Broadway talks politics at Chamber Breakfast
Giving his take on this year’s election, Shane Broadway, vice president for University Relations with the Arkansas State University system and former member of the Arkansas House of Representatives, spoke at the Malvern- Hot Spring County Chamber of Commerce’s monthly breakfast Thursday.
“The election is not over,” Broadway said. “And I’m not talking about recounts and the presidential election, I think that will continue to wind its way through the process in the courts and all those kinds of things, but you still have really a very significant election out there and that is the race in Georgia for the two senate seats.”
Broadway explained that the senate race in Georgia is important because the United States Senate is currently split 50 percent Republican and 48 percent Democrat with two outstanding. Whoever wins in Georgia will decide if the Senate will be Republican ran or Democrat ran. “Democrats control the U. S. House ( of Representatives) and ( Joe) Biden, obviously, is likely to be the president of the United States, so you’ve got the balance of power, right now, if the Republicans control the Senate,” he said.
Broadway continued by saying that the Georgia Senate race could impact a lot of things, including what happens in Arkansas. He said that if Republicans can retain control of the Senate, then Arkansas Senator John Boozman is in line to become the chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee. The benefit to Arkansas is that agriculture is the state’s number one industry and with Boozman as the chairman it could make a huge impact on the state.
“There’s no way I can express to you just how huge that would be for our state,” he said. “Having someone as the chairman of senate agriculture obviously would be significantly huge for our state.”
Moving on Broadway said that the next several months would be very interesting in terms of politics. The governor is term limited and is entering his last session, which begins in January. Then in 2022 the district lines are going to be redrawn because of the 2020 Census. Broadway said that the districts will look similar, but because areas of the state are
losing population those districts will be larger while some areas, like northwest Arkansas, are gaining population so those districts will be smaller. “That’s going to be a huge issue,” he said.
Broadway feels that the legislative session will be interesting because of COVID-19 and the legislature having to spread out, the governor’s proposed tax cuts and the topic of legislative power and executive power. Broadway explained that some of the governor’s proposed tax cuts could concern the used car sales tax and lowering the income tax for new Arkansans. The lowering of the income tax would be to try to attract people to the state. “That’s just one idea,” he said. “It may not be the right idea it maybe a blend of something else, but
that’s what governors do, governors propose and the legislature dis-poses. That’s the way the process works.”
Broadway continued by explaining how the legislative session could focus on the executive power and the legislative power. He said the pandemic has put some strain between those two because the governor had to make mandates because of the pandemic. “It’s a delicate balance that the governor is trying to navigate,” he said.
“Then after the legislative session it’s campaign season again,” he said. “And 2022 is one of those years that’s going to be big.” There will be the governor’s race, the lieutenant governor’s race, the attorney general, the auditor, the treasurer, as well as the legislative races in brand new districts. That’s why he feels that the next few months will be exciting to watch with so much changing and how it leads up to the 2022 election year. “The next couple months are going to be really interesting to keep an eye on to watch and see how the dynamics change and what impact it has,” he said.
Dr. Steve Rook, chancellor at ASU Three Rivers, also spoke briefly at the breakfast. Rook first spoke about ASU Three River’s COVID-19 numbers.
“We’ve have done far better than I had anticipated,” he said. “Our numbers really are low.”
The college currently has three students and one staff member that are positive and about 11 faculty/staff/students who are in quarantine or isolation. He said that the largest number of positive cases at one time has been five and added that most of those cases are people going home and being infected by members of the family.
Rook also gave updates on the few projects the college is working on right now. The Saline County Career Center is in the process of being built and will be open the fall semester of 2021. Rook said that by the fall semester of 2022 they expect to have 1,100 students enrolled in the career center program. “It’ll be great for the college,” he said.
The second project is the Ritz Theater located on Main Street in downtown Malvern. Rook said that the asbestos abatement has been completed. “All the seats are out, the ceiling is out, there’s progress,” Rook said. The hope for the Ritz is that it can be renovated and used as a performance hall for the college and the community.