Here’s Thursday’s open line and the video roundup of news today — Obamacare expansion; new polling; Republican vote suppression; Uber comes to Fayetteville, and a fight about the best dessert.

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* ARKANSAS NATIVE’S UPHILL CONGRESSIONAL RUN: Here’s a good profile on Mark Lester, the Little Rock native and college professor and lawyer who’s gotten the Democratic nomination for a strongly Republican House district around Birmingham now open thanks to retirement. He says he’s not naive about his chances. But he has a case to make about partisan gridlock, working across party lines and gerrymandered congressional districts. An appeal to reason in Alabama. That’s the pitch.

* TURNER GRAIN: Arkansas Business is reporting today on some court developments related to the troubled commodities dealer in Brinkley that has left many farmers holding the bag on unpaid crop sales. It includes testimony about the last contact one business associate had with Jason Coleman, who led one of the troubled companies and has been unavailable since the story broke. He said he was talking from a hospital and was apologetic. He offered to sign over a truck and four-wheeler as a gesture of good faith over the unpaid claims. He reportedly said he’d been on the “wrong side” of some business deals. A judge exempted the associate, Gerald Loyd and his Turner Commodiities, from an order freezing some assets of Turner Grain. He said it was not connected to claims against Turner Grain. Arkansas Business also has details from a second lawsuit in Lonoke County on claims by farmers.

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