Arkansas Democrats look to make election gains in fast-changing Washington County

Normally the biggest attractions at Parsons Stadium on the edge of Springdale are events held on the dirt arena like monster truck rallies, demolition derbies or the 82-year-old Rodeo of the Ozarks. 

But on a recent evening at the outdoor stadium, the focus for Washington County Democrats was corralling votes, not cattle.

“One of the reasons I’m here is to learn about who the candidates are,” Susan Marks, a retiree from Springdale, said as she watched a folk band play with her friend August White. “I’m registered as an independent but I lean left, and I wanted to find out more about Washington County Democratic candidates.” 

Northwest Arkansas is home to many new transplants like Marks, who says she usually votes for Democrats. White, who is also retired and a recent transplant to Fayetteville, said she got plugged into local Democratic politics from the “No Kings” protests.

Marks and White are the kind of voters Democrats are relying on as they try to defy recent history in a midterm election where President Donald Trump’s sagging approval numbers has given the party hope in solidly red states. Once the bastion of Republican support when Arkansas was a blue state, Washington County is key to Arkansas Democrats’ efforts in November.

“We aren’t ever going to ignore the Delta or central Arkansas, but if we are going to come back to power it flows through northwest Arkansas,” state Democratic Party Chair Marcus Jones told the Arkansas Advocate during the Democratic candidate event at the rodeo grounds.

Between 2010 and 2020, Washington County’s population grew 21% according to the U.S. Census Bureau, driven in large part by people moving to the county. By 2050, regional planners estimate the county’s total population will grow to 420,000, a 58% increase.

Dana Deree, the Democrats’ nominee for Washington County judge and host of the rodeo event, is trying to build the coalition needed to flip Washington County. Deree speaks Spanish fluently and served in the Marine Corps, the Navy Reserves, as a diplomat in the U.S. Foreign Service, and as a former public school teacher at Little Rock Central High School. He often speaks about growing up poor in an unstable household and experiencing homelessness. 

Along with the county judge’s race, Democrats hope to flip three seats on the county’s quorum court to win a majority, and to win two statehouse districts in the party’s ongoing quest to break the huge Republican majority in the Legislature.

Deree might be a relatively new face in Washington County, but that may not be as big of a downside in a county rapidly welcoming new residents. While it’s not lost on him that Democrats are excited about him, he’s almost entirely running on finding solutions to the local infrastructure and population growth challenges the county faces, like a lack of affordable housing and an overcrowded jail.

“This county has only been Republican for ten years or so,” Deree said at the rodeo grounds. “And it is ripe for a comeback and my campaign is working hard to be welcoming to returners.”

The battleground

Washington County is a prime target for Democrats, anchored by the college town of Fayetteville and the University of Arkansas campus.

It’s also home to a growing and increasingly diverse population in neighboring Springdale — the home of Tyson Foods. The county also has small towns dotting rural areas, and suburbs and bedroom communities that trend Republican, like Lincoln, Goshen and Prairie Grove.

“Of course Fayetteville has long been a diverse, liberal town and that has not changed and if anything it is becoming more liberal,” political science professor Karen Sebold said about the elections. “So yeah, if there is going to be a battleground for the Democratic Party it is going to be Northwest Arkansas.”

In 2022, Democrats’ gubernatorial nominee Chris Jones eked out a victory in the county over Sarah Huckabee Sanders after Republican candidates won the county easily in every statewide contest between 2014 and the election that year.

The last time a Democrat won the Washington County judge race was when the late Marilyn Edwards narrowly beat a Republican opponent in 2014. The Democratic nominees for county judge in 2018 and 2022 each lost by about 5 percentage points.

Despite that, in 2024 Democrat Vladimir Rivera Lopez narrowly beat an incumbent Republican for a spot on the county quorum court and Diana Gonzales Worthen flipped a seat in the Arkansas House when she won the race to represent the state’s first majority-Latino district. 

Along with the victories, the voting shifts between 2022 and 2024 hold other hopeful signs for Washington County Democrats.

Democrats still made larger inroads in many parts of Springdale. Now as candidates are heading into the final stretch, the questions of how rural areas turn out and how blue Fayetteville and Springdale can get may decide the results. Another place to watch is whether Farmington will trend toward Democrats or further toward Republicans as it did in 2024.

A race to the middle

Democrats are also getting a boost from local sentiment about the incumbent Republican county judge, Patrick Deakins, who was ousted in a primary runoff earlier this year. Deakins’ loss followed several high-profile fights on issues like open records and jail funding that spilled over into acrimonious county meetings.

Deree told the Arkansas Advocate he didn’t get in the race to run against Deakins and indicated that Tim Shepard’s defeat of the incumbent judge in the GOP runoff has made for a tougher race.

When Shepard and Deree met for a recent debate in Springdale, the two men had far more positive things to say about each other than negative. Both candidates spent most of the debate trying to persuade voters they were the least partisan and best at working with others. The two are running on similar platforms of bringing the county together across partisan and geographic lines.

Shepard’s main lines of attack on Deree are that he doesn’t have strong roots in the county and is too much of a partisan Democrat. Shepard says he is a conservative but has never been involved with either party in the county. Deree holds a position with the state Democratic Party and ran for a statehouse seat in central Arkansas as a Democrat in 2000. 

Deree talked up his outreach to rural parts of the county, including in his opposition to permitting new gravel and red dirt mines, while Shepard emphasized his rival’s support from Fayetteville liberals, such as former mayor Lioneld Jordan. 

Deree has criticized Shepard as being a partisan Republican, pointing out that his rival has campaigned with figures like Republican state Sen. Clint Penzo, who unsuccessfully challenged U.S. Rep. Steve Womack from the right in the 2024 GOP primary.

Janet Oxford, who attended the debate with her husband Michael, said she supported Shepard but believed either candidate would be an improvement.

“There is a reason we have a democracy and that we talk,” Janet said. “Just because someone is one party or another doesn’t mean that you say ‘I’m right and everyone is wrong’ and you don’t get new ideas, and you never evaluate if you’re wrong on an issue and we need to have civil discussions.”

The couple has been in Washington County for decades. Michael said he will be supporting Shepard because of his work with volunteer fire departments like the one he runs in nearby Wheeler.

Shepard has outraised Deree by about $26,000, according to September campaign finance reports that were filed with the secretary of state Tuesday. 

Neither Deree nor Shepard said having their respective parties in the majority on the quorum court would matter to how they would govern. 

Deree has campaigned with some Democratic challengers and calls them friends. Shepard said that while he attends events with Republican officeholders, they don’t necessarily endorse each other. Some voters view the chance to oust three Republican incumbents in Farmington and Shady Grove as the referendum needed on the Deakins era.

“I wish I could say Dana’s got it in the bag, but I think it’s going to be a tough race. I believe both candidates are qualified and it will definitely be hands down better than what we’ve had either way,” Annie Langston, a Deree supporter, said after the debate.

Seeking a supermajority

Erick Soto, 25, organizes volunteers and canvasses the working-class, Latino and Marshallese neighborhoods of Springdale that will determine whether Gonzales Worthen keeps her seat in the statehouse as she faces a challenge from Republican Matt Goff, a retired Army veteran and longtime northwest Arkansas resident. 

Soto is a committed Democrat and the son of Mexican immigrants. He goes door to door in House District 9, usually talking with reluctant voters in fluent Spanish. Soto finds many voters are anxious to open their doors over concerns about Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and he thinks lower midterm turnout may be their biggest barrier to re-election. 

“People are tired of not seeing any change at all, and getting people to the polls is the major obstacle here,” Soto said. “If you brought a voting booth to people’s doors it would probably be a solid Democratic district, but I also think some people are feeling fed up so I think it will be a good year for Democrats.”

That race will be key in Democrats’ long-desired goal of breaking Republicans’ hold on the Arkansas House. Because Republicans hold more than three-fourths of the seats in the House and Senate, the party can pass most appropriations bills without any votes from Democrats. 

House District 9 is crucial to the strategy of breaking that supermajority, the state Democrats’ chair said. The party also sees an immediate pickup opportunity in neighboring House District 19 that covers northern Fayetteville, Johnson, and parts of southern and western Springdale.

That race features another newcomer to the region, Democrat Jamie Atkinson, who is trying to unseat Republican Rep. Steve Unger, a two-term incumbent. A retired Navy veteran and chaplain, Unger outperformed Trump in his district in 2024. 

Like Deree, Atkinson spent years in the U.S. Foreign Service and chose to invest and settle in northwest Arkansas after recently retiring. Unlike Deree, Atkinson hasn’t lived in Arkansas until recently — though he does point to generational connections to the state. 

Unger has deeper roots in the district and touts himself as a more moderate conservative focused on local issues. He’s outraised Atkinson and has more cash on hand, according to campaign finance reports. Unger has complained his rival is portraying the Legislature as in control of gas, grocery and insurance prices.

“The cure for our toxic political climate begins with rejecting candidates who offer easy answers to complicated questions,” Unger wrote in a post on his Facebook page.

Volunteers gather at the county party’s headquarters in Springdale every Saturday, where Atkinson and his field coordinators send canvassers to different neighborhoods in the district.

One voter Atkinson encountered was Jodi VanBecelaere, a mom with two middle school-aged children who has voted for both parties in past elections. VanBecelaere hasn’t made up her mind on who to vote for in the House race, though she said she’s supporting Shepard’s bid for county judge.

VanBecelaere told Atkinson she’s worried about public schools and affordability. 

As he walked away, heading to the next door, Atkinson said, “This is the best use of my time, talking to voters. And as a matter of practice, I like to be conservative in my assessments of where I think people are.”