Two Marshall men in race for House seat

A special election for a rural state House district seat has at its center a controversial hog farm operation near the Buffalo River — and both Republicans in the race say they’re for the farm.

The District 83 special primary election, which is being held Tuesday, will determine who replaces state Rep. David Branscum, R-Marshall, who left the position to work for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

No Democrats are running in the special election, so Tuesday’s winner will be the next representative for the district.

“The hog farm,” said Donald Ragland and Timmy Reid, both of Marshall,

when they were asked in separate interviews what was the No. 1 issue they were hearing about from voters.

They were referring to C&H Hog Farms, which has been subject to years of controversy surrounding the number of pigs housed there along a tributary to the Buffalo River, the first ever designated national river. The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality recently rejected the farm’s application to renew its operating permit, a decision that is being appealed.

“If we don’t get behind this hog farm, we’re going to lose everything, we’re going to lose it all,” said Reid, 53, a cattle farmer making his first run for public office. “Our rights are at stake.”

Ragland, a 71-year-old former sheriff, noted that four of the five counties in the district — Newton, Pope, Searcy, Boone and Carroll — drain into the Buffalo River, where tourism is a major part of the economy, along with farming.

“There’s not even a Walmart in this district, that’s how rural it is,” Ragland said. “It’s not like there’s going to be any big plants or anything moving in here.”

Ragland and Reid said they don’t share conservationists’ concerns that a mishap at the hog farm could send hog manure into the watershed. They said the river is being dirtied by a proliferation of tourists. Ragland said kayaking has drawn more people to the river, while Reid blamed feral hogs for polluting the river.

Overbearing regulations are at the heart of the problem for the hog farm, according to the Republican pair.

Ragland added that the hog farm’s owners should be compensated through the state Claims Commission if the farm is forced to shut down. (The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported last year that the farm paid $8,823 in property taxes. The number of people employed there was unavailable.)

When asked about health care in the district, both candidates offered rebukes of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, but they were less critical of Arkansas’ “private-option” Medicaid expansion program, which uses state and federal dollars under former President Barack Obama’s law to buy private insurance for more than 285,000 low-income Arkansans.

The program is also known as Arkansas Works.

Ragland called Arkansas Works “the best thing we’ve got right now.”

Reid said, “If we work on it and get it right, I’ll support it.”

Asked what sets the two candidates apart, Ragland said, “I’ve been a Republican all my life. … My family, my great-grandparents were Republicans.”

Records at the secretary of state’s office, however, suggest otherwise. Ragland voted in Democratic primaries three times before 2001, and has voted in Republican primaries a dozen times since.

Clarifying his remarks Friday, Ragland chalked up his voting history in the 1990s to the lack of Republican candidates in then-heavily Democratic Arkansas, especially in local races.

Reid has voted in less than half the total elections Ragland voted in since 1996, according to state voting records, and Reid voted in Republican primaries in 1996 and 2014.

Reid said he’ll appeal to Republican voters in the primary by opposing the “tax and spend” policies of Gov. Asa Hutchinson. Reid accused the Republican governor of spending beyond the state’s means and was doubtful when told that the governor’s proposed budget for next fiscal year is projected to have a $64 million surplus.

“I would have to see some proof of that,” Reid told a reporter. “I don’t know if it is or not, you’re the one that knows that not me. I haven’t looked into that.”