• CLUB FOR GROWTH TROPHY: Tom Cotton, 4th District GOP nominee at victory speech.

• PROSECUTOR LEADS: Scott Ellington almost won 1st District primary without runoff.

* IT WAS INDEED TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE: Early returns showed moderate (in the Republican context) candidates leading several hotly contested state Senate primaries in Northwest Arkansas, though it had become apparent before I quit that Bart Hester, the former Razorback/Koch Bros. property was going to defeat Tim Summers in Bentonville. The Americans for Prosperity/Crossland Construction/Teresa Oelke Tea Party express train of fellow travelers had reason to crow when all was done — they could claim a big part of victories by Sen. Fireball Holland in Van Buren, Rep. Bryan King of Green Forest and Rep. Jon Woods of Springdale. Holland and Woods face good and interesting Democratic opponents in Republicanland — Rep. Tracy Pennartz in Holland's case and Diana Gonzales Worthen in Woods' case. It will be a test of the possibility of appealing to moderation, though Northwest Arkansas Republicans are exulting in the dominance of their extreme rightwing point of view in that part of the state. Jon Woods was quoted: "I think the conservatives are tired of the moderates in our party." There you have the future of the Republican Party. In the long haul, I still believe that this self-selection of an extreme rightward orthodoxy is bad for the party nationally, if not in places like Benton County and similar. But in the short run, middle-of-the-roaders (and common sense) are about to get pulverized. No creed but greed is the order of the day. Women's rights and tolerance of sexual minorities? Fugheddaboudit. Democrats demonstrated no such liberal tilt in their contested races last night, far from it, in fact. The only true liberal who won was Joyce Elliott, an incumbent with that advantage, who beat a guy who carried Obamacare and who is no conservative, though he was burdened with backing from wealthy corporate patrons in a poor black district. There was a class split there, maybe, though not an ideological one.

* RACE: When it was all over and the heavily white precincts came in, Rep. Keith Ingram took 55 percent of the vote to defeat Sen. Jack Crumbly in his newly drawn Senate district. Crumbly sued because the district wasn't sufficiently black enough to ensure his election. Apparently not, particularly when black voters don't turn out.

* RUNOFFS: In the 1st District Democratic congressional primary, Scott Ellington had 49 percent of the vote to Clark Hall's 39, several hundred votes shy of an outright victory. Ellington, by name recognition as a multi-county prosecutor from the district's biggest city, would appear the favorite to edge over in the runoff, but a very light turnout could produce strange results. The 12 percent that went to Gary Latanich seems unlikely to go to Clark Hall. Latanich had attacked Hall harshly in the early going. Ellington could present a strong challenge to incumbent Republican Rep. Rick Crawford. Hall, too, for that matter.

In the 4th District Democratic congressional primary, Sen. Gene Jeffress and his non-campaign led 40-36 over Q. Byrum Hurst, the Hot Springs lawyer. Who can say where crank D.C. Morrison's 25 percent will go? Maybe not vote at all. Hurst, tax problems and all, would be the strongest candidate against Republican winner Tom Cotton of Washington, D.C. (a temporary Dardanellle resident), in the fall.

* BRAGGING RIGHTS: The anti-tax corporate fat cats at Club for Growth are exultant at the victory of Tom Cotton in the 4th District Republican congressional primary. Their $300,000 accounted for almost a third of Cotton's money — along with bags full of other eastern loot — and beat a Mike Huckabee-backed candidate, Beth Anne Rankin. Huckabee and CFG don't get along, a point in the Huckster's favor.

* THE PRESIDENT: The Democrat-Gazette's promotion of a nut candidate in the Democratic primary for president continued this morning as the paper led with the vote for loser John Wolfe. President Obama, who hit not a lick in Arkansas while Wolfe robo-called and campaigned with endless free media from newspaper and TV, got 58 percent of the vote. That is typically viewed as a landslide, but Republicans and the DOG are endeavoring to portray it as a sign of Obama weakness. Uh, yes, the swarthy Muslim Kenyan isn't much liked in Dixie. If he gets 38 percent in the fall in Arkansas, it will be a good night.

Here's the virtually complete statewide returns. The secretary of state's vaunted vote reporting effort, which cost $500,000, is lacking lots of counties, as expected.

Here's the summary of the Pulaski County vote. Obama got more votes than all Republican candidates combined. Runoffs include LR School Board member Charles Armstrong versus Tommy Branch for House district 30 and Patti James v. John Hout for a juvenile judgeship, but that non-partisan runoff won't occur until November. The links to County Election Commission precinct results are currently not functioning.

It's a strange election day before us. A Republican primary — for 4th District Congress — is the hottest race on the ballot. A Democratic primary race for 1st District Congress has barely caused a ripple. Republican legislative primaries tend to offer a choice between hard-core rightwingers and truly bat**** reactionaries. Most interesting race on the Democratic side is the effort by billionaires (Walton, Stephens) and Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce cutouts (Dickson Flake) to beat Sen. Joyce Elliott in a race to represent a low-income, majority black district that Walton probably wouldn't walk through without a security cortege. Elliott's challenger has been AWOL in the fight to preserve homes targeted for demolition by the Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce Technology Park. But what voters in that district don't know can't hurt them, right?

Oh, there's also the Republican-manufactured high interest in the vote for crank candidate John Wolfe in the Democratic presidential primary. It's a two-day embarrassment for President Obama if Wolfe scores well, says here. Arkansas is irrelevant however you slice it in this — and most — presidential elections.

The big news of the day might be the success met by paid canvassers for a batch of proposals to amend state law or constitution. Sign petitions for:

* THE ETHICS REFORM ACT: It would level the playing field between moneyed interests and the 99 percent at the Arkansas legislature.

* THE GAS SEVERANCE TAX: If we increase our severance tax to a rate comparable with other major gas-producing states we will be able to repair damage done to county roads by drilling rigs and otherwise insure a stream of revenue for highways. If higher severance taxes killed the drilling industry, drillers wouldn't be in high-tax states like Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma and many more. The tax is a tiny marginal cost of the proposition. Gas companies have already spent $1 million to discourage democracy.

Who knows where these guys will stop? The image at top shows something you'll find on the industry-funded website attacking the tax petitions. It urges people to report, East German style, whenever you spot a dissident gathering gas tax signatures. Then what? Will a drive-by kneecapping squad be dispatched? A counter-protestor with a Don't Sign placard? Cameras to take photos for circulation? It's Big Brother scary. I plugged in my own address last night, but haven't looked out the window yet to see if I'm being staked out.

Message: Ve vill not tolerate dissent from the corporate line!!!

Canvassers may also be gathering signatures for some terrible casino proposals. The current semi-monopolies produced for Southland and Oaklawn casinos by legislative finagling are products of reprehensible self-interest politicking. But that's no excuse to approve something even worse.

CONFIDENTIAL TO SLIMEBALL: You do know, don't you, that the candidate you're supporting by attacking the birthplace of his opponent ALSO was not born in Arkansas? Full disclosure: I was not born in Arkansas either. Is 39 years punishment enough to claim residence?

The Arkansas state employees PAC has announced endorsements in state legislative races.

Here's the list.

Note: Most, but not all, are Democrats. (Wonder if those handful of honored Republicans want to repudiate support from this organized labor group? It is, after all, in the usual GOP formulation, composed of underworked, overpaid parasites interested only in pensions, holidays and health insurance coverage, unlike the public service-devoted legislators.) No endorsement in the Little Rock Senate race between Sen. Joyce Elliott and Rep. Fred Allen.

• NOT ME: Secretary of State Mark Martin blames outdated website on predecessor who left office at end of 2010.

Most of the information you’ll find there for candidates, news organizations and other citizens is left over from the 2010 election.

For example, to help people determine where the various candidates for the State Senate and House of Representatives will be running, there are maps of the districts you can download. The only trouble is they are the old maps. Secretary of State Mark Martin was involved in the redistricting process after the 2010 Census, but he hasn’t yet found time to get someone in his office to make new maps available on the website.

On the front page of the Elections Division is an elections calendar for 2012, which points out that noon Sunday was the first day for nonpartisan judicial candidates to file petitions for ballot access. It doesn’t say where these petitions should be filed, what form is required or how many signatures must be gathered. And frankly I doubt that any government office was open Sunday to take the petitions. Maybe Monday.

But that calendar says we’re having a general election, a presidential election no less, on Nov. 6, and there’s a lot of paperwork to get filed, a lot of words to fly, between now and then.

There's more. Lots more.

PS — Ockert didn't even mention the lack of an updated printed or on-line initiated act guideline, with signature requirements. That's another process underway right this minute.

UPDATE: This is rich. Roy Ockert has shared a response he received from the secretary of state's office. His complaints are legitimate, the letter says, though ONE piece of information he sought actually was there. But what I love is that aide Mark Myers, who'd laugh you out of the room if you said Barack Obama inherited a financial disaster from George Bush, is blaming the former secretary of state for the problem. I kid you not.

Post election thoughts, if you have them, right here. I'll check as spirit moves.

ARKANSAS — road bonds. UPDATE: Early results from the secretary of state show bonds being approved overwhelmingly in a light vote, more than 8-1 at the very beginning, but counties settling down to steady 3-1 and 4-1 margins. The early vote in Pulaski County was 78-21 percent and it grew to 82 to 18 with most of the vote counted.

NORTH LITTLE ROCK — sales tax. The early vote totaled about 1,100 and they split 54-46 in favor of the permament half-cent tax and 52-48 in favor of the capital improvement half-cent. I wouldn't call this yet. Early voters tend, I think, to be pro-government votes.

UPDATE: The Pulaski County Election Commission was woefully behind in reporting results, as usual. But I'm hearing from North Little Rock that Mayor Pat Hays has conceded defeat of BOTH tax measures. Does that mean he won't seek re-election next year? And, if he doesn't, who will take on Rep. Tracy Steele? Some day, maybe, the Election Commission will post the votes. They're blaming rain. I guess the Pony Express couldn't get through the flooded ravine.

UPDATE II: The Election Commission votes don't reflect how many precincts this covers, but at 9:54 p.m., with almost 97 percent of precincts counted countywide, it did finally show the trend toward tax defeats — 2,758 to 2,522 (52-48) AGAINST the permanent half-cent; 2,767 to 2,489 (53-47) AGAINST the temporary half-cent for a $20 million mayoral slush fund and other capital expenses.

MISSISSIPPI — personhood for the zygote. UPDATE: Shocker at 8:36 p.m.., with 16 percent of the vote in. The measure is LOSING, 43 For; 57 percent against, with 59,000 votes counted. Don't know how votes in Mississippi split, but I should note that this same group of voters is heavily favoring a Republican for governor, and overwhelmingly approving a voter ID measure and an anti-eminent domain proposal. In other words, some differention is underway on "personhood." Even with almost no people in Mississippi courageous enough to say publicly how bad this issue was, the word got out and people heard it. It's going down, no doubt about it. Perhaps this is why I couldn't get such abortion extremists as Sen. Jason Rapert, who's spoiling to make his race against Rep. Linda Tyler all about abortion, to answer a simple question on whether or not he favored this amendment.

OHIO — repeal of union bashing. UPDATE: John Kasch's anti-union bill for public employees is going down, way down.

NORTH CAROLINA — school desegregation. The Democrats have retaken control of the Wake County schools, a model of desegregation and successful busing, from the Popeheads, Kochheads and Tea Partyers who wanted to return to separate schools.

MAINE: Voters there approved a return to same-day voter registration. Republicans, as part of their national vote suppression effort, had repealed the law. Mississippi, naturally, approved required voter IDs to suppress black and elderly and student vote.

Some people are getting a little of their country back.

• CLARK HALL

He's for jobs. Against "partisanship before people." His potential Republican opponent is on record in support of an end to Medicare as a single-payer insurance program. Sounds like a theme. Noted: Zac Wright, who was Gov. Mike Beebe's campaign manager, is the contact on Hall's news release. Filing deadline for May primary is in March.

UPDATE: Republican attack machine already pounding Hall for gladly accepting available health care planning money and for once supporting legislation to bypass the electoral college for popular election of a president. Republicans want federal money for tax breaks for the rich. And they don't want to give up the electoral college because they hate democracy, otherwise known as one-man, one-vote. Remember 2000? The man who lost the election went to the White House.

His announcement follows:

The Republican push to put ever higher ID hurdles in the way of people voting — particularly people from population segments not friendly to Republican candidates — is built on the fiction of a need to combat voter fraud. There's scant evidence of voter fraud and now comes new reporting on the emptiness of one of the very few cases ever cited by the Republican anti-vote crowd.

Vote fraud is to be distinguished from people turning in phony voter registration cards in voter drives. Fraud comes only when people obtain false registration AND vote falsely. Doesn't happen. Voter suppression through scurrilous caging and other means? That happens a lot. Ask U.S. Rep. Tim Griffin, an expert in the field.

Also, there are no doubt criminal election officials in some places. Our cover story next week, from Tom Glaze's memoir, will richly recount bipartisan election fraud in a rural Arkansas county that persisted into the 1970s. A voter ID program wouldn't have done a thing about that.

Rep. Allen Kerr has been lauded for his aggressive campaign against state employee double-dipping. Much of what he highlighted was inexcusable and needed repair, though some steps had already been taken legislatively before he undertook his publicity onslaught. In every branch of government — judiciary, executive, legislative, higher ed — employees have fake-retired for brief periods and immediately returned to the same jobs (no meaningful job search held), drawing paychecks and pension. So legislation has been introduced to make sure that doesn't happen again, primarily by saying those who return to work must forfeit retirement payments when they are back on payroll.

So what aboutHB 1040 by Kerr and several other Republican legislators? Is it perfect? Not if you think it's OK to exempt certain employees. George Hopkins, director of the Arkansas Teacher Retirement System, opposes the legislation as written. He's been calling the bill out on Twitter this morning, in response to a letter to the editor in support of the bill and its prohibition on a return to covered employment by members of the teachers retirement system. Among Hopkins' points:

* HB1040 exempts a select group of members "chosen" by the sponsor from the application of the prohibition. Always look at an exemption.

* Who is exempted: all colleges, some state agencies, and ANYONE who retires between January and July, 2011. Policy justification for this?

* Another problem is the bill waters down the STRICT ATRS enforcement of the termination separation. The bills encourages violations.

* HB1040 suspends future benefits when a violation is discovered. ATRS requires repayment of all benefits and applies interest on the benefits,

* The weak enforcement is insufficient to comply with IRS requirements of correction of the violation. This puts ATRS at risk with the IRS!

I've asked Kerr to respond.

The Arkansas Republican Party wants a primary to choose a nominee for the vacant House District 54 seat in Crittenden County, where Democrat Fred Smith resigned after a felony conviction. The GOP chose a cheaper convention for a recent House vacancy in Hot Springs, but said that was because it was a speedier process and allowed filling the seat for part of the legislative session. There's not time to get the District 54 seat filled for the session, the party said.

• Lance Turner
• CHUMS: Candidates talk over coffee.

This picture from Lance Turner was too good to pass up.

If you need any info on where to vote, check out the Secretary of State's website.

After a round of rather uneventful debates this week, sparks flew between candidates for Secretary of State. Democrat Pat O'Brien and Republican Mark Martin traded jabs as they have done in the past couple of weeks. John Brummett takes note, as does Jason Tolbert.

O’Brien sought to paint Martin as state legislator living fat off the tax payers running up large questions expenses. This is pretty much a softball charge for any state legislator. The system is designed to pay them embarrassingly low salaries offset by embarrassingly high expense reimbursements.

Martin fought back with charges that O’Brien is Obama’s man in Arkansas and pointed out that he headed up the Arkansans for Obama effort in 2008 while serving as Pulaski County Clerk and questioned if he would do so again in 2010. He even said that O’Brien has brought “Chicago style politics” to Arkansas.

Watch for yourself here.

• Brian Chilson

I've been trapped in the office today, so I couldn't make it up to Conway for the AETN senate debates featuring Sen. Blanche Lincoln, Rep. John Boozman, Trevor Drown and John Gray. Find press releases from Lincoln's campaign and the state GOP on the jump. Actually, you're probably better off not reading those and tuning into AETN tonight at 6:30 to watch it for yourself.

A Mason-Dixon poll finds it 51-34 for John Boozman over Sen. Blanche Lincoln. Only 51?

John Brummett anticipates the coming general election contest between Democrat Joyce Elliott and Rove Republican Tim Griffin in explosive terms, enhanced by the balkanized nature of the district — Pulaski County v. suburban-to-rural counties.