Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln
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Lincoln insists that she is more sinned against than sinning. She believes that her efforts to walk the tightrope down the middle in a hyper-partisan era have made her the target of big-spending interest groups. Halter's challenge has been fueled by more than $5 million from labor unions and the online left, which rebelled at Lincoln's stands against the public option for health insurance, the proposed cap-and-trade strategy for controlling carbon emissions and card-check voting in union-recognition elections. But his campaign might never have sprouted had the ground not been plowed by conservative groups. Last fall, the right poured as much as $7 million into pressuring Lincoln on health care, which has weakened her for this year's general election. That worked: in head-to-head matchups with leading Republican contenders, Lincoln trails them all, barely touching 40% in polls.
Halter trails Lincoln among likely primary voters but may be in a position to force her into a runoff. He argues that he can better tap the anti-incumbent mood in a matchup against the Republican front-runner, Representative John Boozman. The Democratic Party hierarchy, however, is closing ranks behind Lincoln. President Obama and former President Bill Clinton — an Arkansan — have both released ads praising the Senator, and First Lady Michelle Obama appeared to snub Halter during a recent appearance in Pine Bluff.
This isn't Lincoln's first brush with wrathful voters. Raised on a rice plantation along the Mississippi River near Memphis, Lincoln was first elected to Congress in 1992 as the House member from Northeastern Arkansas. She was among the freshmen Democrats who narrowly passed Clinton's economic plan, which raised taxes and helped Republicans to a landslide in 1994. "I've taken the hard votes and I have the scars to prove it," she says. Having won 70% of the vote in 1992, Lincoln eked by with 53% two years later. In 1996, she left Congress to give birth to her twin sons.
A Senate seat opened up two years later, with the retirement of Democrat Dale Bumpers. Lincoln's easy victory in a low-turnout race made her the youngest woman ever elected to the Senate. She was 38. Despite that fact, she is now, in a sense, a 20th century politician in a 21st century pickle, a skilled navigator of the midstream at a time when technology has made it easier to organize around ideological extremes. She has fallen into the trap of the overmoderate politician. By trying to make everyone a little bit happy, Lincoln may not have made anyone happy enough. She's too Democratic for Republicans, but not enough for the Democratic base.
"There's just a lot of national groups that are using this race to make points," Lincoln ventures. She's not just a candidate, she believes, but a symbol, and both sides want to make an example of her. Last fall's onslaught was intended to scare moderate Democrats into blocking health care reform: "They were bashing me for voting in favor of" the Senate health care bill, which did not include the public option, she says. At the same time, her failure to embrace the House version brought on the barrage from the left.
"One side beats me up for doing it, and the other side beats me up for not doing enough of it," she says. In Arkansas, which is neither red nor blue, that doesn't have to be a problem, though. Its politicians have succeeded for generations by playing both ends against the middle. (In the Clinton era, it was called triangulation.) The real danger for Lincoln — and for her colleagues this year — is getting beat up just for being in Washington.