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Arkansas: Senior Senator Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D) Last Updated September 23, 2003
Blanche Lambert Lincoln was elected to the Senate in 1998 after showing something close to perfect political pitch in her 1990s electoral career. She grew up in Helena, on the flat rice lands of eastern Arkansas, where her father and brother are the sixth and seventh generations running a farm raising rice, wheat, soybeans, and cotton, and where she stayed in public schools after they were integrated. Cheerful, active, endowed with good political sense, she lists her hobbies as duck hunting, fishing and yard sales. After college, in 1982, she worked as a staffer for 1st District Congressman Bill Alexander, then after two years worked as a lobbyist for, among others, Billy Broadhurst--Gary Hart's host on the 1987 Monkey Business cruise. In 1992, she moved back to Arkansas and, as Blanche Lambert (she was married in 1993) ran against Alexander, sensing he was in trouble. He had lost a leadership race in 1986, was named in a lawsuit for a $308,000 debt, and had 487 overdrafts totaling $208,000 on the House bank. ''I'll promise you one thing,'' the 31-year-old challenger said, ''I can sure enough balance my checkbook.'' She won the primary 61%-39%, carrying 23 of 25 counties. In the House, Lincoln compiled a moderate voting record and got a seat on the Commerce Committee. She saw Japan open its market to Arkansas rice and denounced the Supplemental Security Income program that provided disability checks to kids who act up in school. She supported much of the Contract with America in 1995. But when the moratorium on regulations threatened duck hunting season and national wildlife refuges were closed, she got laws changed to ensure it wouldn't happen again. Her re-election margin in 1994 was only 53%-47%, but she seemed well positioned to hold the seat when, in January 1996, she announced that she was pregnant with twin boys and would not run for reelection because of the strain of campaigning in an Arkansas summer during a difficult pregnancy. When Senator Dale Bumpers announced he would not run for reelection in 1998, Lincoln got into the race. She flashed snapshots of her twins and ran ads showing her overseeing mealtime, balancing one twin on her lap, bouncing the other on her knee, laying her head on her husband's shoulder. ''Daughter, wife, mother, congresswoman … Living our rock-solid Arkansas values.'' In the primary, she faced Attorney General Winston Bryant, the Democratic nominee in the 1996 Senate race. She led by an impressive 45%-27% in the May primary, with 64% in her old 1st District, which cast nearly one-third of the votes. She won the June runoff 62%-38%. In the general election, Lincoln stanched the Republican tide that had been running since Bill Clinton left the state, and then some. The Republican nominee was Fay Boozman, an ophthalmologist from Rogers in northwest Arkansas who attended the same church as Republican Senator Tim Hutchinson. Boozman had a profound religious experience in 1992, sold his medical practice, and ran for the state Senate; there he was the champion of the partial-birth abortion ban. Boozman called on Bill Clinton to resign and ran tough comparative ads on Lincoln. He said the Bible dictated his anti-tax philosophy and made a serious gaffe when he said it is rare for women to get pregnant by rape because fear triggers a hormonal change that blocks conception. Lincoln won 55%-42%, a more solid win than Hutchinson's in 1996; Boozman carried the northwest corner of the state and little else. She was the youngest woman ever elected to the Senate. Lincoln's voting record has been a bit to the left of the midpoint of the Senate; she was one of nine Democrats to form a moderate caucus, similar to the House's Blue Dogs, in February 2000. Working with her 1st District successor, Marion Berry, she promoted farm exports, joining the WTO caucus in October 1999 and in May 2000 visiting Cuba, which, before Fidel Castro, purchased much of Arkansas's rice. She described Castro as "very cordial" and "still very much in command and in control," accepted two boxes of cigars, worth $1,250, and strongly supported ending the embargo on trade in Cuba. She voted for the partial-birth abortion ban, saying it was "always a difficult vote." In February 2001, Lincoln got a seat on the Finance Committee and played an important role in some key votes in the closely divided Senate. In March 2001, she was one of six Democrats to vote to kill the Clinton ergonomics regulations and one of six Democrats to vote for non-severability on campaign finance (which threatened to get the whole bill declared unconstitutional). On the Finance Committee, she and other moderates negotiated with Chairman Charles Grassley and ranking member Max Baucus to get two provisions into the committee bill: One was to make the child care tax refundable to those who pay no income tax and the other was to create a new 10% income bracket. She was one of 12 Democrats to vote for the tax cut in May 2001, but she voted against the Bush budget also in May 2001. She voted against oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in April 2002. Lincoln has also worked with Republican Congressman Dan Burton to aid U.S. citizens who have been kidnapped and held in Saudi Arabia (primarily the issue involves children illegally abducted by one of their parents). On two major issues she struggled unsuccessfully to find middle ground. She and Louisiana Sen. John Breaux supported a welfare reform authorization different from the Bush administration version, with 30 hours of work required each week instead of 40 and giving states more leeway to meet the requirement that 70% of recipients leave the rolls (Lincoln and Breaux would let the states count those who had already left); but no welfare legislation emerged. From June to September 2002, she spent much time and effort trying to come up with a compromise on prescription drugs for seniors but, as on welfare, no bill was passed. In September 2002, Lincoln held up the faith-based services bill until she got agreement on a provision allowing corporations to donate a greater share of their stock to charity while still counting it as stock on the books in determining corporate control. Never far from her mind are the rice farmers of Arkansas's Delta. She was one of two Democrats to vote against the farm bill in February 2002, because she said it was not generous enough to cotton and rice farmers; she also worked with Olympia Snowe of Maine to change the softwood lumber agreement with Canada. She fought unsuccessfully against limits on farm subsidies. Three rice farms in Stuttgart and Helena were among the top five recipients of farm subsidies in the country, with $106 million from 1996-2001, the largest concentration of subsidies in the United States. In September 2002, Lincoln pushed for extending beyond 2010 scheduled reductions in the estate tax and allowing family farms to treat as a non-taxable "carryover business interest" transfers of interests to family members so long as they don't sell them. She has supported the $16 million Grand Prairie irrigation project, to replace water that rice farmers get from the nearly depleted alluvial aquifer. Lincoln comes up for reelection in 2004. There are many signs that Arkansas has been trending Republican, but Republican candidates at the top of the ticket have not been faring well lately. Hutchinson was defeated by Democrat Mark Pryor in 2002 and Governor Mike Huckabee was reelected with only 53% of the vote against a weak candidate. In early 2003, neither seemed likely to be a strong opponent for Lincoln in 2004. One possibility is Asa Hutchinson, Tim's brother, a former congressman and head of the Drug Enforcement Administration and most recently a high-level appointee in the Homeland Security Department. It's not clear that he will return to Arkansas to make the race. Another possibility is Arkansas's one Republican congressman, John Boozman, brother of Lincoln's 1998 opponent. But Arkansas is likely to vote for George W. Bush in 2002, and this could be a seriously contested race. And more may be possible for Lincoln: In June 2002, she appeared on National Journal's website as a possible vice presidential nominee.
Update: September 23, 2003
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