Arkansas

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Much of the attention devoted to outside nonprofit political groups has focused on their spending on national elections, but in Arkansas, it was their influence on the Statehouse that may mark a watershed moment for them.

Groups like Americans for Prosperity and the 60 Plus Association, which have ties to the donor networks financed by Charles and David Koch, the conservative billionaires, poured money into Republican campaigns at the state level. For the first time since 1874, Republicans won a majority in the state’s Senate and House.

Republicans also hold all four of Arkansas’s seats in the House of Representatives after Tom Cotton, a 35-year-old Army veteran, easily won a seat vacated by incumbent Mike Ross in the Fourth District.

In the Third District, the Republican incumbent, Steve Womack, did not face a Democratic challenger and easily defeated Green Party and Libertarian candidates.

That leaves Gov. Mike Beebe, a Democrat, to cope with a Republican Legislature, and Senator Mark Pryor as the sole Democrat representing Arkansas in Washington, a sea change for the state that produced Bill Clinton.

The real prize for the Republicans is the State Legislature, where every seat in the two houses was up for re-election for the first time in 10 years. Arkansas was the last of the 11 Confederate states to have a Democratic chamber, as The Washington Post noted, and Republicans needed to win only a few of those seats to turn the Legislature red for the first time since Reconstruction.

Thus, Americans for Prosperity, the granddaddy of the nonprofit advocacy groups that have played such a big role in this election, pledged to spend $1 million in the state. In addition to spending on state legislative races, the group was also hoping to defeat a ballot measure that would impose a half-cent sales tax, but the measure was approved.

A ballot measure to legalize the medical use of marijuana appeared headed for defeat.