Arkansas lawyer Rebekah Kennedy is challenging Democratic Senator Mark Pryor in the 2008 general election, but she isn’t a Republican. Rather, Kennedy is confronting Senator Pryor from a progressive candidate, exposing Pryor’s work to help the agenda of the Republican Party. Kennedy is running as the Green Party candidate for United States Senate.
Recently, Irregular Times spoke to Rebekah Kennedy about her campaign for the Senate, and asked her where Mark Pryor fits in the system of Arkansas politics as she sees it. The following is a portion of that interview:
Rebekah Kennedy: We have a large category of Rockefeller Republicans in Arkansas, which is a term that may sound odd to people in some places, but they’re sort of liberal in the sense of being forward looking and in favor of education and science. In some cases that kind of Republican has been the only alternative to the back-slapping, good old boy Democratic politics.
Irregular Times: Where in particular does Mark Pryor stand in that system, as you see it?
Rebekah Kennedy:Mark Pryor is the worst of both worlds - the Democratic and Republican Party in Arkansas. On the one hand, he’s part of a status quo, good old boy, our favors and their favors system. At the same time, he is much less pragmatic and moderate than most of those Democratic politicians, and much more right wing.
He is a politician who, although he occasionally gives lip service to issues like education. He’s primarily a conservative politician who most people recognize as having a Republican agenda. He has strongly supported Bush legislation that even some Republicans didn’t support, including particular issues in relation to the Patriot Act, and including the Military Commissions Act.
In fact, that brings me to the second half of your first question, which is why I got involved in this race. We’re looking at a situation where the people of Arkansas are facing the possibility of having no choice on the ballot whatsoever, having a U.S. Senator walk into the U.S. Senate unopposed, and not because he’s a great senator who inspires and leads and has done a good job in his first term. Rather, we’re talking about a senator who voted to suspend the writ of habeas corpus and allowed the President to arbitrarily imprison people for life without trial.
We’re talking about a senator who rarely puts forward any idea for legislation of any ideological stripe of any kind, someone who’s a voter in the Senate, but not a leader in the Senate. The only thing he has led on has been compromising the Democratic strategic position with things like the Gang of Eight, or other different gangs of different numbers, when the Republicans threatened to destroy the filibuster back when they didn’t need it. He became the broker for the compromise on that and allowing the conservative nominees to get through the nominating process even though they don’t have the votes. He was on the Democratic Party committee that was supposed to support the election of Democratic Senators, and yet he supported Joe Lieberman over the Democratic nominee, Ned Lamont. So, his only leadership role in the Senate has been to lead those who want to compromise the narrow position of power the Democrats have in favor of getting Republican agendas through the Senate.
