The few, the timid, the Democrats
“Russellville may be small, but they’re slow.”—longtime Conway radio sportscaster Bill Johnson calling play-by-play for a high school basketball game in the mid-’70s in which the Conway Wampus Cats were dispatching the Russellville Cy- clones, who were playing a ball-freezing strategy to try to limit the size of their crushing.
Arkansas Democrats may be few, but they’re timid.
They are in this case the mid-’70s Russellville Cyclones, pre-dating Corliss Williamson, a future Cyclone and Razorback legend who was large, but speedy.
State Democratic legislators, pitiable as they are in number and influence, surely did not need to cower last week in an indifferent posture on the crypto-mining issue of intense rural Arkansas concern.
Arkansas Democrats get most of their woefully insufficient votes in Little Rock, Fayetteville and lightly populated Delta strips heavy in Black voters. Goodness knows they needn’t risk making a connection with white rural Arkansas. Their status quo is working so well. Their nationalized absorption by Washington Democrats in their woke packaging has been so successful. I jest, of course.
Last week Democratic state legislators recoiled at addressing quality-of-life concern and the environmental worry associated with crypto mining. They leaned instead on supposedly virtuous protection of the legislative process, as if that made a damn to a person living with oppressive noise and at risk of an electricity brownout—all because of an ignorant blunder that legislators, including Democrats, made in the frenzied last stage of the legislative session last year.
There is still time and the conceivable opportunity in the fiscal session for Democrats to make some amends, but it’s a bit too late for full atonement.
What happened is that three legislators filed resolutions for crypto-related bills to be considered by suspending the rules to allow introduction of non-fiscal matters in a constitutionally required budget session.
One, by the sponsor of the bill last year that made a mess by allowing crypto mining without any local regulation, was for an industry measure that doesn’t do much other than invite lawsuits through vague language.
Another, by Sen. Missy Irvin, was a bit better but narrowly focused.
Seven were from state Sen. Bryan King of Green Forest, a cowboy independent conservative and true populist, and they proposed meaty state regulation, local authority and meaningful fees.
Most House Democrats voted “present,” by which they said they were there for the session but not for the country folks living with crypto-mining distress over loud noises and steep electricity consumption.
King tells me he had previously been told by Senate Republican leadership that his proposals were going nowhere. So, he wasn’t surprised by resistance to his measures. But he was taken aback that most Democrats weren’t even with him. I was surprised, too. Here’s what I’ve received by way of explanation: Democrats fear breaking the voter-mandated practice of having budget-only sessions in off-years. They think that, if we start suspending the rules to take up other matters, these fiscal sessions will turn into annual general ones, doubling the Democrats’ heartache as they resist in vain bills of rightwing overreach about abortion or libraries, or heaven knows.
Suspending the rules for pay raises for state employees was different, they said, because the issue at least had to do with budget spending.
State Sen. Greg Leding of Fayetteville added that there was Democratic concern about rushing through a crypto fix and not learning the original lesson not to make policy in a big hurry.
Democrats were essentially telling those needing urgent protections from crypto mining that they can’t get any immediate relief because more thoughtful relief could come later. People were told to sit tight and live with their woes while Arkansas Democrats held out for perfection that never comes, least of all in Arkansas lawmaking.
Democrats also stress another possibility: Their opposition was only to the process of allowing outside issues. Once the bills get introduced, Democrats could well vote for them because the procedural argument would be moot.
For the bills after being against their introduction … that’s not clear messaging.
Anyway, it might be better to let Republicans file their culture-war bills every year. Maybe they’d run out or tire out sooner that way.
There are many reasons Democrats are anemic in Arkansas. But any list of reasons would have to include—though not at the top— political ineptitude.
Their only answer likely is for a Corliss Williamson of politics to come along to help them play a fullspeed game to win, not a stall game to keep the margin of defeat down.