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And hello again everyone.

Thanks very much for joining us here we are at the end of another busy news year.

Multiple legislative sessions with debates over hot button social issues.

The reach of government and a pandemic, period.

The amount government should collect in taxes and the shape of government, executive and legislative in the decade to come.

Business the continuing COVID impact the continuing rise of Northwest Arkansas.

The continual quest for infrastructure improvement a lot to unpack in our year end retrospective.

So let's begin.

Here's Andrew Demillo, State Capitol Bureau chief of The Associated Press.

Heather Yates, associate professor of political science at UCA.

Lance Turner, is editor of Arkansas business and welcome All Andrew.

Let's start with you, the one of the big stories and we.

At the Capitol anyway, we've got tax cuts, but one of the bigger stories, I think is the continuing tension.

Between the the executive and the legislative, both of the same party.

Yeah, that's that's correct.

You know this is a theme that we have seen throughout the year with the legislature during legislative sessions and during this special session.

Most recently where there's there's tension, even though it's majority Republican legislature and Republican governor.

There is some tension over how much power the legislature has and the special session.

But really, there was there was some resistance this time around.

Two trying to expand legislatures power to expand the agenda and the scope of the special session and the legislative leaders and the governor were able to head that off.

But there there was a push to try to go beyond tax cuts and really open up the session to other issues.

Kind of a laundry list of issues for conservatives including Texas style abortion ban.

Critical race theory ban, you know, even revisiting the whole issue of virus mandates by businesses and you know they were able to keep the special session within three days.

But I think this is a theme that we've seen throughout the year and we're going to see next year heading into the fiscal session just a couple months away, right?

And and throughout his tenure, Mr Mr. Hutchinson has generally prevailed, although he has had to surrender some authority, some executive authority to the General Assembly.

Yeah, that's that's correct.

Yeah, we we saw this during the regular session.

You know there was, you know, kind of a changing of the of the power structure when it comes to emergencies and this was really a response to some pushback from legislature from legislators from Republican legislators over some of the safety restrictions that the state had taken.

Because because of the coronavirus, where legislature has a bigger say.

In the emergency powers and in the restrictions that that can be taken, not just during COVID but during future emergencies as well.

Yeah, Heather Yates, you've been watching the redistricting process, the reapportionment process, and of course, the social agenda of some members of the General Assembly in terms of legislation, these, as Andrew has noted, these aren't going.

These are not going to end with December the 31st.

They're going to carry over into the next year, and possibly even beyond.

Do you see that?

I do the special session that was called is important for not what it actually got accomplished, but what it threatened to do because it telegraphs the coming attractions for the session of 2022.

It's an election year, and we have a lot of state legislators who have ambitions beyond the legislature, and so they also are wanting to put on that agenda pieces of legislation that are going to drive topics that are going to play to the base of the party, even insofar as that they.

Characterized ASA Hutchinson as being a a moderate Republican, as if that's a bad thing, but notably that they were characterizing the governor as somebody who is not taking the threats to Arkansas social culture seriously.

Of all the topics that have been previously mentioned by one of the panelists here.

So that's going to play out in 2022 that they've already kind of flashed their hand on what their agenda was, they.

They threatened to kind of wrestle that special session away from the governor.

The governor tried to preempt that as much as possible, even in his call for the special session.

I think the legislators and the leadership most definitely knew that getting into those topics on a special session at the end of the year was going to be a miscalculation because it was those issues are going to be controversial.

They're going to take time.

They are going to be high profile, so that's going to carry over into 2022.

And those are the things that we can most definitely expect.

At the top of the election year, having looked at the reapportionment Heather and studied some of the candidates who have announced thus far for for the 22 elections.

Do you see the ideological temperature or shifting at all the scale shifting at all in the next General Assembly?

Not not not the session that's about to begin, but in the near future.

In the near future, in terms of how the ideological temperature is playing out in Arkansas, that has an arc linked directly to how these districts were redrawn, we see that the temperature is actually elevating, right that these districts were drawn in a way that intensifies the Republican incumbency advantage, which is a pretty hefty advantage.

And this year, the year 2021 was the year of redistricting for the state reapportionment.

And what we saw is the state legislature having a super majority of Republicans controlled this process.

For the first time since reconstruction, and that's pretty significant.

Significant to consider that this drives the Fed, at least at the federal level, the the districts for the next decade, and we see that the second Congressional District was gerrymandered in a very specific way with almost surgical precision of South East Little Rock North Little Rock got trifurcated, and So what we saw was the legislature.

OK, really didn't have to redraw the maps of 2010, but they did anyway and the reason why was because they wanted to hamstring any opposition that would come into that second Congressional District.

Because looking at Arkansas, the second Congressional District was the one district that was garnering a lot of competition and becoming increasingly competitive.

So what we saw here is the Republican legislature for the next 10 years.

Take control of a process double down on this ideologically ideologically driven fever that we have right now that is actually upping the defensive temperature within the state.

If it is Sunday morning.

It's ASA Hutchinson morning, he's a regular.

It's because he's obviously playing a long game here.

Does anyone have what Andrew back to you for a second?

What's going on?

Well, you know the governor has had an increased profile this year.

A good part of it is because he took over as Chairman of National Governors Association, which made him higher profile to talk about states issues.

But also he has kind of carved out a position for himself.

As someone who is distancing himself from you.

From from President Trump and also from you know somewhat Arkansas is a Trumpian turn where he's talked about.

You know trying to not to re litigate the election of 2020 and trying to focus on focus on the issues.

The thing that's unclear is what's he going to do when he leaves office.

Is this part of ramping up for something bigger?

He has made it clear that he you know he has decades of public service and he's made it clear he still wants to do something.

The big question is what exactly is that thing going to be?

Yeah Lance Turner.

Mr. Hudson made his speech in 2016 for Mr. Trump.

Mr. Trump has turned around and his tenure.

He made life miserable for Mr. Hutchinson on the business side.

It.

What's to do there?

Well, I don't know, you know, it does appear that you know ASA Hutchinson has been a very business friendly governor here in Arkansas.

I think, I think by and large the business community is pretty satisfied with what he's been able to do.

You know, he's been focused since day one on economic development issues.

You know, trying to attract and grow businesses here, and he's got a pretty good record.

I think to point to in that regard.

So from a business standpoint, he's very much kind of that old school, mainstream Republican, business friendly.

Person, but those seem to be in short supply, but I think perhaps you know, maybe there's the sense on his part that there is still a path for that kind of person in in in in government service and and perhaps that's where he's sort of kind of trying to chart his path, but but it's hard to imagine given just the politicization that we've seen now there's the extremes on all sides that you know someone like that can find much purchase in the electorate that is.

You know, because of redistricting and and and how districts have changed and become more extreme, how you can, how you can appeal to a base that that would that would get you elected to anything in that regard.

Yeah, some of us Andrew or I think are old enough to remember when Mike Huckabee was governor, often in legislative sessions, Democrats were his his strongest allies.

He was at war.

I hate to say at war, but there was a significant tension between Mr Huckabee and the Republican members.

Of of the General Assembly as well, because Mr. Hutchinson Hutchinson, Mr. Huckabee, was trying to steer that that middle path trying to be a Main Street Republican.

Yeah, and yeah, I think we saw this on.

You know several issues, especially when it came to some of the culture wars issues and you know Hutchinson is still by most by most measures, not.

He's not a moderate, you know, he assigned, you know, a large number of abortion restrictions and but he's still kind of tried to tap the brakes somewhat on all these cultural wars bills.

You know, most notably, he vetoed legislation that to ban gender affirming surgery.

4 transgender youth and you know he was.

He was over ridden on that on that veto.

But, you know, made a point of saying, you know why he thought this went too far.

He's still signed other the other measures, you know, culture, wars, measures, and but there's still some areas where he's kind of, you know, tried tried to slow down some of the some of these things, and this is where he's facing a lot of the pushback, but also on on the virus response.

You know he.

You know had had supported some restrictions in response to COVID, and you know he's tried.

You know, tried to kind of push back a little bit on the efforts to try to restrict what businesses can do, and that's where he's he's seeing a lot of the lot of the fight right now, but it's not as though he is split.

You know, in a huge way from Republican orthodoxy.

It's just that he, you know, as you know, being painted as as a moderate for not being in lockstep.

On 100% on some of these issues, yeah and Lance Turner.

Mr Hutchinson has often argued against such legislation as we've been discussing because he says it's not very good for business.

That's right, yeah.

I mean you, you've got to remember you've got companies like Walmart, Tyson Foods, other companies here in Arkansas that are big companies that are global companies that have to think about things like recruitment and and hiring the best and brightest of people from all walks of life and attracting them to come to Arkansas and live in Arkansas and do business here and so.

And in that regard, you don't necessarily want to alienate very many groups, and so that's been a point of tension too, because you've got retailers like Walmart that want to show an inclusive face to the world and to its workforce.

And so when you've had things like transgender issues come up the bathroom bill from several years ago came up, and Walmart was a big voice in that, you know, LGBTQI issues.

Those kinds of things when those issues have come up.

Hutchinson has been, I think, very mindful of.

Where Walmart and Tyson?

Some of these global giants that are in our backyard, what their interests are in in sort of being able to to attract the best workers because they are in highly competitive industries.

Yeah, walking that fine line, Mr. Hudson said I'm for vaccination.

I'm form asking but I don't want to order business to do it.

Exactly, yeah, and that's that's been a key thing too, but but you know you've seen businesses like Tyson Foods that have gone ahead and mandated the vaccine on their own, and I think that's the preferred path, right?

Let businesses decide what's best for them, and we will try to encourage the behavior that we want to see.

But we will not have the government do that for us in terms of big business Lance in Arkansas, it wasn't a bad year.

It wasn't a bad year at all.

No, we've had a lot of activity.

We've had a lot of you know, like the economy has awoken right in.

In many ways.

We had a shutdown in 2020.

A very sudden shutdown, and I think we've all kind of underestimated exactly what that means for an economy when everything just stops.

And then that's what happened.

Everything just stopped, and now that demand is returning, and so businesses are capitalizing on that.

And it's been awkward in a lot of ways.

We're seeing supply chain delays because of that.

But other places are doing quite well.

In banking, we've seen merger activity begin again in two of Arkansas's biggest banks, Home Bancshares of Conway and Simmons, First National Bank of Pine Bluff have capitalized on that and and, and bid off some big acquisitions in the state of Texas acquisitions that are adding billions of dollars of assets and expanding their footprint.

Preparing for all this demand that's about to get going again, and it's already underway so.

Yeah, it's frankly it's been a pretty good year for business.

There are a lot of unknowns, obviously, but I think we're starting to try to live with those unknowns, unknowns about resurgence of COVID variants in those kinds of things, I think we're starting to kind of pick out a path of what what this new normal is and and be able to kind of do business around those unknowns.

Well, the new normal is that does is that going to include persistent employment issues?

I mean, personnel issues.

That is one of the headaches that.

That I know, businessmen both big and small, are having to deal with.

That's the number one thing that we hear almost on a daily basis at Arkansas business from our readers is is that they cannot find workers and so you know this.

This pandemic I think, is has again everything.

Shut down and gave a lot of people time off, for better or for worse.

And a lot of people are rethinking what they want their careers to be.

And that's caused people to not necessarily jump at the first thing that comes along.

And that's been particularly tough on the hospitality industry, restaurants, hotels.

You know, hourly workers really rethinking kind of what they wanna do with themselves.

They've been able to do this because they've had the luxury of of of some government aid that they've been able to sort of live on for a little while.

There's some security there, right?

Fritz bought them some time to kind of think through how they want their careers to be, and so that's played a role in in in this worker shortage, but also just the sheer demand that everyone is experiencing too.

I mean, we've we've suddenly got, you know, people trying to get back out and spend money.

In order products and so all that's coming back, you know 234 times more than that what we experienced last year.

And and there's just not enough people around to to to feed that demand.

So I think you know certainly going into next year, we're still going to be experiencing some labor pains, and that's going to cause all the things that we're experiencing now.

There's going to be inflation.

Things are going to be a little bit more expensive, and certainly I think in the first half of the year we're going to be looking at, you know, some supply chain delays.

You know we may be getting some Christmas gifts in January.

Because of all this, so maybe yeah, maybe February.

Well Lance, you hit my segue word there and that was inflation.

That's an economic story.

But that's always a political story as well.

And the Fed is beginning to say, well, maybe maybe it's a little bit more than just temporary, so that's going to have an enormous impact in over the next 12 months, depending on the right, yeah?

I think we're about to see the word transitory disappear from the next several Fed statements that we see.

That's been the line for a while.

There's a lot of pressure, I think on the Fed to to stop to stop the the you know, the low interest rates kind of take their foot off the gas a little bit and let things kind of catch up with the rest of the economy.

So they've already signaled that that's going to begin happening in the next year.

Certainly this is not good for the Biden administration at all.

We do not like to see prices going up the you know the gas prices have been a pain.

Those have started to ease a bit in in in the last few weeks so whatever can happen in that regard to get inflation down is is is good for Democrats.

But again, you know as long as it's hard to find workers and as long as it's hard to get stuff those prices are going to remain elevated for a little while, right?

Heather and Andrew and Lance as well the year was notable in that at least in terms of the Republican gubernatorial nomination.

It looks like a clear shot for Miss Sanders.

Heather yes, so heading into the governor Tauriel election year, all of the Republican challengers that were primarying Sarah Sanders have dropped out and so it's it's she is the candidate presumptive.

And presumably the the next governor of Arkansas.

And she stands to make history.

Being the first woman Republican elected to that post in Arkansas ever?

So yeah, that that's going to be at the top of the ticket.

But then we've also got a lot of uncompetitive races.

Down ballot for all the constitutional offices as well as the state legislature.

Yeah Andrew.

It's kind of tough to.

What has she got now $188 million in her campaign.

While I'm exaggerating a little, but I think the last report was just under 12 million.

Yeah yeah her her fund raising was, you know something that's been unheard of for any race in Arkansas.

You know, especially especially in a primary.

And that was one of the things that kind of helped her clear.

The way was just the numbers that came in having Trump Trump's endorsement in a state that is very solidly Republican, solidly went for Trump.

And you know, we're not even in the election year yet, and she hasn't really had to spend to spend much of it.

You know she's running a couple ads.

But we've not really seen you know the bulk of that money being put to use yet, and you know, it's gonna unsure you know what that's gonna do in terms of races here and transforming things.

A lot of her attention right now has still been focused on national issues talking about Biden and criticizing him rather than Arkansas issues.

And that's the big question we're facing next year is how much can she keep doing that in Arkansas?

Is she going to start laying out more of a plan?

On Arkansas issues, well, she certainly has the money to fight anything that the Democrats would conceivably throw at throw at her.

But Heather, how much does how much?

How much room do the Democrats have?

They don't have much room.

When Sanders announced her race, she entrenched her initial message on the ground level of being the defender of Arkansas.

She's planted herself as being.

She said her words.

The last line of defense between Arkansas and the federal government.

So I think that is her anchor trying to stay on the ground in Arkansas, but it's I anticipate it will serve her well to maintain a national profile with this race.

Her campaign was nationalized before she.

Even really officially announced, and I don't think that's going to hurt her much on the ground because a lot of Arkansans are already pushing back on Biden, pushing back on the Democrats and on the ground.

The Democrats really have not been able to build up the apparatus enough to wage a formidable opposition to her, and so she has framed the narrative for nothing more that the Democrats are just going to be responding to.

Her message not really actually attacking her message.

Heather Yates, Andrew Demello, Lance Turner.

Thanks very much for being with us and we'll see you in the next year.

Another year gone.

As is our custom, we end this year by noting the Arkansans who left the arena in the past dozen months.

They are in The Maine, the men and women who made news gave us something to talk about each week.

Others of them helped us cover the news.

Almost certainly there are some omissions, and for that we apologize.

Certainly such omissions were inadvertent.

Thank you, thank you for making Arkansas week a part of your week.

Be well.

And we'll see you next year.

Support for Arkansas Week provided by the Arkansas Democrat Gazette.

The Arkansas Times and QR FM 89.