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November 7, 2002, 9:40 a.m. Arkansas Ways Brand names finish first. By Kane Webb

LITTLE ROCK, ARK. — The political ads had started to run together long before Election Day, but one stood out in the mercifully dying days of a bloody U.S. Senate campaign here in Arkansas: In one brief spot — it couldn't have been more than 30 seconds — the candidate was shown leafing through a Bible; praying at the table with his family, heads bowed, hands together; and sharing a moment with dear old, highly recognizable dad. A half-dozen political commercials earlier, this same candidate, donned in Good Ol' Boy camouflage, had pledged his allegiance to the Second Amendment.

Who was this social conservative, this friend of gun owners, this God-fearing family-man-of-the-people? Mark Pryor, of course, the Democrat.

Right then, you knew this thing was over. The polls, dead-even less than a month earlier, had shown Mark Pryor steadily pulling away from the Republican incumbent, Tim Hutchinson. This was supposed to be one of those up-all-nighters that tips the balance of power in the U.S. Senate. But as it turned out, the Pryor-Hutchinson race wasn't much of one. By Monday, the latest Zogby poll showed Pryor with a 13-point edge, and even some in the Hutchinson camp seemed resigned to the inevitable.

Yes, inevitable. For even on a night when voters across America endorsed George W. Bush by electing the candidates the president had personally campaigned for, Arkansas was, well, Arkansas. Not even five trips to the state by the president could save Tim Hutchinson from his past — and the state's.

Understand: Voters in this small, populist state have a contrary streak as wide as Bill Clinton's campaign smile. After all, this is the same state that, in one memorable election in 1968, voted this weird way: George Wallace for president, Democrat J. William Fulbright for U.S. senator, and Republican Winthrop Rockefeller for governor. Huh? And just six years ago, as the country was reelecting President Clinton, cussedly independent Arkansas sent its first Republican senator since Reconstruction to Washington. His name was Tim Hutchinson.

But that was then. This is 2002, A.D. After Divorce. Tim Hutchinson may not have run explicitly as a family-values conservative back in '96 — in truth, that race was largely based on national issues like Medicare, Social Security, and the popularity/notoriety of Newt Gingrich — but that didn't stop his divorce from become Issues 1 through 100 in this campaign. Issue No. 101 was Mark Pryor's ancestry, but we'll get to that later.

The problem, of course, was that Tim Hutchinson didn't simply get a divorce. It was that this Baptist minister, a Republican in a state still so yellow-dog Democrat it barks, got a divorce and then remarried an ex-aide from his Senate office after, yes, voting to convict Bill Clinton in the president's X-rated Senate trial. Connect the dots, Democrats would tell you, and it spells hypocrisy. Evidently, the charge stuck. Unable to run as a social conservative without the other side bringing up the D-word, Tim Hutchinson yielded that precious real estate to Mark Pryor.

Senator Hutchinson may have been the incumbent in his race for reelection, but the clear favorite was Mark Pryor. Not just any Democrat, he's a Pryor. That's a valuable name brand in Arkansas, right up there with the Razorbacks and fried catfish. Mark's father, David Pryor, served the state as a governor, a U.S. senator, and, to quote one Arkansas journalist, as the state's official pet rock. Throughout his years in high office, Pryor the Elder pulled off a neat, if not impossible, trick: He managed to remain remarkably popular if not loved, while voting largely along the same party lines that often resulted in criticism of Arkansas¹ then-senior senator, Dale Bumpers.

Unfortunately for Tim Hutchinson, Mark Pryor proved himself a chip off the ol' pet rock. "Politics in this country and certainly in this state isn't just local, it's personal," wrote the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. "And Tuesday was a personal triumph for Mark Pryor."

How strong is the Pryor brand in Arkansas? Consider the landscape. Literally. In the months leading up to Election Day, the Natural State was littered with Pryor campaign signs and bumper stickers — the same design dad had used in his many elections. Just the last name on a red, white, and blue background shaped in the state of Arkansas. One wonders if some voters thought they were electing David Pryor all over again.

Once the polls closed in Arkansas, though not without a court battle first, the only suspense that remained was the final margin. By evening's end, Arkansas had again bucked the national trend, kicking out an incumbent Republican senator just as his party would regain control, when he could have ascended to a committee chair and retained a popular president's ear. Instead, the state will be represented by two of the three youngest and least-experienced senators in the minority of the upper chamber: Blanche Lincoln, in her first term, and now Mark Pryor, who capped his victory speech Tuesday night by pulling out his father's old nameplate: "Arkansas Comes First." Surely the irony isn't lost on all of Arkansas's contrary voters.

— Kane Webb is assistant editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.