Lincoln Trailing in Arkansas Polls
Politico reports:
VAN BUREN, Ark. — Blanche Lincoln needs to reach out to seniors so badly that she even dared to interrupt a Bingo game.
“Nobody told me we’d be honored with Ms. Lincoln’s presence, ” the announcer said somewhat sarcastically at a senior center where some 25 people had gathered on a Thursday morning. “We’ll hold a little while, I guess.”
Down in the polls and written off by both the media and her own party, the Democratic incumbent is engaged in a furious brand of retail politics that will take her to at least 109 Arkansas cities, including this sleepy town of 22,000 people near the Oklahoma border, where she dropped in on a game of Bingo, introduced herself to blue-collar patrons at a tiny diner, secured support from a woman at a nail salon and asked a gun-carrying constituent on Van Buren’s Main Street for his vote.
Lincoln is littering the state with brochures calling her “One Tough Lady,” telling voters about her family’s seven generations in Arkansas and constantly touting the fact that she’s the first Arkansan to chair the powerful Senate Agriculture Committee. Yet she’s also stuck trying to explain her reasons for backing the controversial new health care law and finds herself insisting to voters that she is, indeed, a moderate.
None of that may matter, as Lincoln finds herself on the receiving end of sharp voter backlash against Washington incumbents in a year in which Republicans are poised to make dramatic gains in the House and the Senate.
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