Campaign Focus : Heated race down to seniority, taxes
Posted on Sunday, October 5, 2008
FAYETTEVILLE — State Rep. Jim House works the traffic jams along Arkansas 265 every weekday morning. He figures as many as 3, 000 potential voters are stuck in traffic out there, and he knows how to get their attention — on horseback.
Straddling a red roan crossbreed, the professional horseshoer holds a 2-by-2-foot handmade sign that reads “Re-elect Jim House, House of Representatives.”
A two-mile traffic jam can provide a captive audience, and House, who lives just down the road in the Baldwin community, is hard to miss campaigning in the saddle. Every day, he picks a different intersection along Arkansas 265, or Crossover Road, but the intersection at Arkansas 16 provides the longest lines of potential voters.
“I think they help a lot,” House said of the two horses he used for campaigning in 2006 and again this year. “I won by in the neighborhood of 150 votes last time.”
“I like to see people get elected on the issues, not because they sit on a horse,” said Gene Long, a Republican from Springdale who is challenging House, a Democrat, this year for the District 89 seat in the state House of Representatives. District 89 is in eastern Washington County.
LONG LEGACY Originally from Winnfield, La., Long said he’s a member of the most powerful political family in Louisiana history. Long said he is apparently a cousin of late Louisiana Gov. Huey Long, although Long isn’t sure of the exact degree of kinship. Gene Long’s father wanted to name him after Huey, but his mother said no. Instead, Long was named Hugh Eugene Long, or Hugh E. Long to satisfy his father’s desire, at least phonetically.
“I’ve been in a political family all my life, but I’ve never been a candidate before,” said Long. “I’m 57. If I’m ever going to run, now is the time.... I want to pay back my country for the lessons I’ve received.”
After six years in the Navy, Long went to work in 1975 for State Farm Insurance in Monroe, La.
He transferred to Fort Smith in 1981 and started his own business in Northwest Arkansas in 1997.
The Gene Long agency is an insurance company with offices in Fayetteville, Rogers and Mena. In June, he purchased Insurance Marketplace, which had been a subsidiary of ANB Bancshares.
The major issues in Long’s campaign are taxes and education, saying the state doesn’t have to raise taxes to improve education. State spending should be cut instead, he said.
Arkansas ranks 50 th in college graduates, 48 th in income and 25 th in overall tax burden, he said.
“How can you take people so poor and tax them so much and ever get away from that 48 th income spot ?” he asked. “‘ You cannot have capitalism without capital, ’” he said, quoting Earl Long, Huey’s late brother and another Louisiana governor.
“When the state takes your capital, all you have left is socialism,” Gene Long said, “and I don’t know anybody who prospers under socialism.”
Long said he’s anti-abortion, believes in the sanctity of marriage and supports Second Amendment weapon rights.
“All those things involve people,” he said, echoing the populist platform of the Long family. “Sometimes, you have to look at how values affect people.”
Long is the second member of his family to run for office as a Republican. His uncle Gerald Long was elected last year to the Louisiana Senate. “I’m not a bad guy because I’m a Republican,” Gene Long said, noting that, occasionally, “I sound like a Democrat.” Long said that Arkansas had a surplus in its budget last year and that money should be given back to residents who are struggling with high gas prices and other economic stress.
HOUSE THE HORSESHOER Jim House said he believes the Legislature gave $ 250 million back to residents last year when it passed a 3 percent cut in the sales tax on groceries, over a two-year period. He hopes the final 3 percent is cut from the food sales tax in the next Legislative session. The Legislature also gave $ 32 million to the poorest Arkansans by removing them from the income tax rolls, House said.
House is in the second year of his first term as a state legislator. He learned how things are done during his first term, and it would be a waste not to re-elect him now, he said, because he will have more seniority and be able to serve on committees that can better benefit Northwest Arkansas. House now serves on the House Public Transportation Committee; the City, County and Local Affairs Committee; and the Joint Committee on Public Retirement and Social Security.
After college, House spent 26 years working at the Fayetteville office of the state Department of Health. He was administrator of the Washington County Health Department from 1990 to 2000, retiring at the age of 51 to shoe horses. House used his G. I. Bill money to go to horseshoeing school in Sperry, Okla. He’s been a farrier since 1974.
“It’s very bad for my body,” he said, while grappling with the hind leg of a large Belgiancross horse to pull an old shoe off. “I shoe horses on demand, but I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t enjoy it.”
Almost everything the state Legislature does concerns money and budgets, he said.
Everybody wants more money for their projects, he said. House said he keeps a piece of paper on his desk at the General Assembly that states, “Jim, all legislation is special-interest legislation. It’s all special interest to somebody.”
“But if it’s bad for the general population,” he said, “I can’t vote for it.”
Two of the major issues before the next Legislature concern medical improvements, he said.
One is the proposed satellite campus in Fayetteville for the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, which will need between $ 3 million and $ 5 million per year in funding. The other is a statewide system for trauma care training in hospitals.
Another big issue is infrastructure, he said. Northwest Arkansas’ highways are too congested, and the two-mile traffic jams at highways 265 and 16 are evidence of that, he said.
Like the poster he holds from his horse for the traffic to see, House takes pride all his signs are homemade and that he spent only $ 10 for the stencils volunteers use to spray blue paint on the boards.
Long’s campaign signs, in contrast, are large and professionally printed, House said.
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