplies or maintenance support — rakes and water houses and lightbulbs." The camp has 30 buildings to maintain, "and it takes a lot of manpower," she said. You can find a list of needs on the camp's website, campaldersgate.net.

Cash contributions help pay for scholarships for campers who can't afford the $1,000-a-week camp fee. "We don't turn anyone away for inability to pay," Daniels said.

You can support Aldersgate right now by taking part in its Petit Jean fundraiser: If you order smoked hams and turkeys and food gift boxes from Petit Jean Smoked Meats, a portion of the price goes to the camp. Order forms, and more information about Aldersgate, are available at the camp's website.

The camp also holds an annual fish fry fundraiser each fall.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

One of the painful realities of living and working in a city the size of Little Rock is that you're constantly reminded of how thin the line between being middle class and being homeless can be. If you care enough to look for them, the homeless are everywhere, and more of us than would probably care to admit it are one paycheck, one long hospital stay, one divorce, one eviction or one mental health issue away from joining them.

One of the homeless in Little Rock is Billy, a 20-something man who asked us to conceal his identity because he fears it might exclude him from certain services, including the ability to sell plasma, one of his only sources of income. Some of the plasma centers will not accept donations from those who admit to being homeless, he said.

"[Homelessness] opens you up to a lot of diseases," Billy said. "Just the environment you're in is a lot more unhealthy."

Originally from Hot Springs, Billy said he's had mental health issues since childhood. He wound up homeless in Hot Springs after going off his medication. After getting back on his meds and seeking public housing, he was placed in an apartment in Little Rock, only to be evicted at the beginning of November after going off his medication again.

"I had that apartment for a while, but I got off of my medication and had multiple suicide attempts," he said. "I couldn't even get out of bed or do anything to help myself. I couldn't even move around. I had to go to the mental hospital, and I lapsed on my rent payment while I was in the hospital, and so I got evicted."

Since then, Billy has been homeless. He said that being homeless is not as bad as most people think, but it can be dangerous, especially if you're naive or too trusting. Some resort to prostitution, drug dealing or addiction. Hopelessness can set in after awhile, he said, and that can lead to other problems.

"There are people who have already given up on life before they were homeless," he said. "Being homeless may exacerbate that in some way, or amplify aspects of it into their social interactions. But the majority of [homeless] people you meet are really upbeat. It's just a temporary thing. ... It's something out of their control, they don't fret needlessly about it. They don't accept it, but they shoulder their burden with grace and humility. They're just down on their luck."

Most homeless shelters, Billy said, allow people to stay free for a certain number of days — usually 10 to 15 — providing food, shelter, showers and other help. After those days are used up, he said, the shelter where he stays costs $4 per day.

"You can go that route, if you can get money," he said. "With the cold weather, if it's 42 degrees or below, you can stay in the shelter for free after your 10 days for that month are used up."

Billy describes himself as "pansexual." He learned about Lucie's Place, a nonprofit that focuses its services on the LGBT community, from another homeless person who had received assistance from the charity. He submitted some information about himself and his needs, he said, and now Lucie's Place helps him with transportation and phone access, helping him get to doctor's appointments so he can stay on his mental health medication, and putting minutes on his cell phone after a glitch wiped out all his minutes. To a homeless person, a basic cell phone can be a crucial lifeline, helping him find shelter, jobs and assistance.

"That's one of the biggest issues I ran into: Everything is done either online or over the phone, and a lot of homeless people don't have access to phones or the Internet except at the library," he said. "There are places like Jericho where they have a public phone, but it's not a number you can be reached at any time, so it kind of closes the door to a lot of possibilities.

Billy said that volunteering with or spreading the word about a nonprofit like Lucie's Place can sometimes be just as valuable as money. If you don't have the time to volunteer or the money to donate, he said, be an intermediary, bringing a charity for the homeless to the attention of someone who does have those things. Educate yourself about the issues, and then do something to change what you don't agree with. A lot of people, he said, are just apathetic.

"To me, apathy is the opposite of empathy," he said. "You can't really be apathetic about something if you understand at least a little something about it. There's a lot of people who help the homeless, so I think there's a lot of goodwill out there."

Penelope Poppers, the co-founder and executive director of Lucie's Place, said that she first became aware of the link between being LGBT and homelessness while working with a charity called "Food Not Bombs" in about 2010. She was serving food under a bridge in downtown Little Rock, she said, when she realized something. "At some point, I looked around under the bridge and realized that more than half the people there had come out to me as LGBT," she said. "Statistically, that shouldn't be true, so I did more research and discovered this nationwide trend of LGBT people being disproportionately represented in the homeless community."

The following year, Poppers helped start Lucie's Place, a group that provides assistance and outreach to homeless people who are also LGBT. It's named after Lucille Hamilton, a transgender woman who died in 2009. Hamilton's mother is on the board of Lucie's Place. The group received nonprofit status in 2012.

The original goal was to open a shelter for LGBT young adults aged 18-25. Funding for that shelter is still coming together, but Lucie's Place isn't waiting, providing outreach and assistance to homeless LGBT people, including transportation, phones and help finding shelter.

Poppers said the typical story she hears from homeless young people is that they were kicked out of their parents' home after coming out as LGBT. "That's not to say that there's never been an LGBT homeless person who became homeless for another reason, but that's the overwhelming reason," Poppers said. About half the young people they help are from Arkansas, including many from rural areas of the state. "We've had a few people whose parents dropped them off in Little Rock and literally drove away, just because it was a convenient spot," she said. Once people become homeless, she said, it's very hard to get back in the mainstream.

Poppers said that the charity is still about $150,000 away from opening a permanent shelter. While the board is working toward that goal, Poppers said they plan to start discussions in January on putting services to the homeless front and center.

"At this point, we've stopped putting a timeline on [opening the shelter]," she said. "We can fill the place in two months when it does open, but now we're just waiting on that last round of funding."

To learn more about Lucie's Place or to make a donation to help, visit its website at luciesplace.org, or find it on Facebook at facebook.com/luciesplace.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Clinton doesn't look like the kind of place that needs environmental remediation. A town of 2,600 nestled in the Ozark foothills at the spot where two forks of the upper Little Red River join together and feed into Greers Ferry Lake, its woods and streams appear pristine to the eyes of most travelers on U.S. Highway 65. Yet because of past modifications to the landscape, the waterways of Clinton are more troubled than they look.

In 1982, a massive flood hit the area, sending nine feet of water through downtown. The response was understandable: Working with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the town channelized a portion of the Little Red that flows through Clinton, the Archey Fork, carving out a deep floodplain some 3.2 miles long and 100 feet wide to contain any future floodwaters. What happened next is testimony to the difficulty of imposing manmade constraints on the natural world, said Scott Simon of the Arkansas field office of The Nature Conservancy.

"The river started flopping around in that channel and eroding land. You know, Mother Nature doesn't like a straight line," Simon said. Because a river tends to wend back and forth across the land, forcing it into a channel will only encourage the water to eat into its surrounding banks. The 100-foot channel began to grow and grow, as the river attempted to regain the natural shape of its flow. Three decades later, the floodway is eight times as broad as it was originally.

"The corridor is now 800 feet wide. It's threatening landowners, it's threatening the airport, and it's sending silt down into Greers Ferry Lake. And, there's a bunch of rare fish and mussels that occurred there — there used to be some great fishing habitat — but there's no habitat for hardly any fish in that 3.2-mile stretch."

Now, all of that is changing because of a river restoration partnership between The Nature Conservancy, the city of Clinton, the Arkansas Canoe Club and several other public and private organizations.

With the help of two grants from Southwestern Energy totaling over $1.8 million, the partners are building a new channel for the Archey Fork within the existing floodway. The project employs engineering techniques known as "natural channel design" to strategically nudge the river back into a natural pattern of bends and curves. Workers use local materials — rocks and boulders to create riffles, native vegetation to recolonize the eroded riverbanks, and erosion control structures called toewood, built of trees already downed by a storm. (For more details and pictures, visit restoringtheupperlittlered.com.) It's not an easy process, nor cheap, but Simon said there's a local consensus that it's needed.

"It's the town of Clinton that wanted this, that contacted the local partners and got everybody together. They've been great," he said. "The goals are to stop the loss of land from erosion ... improve the river habitat so that rare fish and sport fish will return, and create some recreational opportunities right there in the city of Clinton — canoeing, fishing, swimming holes." Preserving the safety of the town is a priority, too, of course. "We had the design reviewed by an engineering company, and they certified that this design will not cause any rise in the floodwater."

Phase 1 of the project was completed about a year ago; Phase 2 is ongoing right now. "We like to do river restoration projects in phases," Simon explained. "We want to see how the river responds to the restoration work so that we can understand if there are any adjustments that need to be made to the next phase of the project." So far, so good. Already, wildlife monitors from the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality and the University of Central Arkansas are seeing increased numbers of smallmouth bass — and the reappearance of the yellow-cheeked darter, a rare fish that's been absent from this stretch of river for 30 years.

"You build it and they will come, and you can actually measure it," Simon said. "It's just pretty neat."

The Archey Fork is only one of the Conservancy's many projects in Arkansas. In the Big Woods of the Delta, a seven-mile stretch of the lower Cache River was channelized in the 1970s to control flooding of farmland; the Conservancy is now halfway through a project to return the lower Cache, which is a vital wintering spot for mallards, to its old meandering route. The organization is also preserving a stretch of the Kings River near Eureka Springs that had become badly eroded from nearby mining operations and deforestation. And, in several woodland areas — north of Atkins, on Mount Magazine, around Pinnacle Mountain — the Conservancy is using controlled burns to restore the health of forests that have grown too dense. Clearing the underbrush reduces the chance of a truly catastrophic fire in the future and boosts the population of species such as bobwhite quail.

"Most of us don't realize how much Arkansas has changed, and how different a healthy river or healthy woods compares to something that's not in really good shape," Simon explained. "A healthy river will have very, very few feet of visibly eroding banks. Most of it will be all vegetated. ... In some rivers in the Ozarks, you'll see those real messy, muddy, earthen banks without any vegetation on it — that's not natural."

Other environmental organizations focus on policy and advocacy work. In contrast, the role of The Nature Conservancy is much like that of a social worker: One case at a time, it's attempting to remedy the damage dealt by years of abuse and neglect.

"These are projects that benefit nature but also benefit people," Simon said. "Since it's such practical, on-the-ground work, you can see the results. You can walk around on the results, and you can measure it."

In Arkansas, the Nature Conservancy is seeking donors for the next phase of its Cache River restoration project. Donate online at nature.com (search for "Arkansas" to navigate to the specific page for our state) or by phone at 663-6699. Checks can also be sent to the headquarters of The Nature Conservancy in Arkansas at 601 N. University Ave. in Little Rock.

The organization also welcomes volunteers to assist with its restoration projects in Arkansas. For individuals interested in helping the Conservancy preserve land in critical conservation areas, the Conservation Buyer Program sells properties to individuals who agree to the terms of a protective conservation easement.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]