Decision day summary

More Arkansans voted early this general election than during the non-presidential general election four years ago, a preliminary state election tally shows. As of 10 a.m. Monday, 151,419 Arkansans had voted early since the start of the period on Oct. 23, said Natasha Naragon, a spokesman for the secretary of state’s office.

A Democratic shift in Congress would mean a higher profile for several Arkansans. Sen. Blanche Lincoln appears set to take a subcommittee chairman’s post on the Senate Agriculture Committee, and Rep. Vic Snyder would likely become chairman of a House Armed Services subcommittee. Sen. Mark Pryor is angling for a position on the Senate Armed Services Committee in the next Congress. Republican John Boozman would lose his spot as chairman of the Economic Opportunity subcommittee of the House Veterans Affairs Committee.

A lawsuit challenging the results of the runoff election in state Senate District 16 is back in St. Francis County Circuit Court after the Arkansas Supreme Court on Monday reversed that lower court’s decision to dismiss the complaint. In a related case, the high court denied the appeal of a third Democratic candidate for the same Senate seat; he had also filed a lawsuit challenging the results of the May preferential primary.

More allegations of neglect have surfaced at the state’s largest juvenile lock-up. The disability rights center has filed an 18-page report citing over 50 incidents in which Alexander Youth Services failed to meet it’s obligations in providing services to children.

Although two-thirds of the participants defaulted on their payments, state utility officials want to extend for another year a revised “cold-weather rule” that lets poor, disabled or elderly customers defer part of their natural-gas bill until spring. Large-scale users fear that could unfairly raise rates for non-delinquent customers, and are considering legal action.

The Forrest City Medical Center will expand its’ emergency room facilities from around 1,500 square feet to over eight thousand square feet with a $5 million construction project set to begin in April.

Pinkey McFarlin’s wellknown battle with an addiction to painkillers to treat a chronic back injury made him an easy target for a woman eager to earn money as a confidential informant, an attorney for the Newport alderman told jurors as his federal drug trial began Monday in Little Rock.

The Benton Police Department is urging hundreds of people with active misdemeanor warrants to surrender and avoid going to jail. The department says that there will soon be more room in the jail when the county opens a new lockup later this month.

The Hot Springs Music Festival on Monday sounded a public appeal for donations to help deal with what it expects to be the “overwhelming noise environment” of a competing Harley Owners Group Rally, also scheduled for June 2007.

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Crystal ball time

It is a funny thing that people keep asking me questions about politics. Haven’t they figured it out yet? I don’t know anything and my crystal ball is clearly defective. I have gotten so many wrong, but, back by popular demand, here a few pre-elections reflections and predictions.

First of all, this is not the nastiest campaign I have seen. I would prefer not to mention which ones were worse, but I will say that it is rather intense to have several nasty races at the same time. Nationally, I say the donkeys take the house and the elephants keep senate control. The notable thing is that, one way or another, the free ride previously enjoyed by the Bush administration is over.

I say that the governor’s race is very close and we will go to bed tomorrow night not knowing. Turnout is the key. I predict Bill Halter has a decisive win over Jim Holt. Dustin McDaniel buries Gunner DeLay.

Here is the shocker of the day. Pulaski County Judge Buddy Villines is in trouble. He will get a big surprise from Republican Buddy York. Villines could lose, although I do not expect it.

Stumbaugh and Anderson run well, but incumbents prevail.

None of this should be taken as endorsements. This is just my sense of where things stand.

(Broadcast November 6, 2006)

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