Arkansas Lt. Gov. Bill Halter declared in an interview that he’s a stronger general election candidate than Sen. Blanche Lincoln, pointing to his strong showing statewide in Tuesday’s Democratic Senate primary in defiance of conventional wisdom that a progressive favorite would only win urban districts. By his math, over 55 percent of the Democratic primary electorate picked someone other than Lincoln. He likes those odds for their June 8 runoff.
“The fact is we won counties in every part of the state,” Halter told TPMDC in a wide-ranging interview last night. He said he will keep telling everyone for the next three weeks that “if you send the same people to Washington you’re going to wind up getting the same results.”
Conservative Democrat D.C. Morrison pulled in 13 percent of the vote, and told TPMDC yesterday he won’t be backing Lincoln or Halter. Are his voters up for grabs? Former DNC Chairman Howard Dean thinks so, telling me this week that “anybody could win this one” since the conservative’s voters probably aren’t enchanted by Lincoln. “[Morrison’s] voters stay home or they vote for the anti-establishment candidate,” Dean said.
(Of course, using Halter’s math, 58 percent of voters chose a candidate other than him.)
Halter wouldn’t disclose figures, but hinted at “very good fundraising success” in the hours after he pulled 43 percent of the vote to Lincoln’s 45 percent (outperforming the TPM Poll Average that has now narrowed to a near tie.) Overall, his fundraising came from 60,000 individual contributions from across the country, with an average of $30, Halter said.
Halter said he doesn’t begrudge President Obama, former President Bill Clinton or other top Democrats for backing Lincoln. “When I win the Democratic nomination I’m going to ask everyone under the sun to endorse me,” he said.
As I reported yesterday, labor organizations are doubling down and say they think Halter can prevail in the runoff. He’s hoping to get another crack at debating Lincoln, but that’s not looking likely.
Team Halter for more than a week before Tuesday’s election was attempting to say that even a runoff was a victory since, after all, an 11-year incumbent would be coming up short against a candidate who’d been in the game 11 weeks. Lincoln’s camp is taking him seriously, asking him to call on outside groups to “go home” and take down negative ads.
Halter claims his spots are all positive, and cited multiple attack ads run against him by outside groups backing Lincoln.
Halter said he and Lincoln did not speak on election night but that he’d bumped into her at a polling site on Tuesday. They exchanged greetings and he introduced her to his father-in-law. They’ve known each other two decades but aren’t what he would describe as “friends,” he said.
Halter also weighed in on Rep. John Boozman, who surprisingly won the GOP nomination without a runoff by clearing a field of eight candidates Tuesday. He called him “a solid candidate” and “a very likable guy.”
“When I wind up facing him there will be very clear policy differences between us and it will be a great race,” Halter said, saying that their biggest difference comes on fiscal policy.
Read our coverage of the race here.
