Jones impressive, but much history to overcome
Is Arkansas ready to elect an African American and a Democrat as governor? For Chris Jones, the second adjective is as big a challenge to overcome at this point in Arkansas history as the first.
Jones announced he was running for governor Tuesday in an impressive 2:37 minute campaign commercial.
He’s a physicist and also a minister and sees no conflict between science and faith. His family came to Arkansas in 1819, and he is a seventh generation Arkansan. He was inspired to be an astronaut by the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion in 1986, but he couldn’t fly because he is deaf in his right ear. Instead, he became a nuclear engineer and earned a doctorate in urban planning. He recently was executive director of the Arkansas Regional Innovation Hub, a nonprofit that supports entrepreneurship. His wife, Dr. Jerrilyn Jones, is an ER doctor and an Air Force veteran.
They have three school-age daughters. He says he loves being a girl dad.
In an interview with the Arkansas Democrat-gazette, Jones, 44, said he was first inspired to run for governor when he was eight years old. If elected, his top priorities would be infrastructure and broadband, improving public schools, and economic development. On his website, he’s quoted saying, “The reality of this moment in our nation’s history is that if we want our politics to be different, we have to be different. Other candidates may try to divide us in this election. But I’m not running for governor to fight a culture war or to go on cable news. I’m here to bring Arkansans back together with a campaign that brings out our best.”
Arkansas has never elected an
African American to a statewide office, to the U.S. Senate or to the House of Representatives. Out of 135 current state legislators, 15 are African American. Seven represent Little Rock or the central Arkansas area, and two represent Pine Bluff.
In fact, in all of American history, there have been only two African Americans elected as governor from any state. Another two were appointed, one of whom served only briefly in Louisiana in the 1870s. There have been 11 African American U.S. senators.
That means Jones will have to overcome more than 200 years of American history in that regard.
By running as a Democrat, he’ll also have to overcome some recent Arkansas history. Gov. Mike Beebe was re-elected governor as a Democrat in 2010 with more than 64% of the vote. But since then, no Democrat running statewide has reached 44%. In the last two election cycles, the ceiling has been 37%. Since 2010, two incumbent U.S. Senators running for re-election as Democrats, Mark Pryor and Blanche Lincoln, failed to reach 40%. Democrats occupy only 29 of the 135 seats in the Arkansas Legislature. Until 2010, they had occupied the vast majority of them.
In one decade, Arkansas has flipped from Democratic dominance to Republican reign, and there’s nothing to indicate the pendulum will move in the opposite direction any time soon.
If Jones wins the nomination, he would face Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the former press secretary for President Trump and daughter of former Gov. Mike Huckabee, or Attorney General Leslie Rutledge. Libertarian Ricky Harrington is also campaigning for the office.
Two other Democrats have announced they are running for governor: James Russell and Supha Xayprasith-mays. The latter immigrated to the United States from Laos at age 6 with her widowed mother and three sisters to escape that country’s communist regime. She eventually became a Walmart executive and then an entrepreneur and is married to former Arkansas Supreme Court Justice Richard Mays.
One noteworthy fact: Chris Jones is the brother of Leon Jones, who is campaigning to be Arkansas’ next attorney general – as a Republican.
The two brothers’ differing viewpoints should make for some interesting family get-togethers, and an interesting future column.