Where there's a Will, there's a way

After Bill Clinton was elected President, Arkansas elected only its third Republican Governor since Reconstruction, a Republican US Senator, and saw a resurgence of the state Republican Party. Despite trending more Republican in Presidential races, in the past two years Arkansas elected Democrats for Governor, all statewide offices and a super-majority in the state legislature.

Why did the Arkansas Democratic Party suffer in the years following Clinton's election only to come back stronger than ever a few years after Clinton left office?

I asked that question to a politically savvy friend who worked for ACORN when I lived in Little Rock. He thought Democrats suffered for several reasons, including the Whitewater scandal, but most of all because Bill Clinton took so much of the Democratic Party leadership and staff with him to Washington. The absence of many of the state's top organizers and elected leaders created a vacuum that Republicans filled.

Obama already picked an Illinois Congressman to be his Chief of Staff. If he taps more state leaders could the same thing happen to Illinois? I don't think so.

Here's why.

1) After years as Governor, Arkansas state politics revolved around Bill Clinton. Illinois state level politics never focused on Obama. He was never the head of the party or even one of the most powerful leaders in state level politics. His three years as US Senator was too short to make him a statewide fixture.

2) Illinois has a deeper backbench than Arkansas. If there's one thing Illinois is good at its electing a lot of politicians, good or bad. We're a lager state with more leaders, more political talent, and a deeply competitive political environment.

I tried to think of a way to write that without insulting the entire state of Arkansas, since I know plenty of great people form there. That's the best I could come up with. I like Arkansas but let's face it; they're the Southern state that other Southern states make fun of. I think they only stopped accepting beaver pelts as currency sometime in the 1980's.

(How much you want for this Arkansas beaver pelt?)

But that doesn't mean things won't change for Illinois at the state level. If you're an elected official or political staffer looking to advance your career, you're going to see a lot of positions open up in the next two years. If anything, Democrats will grow stronger by making room for new leaders and ideas. Also, will Obama's chief strategist David Axelrod become a creature of Washington or will he help increase Obama's influence in state politics?

This will be an interesting time in Illinois politics.