Democratic candidates focus on voter education in Northwest Arkansas rematches • Arkansas Advocate

Northwest Arkansas voters may have a sense of déjà vu when they head to the polls in the coming weeks. Bentonville and Springdale residents will decide rematches in Arkansas House Districts 9, 10 and 11 where Democrats are focusing on voter education to improve their odds of victory this time around.

All three Republican incumbents did not respond to interview requests for this story. 

Democrat Diana Gonzales Worthen said she felt confident about her chances during the 2022 election for Washington County’s District 9, the state’s only district with a majority of Hispanic voting-age residents. When votes were tallied, she lost to Republican DeAnna Hodges by 109 votes, the exact number of votes cast for Libertarian Steven Stilling.

Stilling is not participating in the 2024 race.

The loss was “heart-wrenching,” but Gonzales Worthen said she wanted to know what happened. What she found was that the district is home to several new voters, so lots of education about the voting process is needed, she said. As a result, the longtime educator has engaged in voter education initiatives and launched campaign efforts earlier than in 2022.

After participating at a candidate forum hosted by the League of Women Voters of Washington County at the Fayetteville Public Library on Oct. 8, Gonzales Worthen told the Advocate she’s running again because she feels she’s the best person to represent District 9.

“[The race] could have gone either way, and so I’m very happy that I decided to do it again because many of the people that had been identified supporters, being that the district is [a] majority Latino district, many of them were voting for the first time and didn’t know the process,” she said. “And so going back knocking doors, it’s been educating all of them to know exactly what they need to do because they didn’t know where to vote, how to vote. Some thought that they could vote online.” 

In neighboring District 11, Democrat Rey Hernandez said he hadn’t planned on running again because he was getting older and wasn’t sure he had the stamina for another campaign. When Hernandez realized no one else had filed against the incumbent, he jumped in the race because he didn’t want it to go uncontested.

Following the Oct. 8 candidate forum, Hernandez told the Advocate he was optimistic in 2022 when he ultimately lost to Republican Rebecca Burkes by nearly 1,300 votes, and said he “wrongly assumed that people just automatically come out and vote.” 

“So it is [a] very different race for me,” Hernandez said. “I realize that people need to understand that there is a race going on and that that race can only be won with votes. It’s not won by reading your mail or looking on social media. You actually have to pick yourself up and go down to the polls.”

Arkansas historically has reported low voter participation rates, but Hernandez said he thinks the fact that it’s a presidential election year and a woman is running at the top of the ticket might help. Hernandez said it would be nice if he and Gonzales Worthen win their respective elections and could provide representation for Springdale’s Hispanic community at the state Capitol. 

Residents of Springdale, where roughly 39% of the population is Hispanic, have never been represented by a Hispanic lawmaker in the Arkansas Legislature.

“That’s our hope, that we can get in there, create a Hispanic Caucus for once in the state of Arkansas and give our people, la raza, some representation as well as for all of our constituency — teachers, veterans, ranchers, everybody that we represent,” he said.

Hodges and Burkes did not participate in the Oct. 8 candidate forum.

In Benton County, House District 10 also has a 2022 rematch on the ballot. Freshman Rep. Mindy McAlindon, a Centerton Republican, defeated Democrat Kate Schaffer by 1,460 votes.

Schaffer said she “didn’t know what to expect” two years ago as a first-time candidate with a non-incumbent opponent, and receiving 44% of the vote was “a pretty good showing” in her opinion. She decided to run again after paying close attention to the 2023 legislative session and being frustrated by the “lopsided” division of power due to Republicans’ supermajority, she said.

Her message that she hopes “to bring compassion and common sense” to the Legislature “seems to be resonating with people,” she said.

“I think there’s kind of a feeling that we need to bring some balance back to the statehouse, that it’s getting too extreme,” Schaffer said.

More than 60% of registered voters cast ballots in the District 10 race two years ago, and Schaffer’s campaign has responded by reaching out to newly registered voters this year, she said.

House District 9

Hodges is the current representative of District 9, which includes east Springdale in Washington County. During her first term in office, the freshman legislator was the lead sponsor of a bill that amended the law concerning contracts for work performed on state aid roads. 

She also co-sponsored bills that amended the state’s Freedom of Information Act, reduced the income tax and increased the homestead property tax credit. 

Hodges told the Arkansas Democrat Gazette her constituents work hard and want to keep more of what they earn. The incumbent also told the newspaper she wants to explore what the state can do to help cities build needed infrastructure, and look at making public transportation safer by giving public transit systems more authority to remove disruptive passengers. 

This is Gonzales Worthen’s fourth time seeking a seat in the Arkansas General Assembly. She had unsuccessful bids for the House in 2006 and 2022, and the Arkansas Senate in 2012. Gonzales Worthen said her 2024 campaign is “all about strong schools, strong families and a strong Springdale.” 

With 35 years of experience as an educator, Gonzales Worthen said her focus if elected would be on education-related issues, such as ensuring that teachers and support staff are well paid. Additionally, Worthen said she’s interested in looking at after-school and summer programs that would help working families and also provide an opportunity where students could work on literacy skills, which historically have been poor in Arkansas.

“I’m a co-founder of two nonprofits where I worked with a lot of families and have helped to provide college opportunities there as well, and so in a nutshell, with my education background — education, health care, mental health care, those are all of the areas that I would really like to work towards,” she said.

House District 10

Northern Bentonville, northeastern Centerton and southern Bella Vista comprise District 10.

Schaffer, a Bentonville resident, has worked on previous Democratic legislative campaigns and said the area is “really forward-thinking… very dynamic and changing quickly.”

McAlindon told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that District 10 residents “are highly active entrepreneurs who don’t want constraints of government stopping them.” She supports reducing “regulations, red tape and taxes” to support small businesses, according to her campaign website.

She co-sponsored the two cuts to the state’s corporate and individual income tax rates that have been proposed since she took office, in September 2023 and in June of this year.

“Arkansans deserve to keep more of their own money,” McAlindon’s website states.

Schaffer said tax cuts should be “targeted for average Arkansans” instead of adding to the state’s “upside-down tax system where low-income people pay the lion’s share.”

McAlindon was among the 80 GOP lawmakers who co-sponsored the LEARNS Act, a wide-ranging 2023 law that changed many aspects of education in Arkansas, including the creation of a new school voucher program. Her website mentions her support for allowing “parents to decide on what is best” for their children’s education.

She introduced a “Parents Bill of Rights” late in the 2023 legislative session that would have allowed parents to review classroom materials and to remove their child temporarily from school if a class or school activity conflicts with the parents’ religious or moral beliefs. The bill passed the House but slowed to a halt after Senate Education Committee members expressed concerns that it would burden teachers.

McAlindon was also the lead sponsor of Act 511, which prohibits public schools and colleges from requiring employees to participate in implicit bias training.

Schaffer criticized McAlindon’s education policy stances, including her campaign fliers that say she favors “strong schools.”

“She fails to put the word ‘public’ in there, and I would argue that being a sponsor of the LEARNS Act is not being a strong advocate for public schools,” Schaffer said.

By contrast, Schaffer supports “adequately funding schools, supporting teachers and preparing kids” in public education, according to her campaign website.

House District 11

Burkes, who founded a residential and commercial real estate development, construction and brokerage company with her husband, represents District 11, which encompasses downtown Springdale and stretches northward into Benton County and eastward toward Beaver Lake.

During her first term in office, she was lead sponsor of a bill that revised child labor laws and eliminated the state requirement for children under the age of 16 to obtain permission from the Division of Labor in order to be employed.

According to her campaign website, Burkes said government will grow and become more invasive in people’s lives if left to its own devices, so the answer is less government. 

“Small business and entrepreneurship are the backbone and lifeblood of this region, and I will fight for lower taxes and against the red tape that limits and burdens these businesses,” Burkes said. “I am 100% pro-life and will fight to defend life of the unborn, protect your 2nd Amendment fundamental rights, and push back against invasive liberal ideology in our schools.”

Hernandez, a Marine Corps veteran, cattle rancher and University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences community health worker, said he’s likewise interested in education, and has helped the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) raise more than $1 million statewide over the last 20 years to help Latino students pursue higher education. 

If elected, Hernandez said he would work to create a living wage for Arkansans, noting that although the state’s minimum wage increased to $11 an hour in 2021, those who were making just above that were left behind because they didn’t receive an increase in pay. 

“We don’t want to keep our Arkansans at a minimum,” he said. “We want them all thriving so whenever there’s going to be a wage increase for the minimum wage, there will also be an equal wage increase for every hourly worker with companies that are over 500 employees.”