Yesterday the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette published a profile piece on Land Commissioner-elect John Thurston (paid subscription required to read full article). In the article, state GOP chairman Doyle Webb makes an interesting admission about the party's election strategy this year:

Thurston has never held public office and was not an active participant in the Republican Party. He has not donated to a political party in the past 20 years.

 

“I had never heard of him,” Webb said. “We had not targeted specifically the land commissioner as a race we were trying to recruit candidates for.”

 

Webb said Thurston approached the party with a desire to see a Republican in the office for the first time.

 

“We will certainly look to hold the seat and I think his performance will determine if that is possible,” Webb said, adding that he thinks Thurston will do well.

Did you catch that? Apparently the Arkansas Republican Party wasn't planning on having a candidate for land commissioner this year. If you'll remember, we have previously pointed out that the Republicans would have won auditor, treasurer, and probably attorney general if they had bothered to field candidates for those offices. Now we discover that they almost missed out on land commissioner, too.

Thurston, of course, saved their rears by showing up at the last minute to file -- and he ended up winning. That was a big deal because it meant the Republicans won three constitutional offices instead of two -- leaving them only one short of the Democrats.

But imagine if the GOP had fielded candidates for the other three constitutional offices, the ones they missed out on. We could have been talking about a 6-1 GOP edge, plus two out of three on the Board of Apportionment, which handles redistricting. Governor Beebe could have become an island, surrounded by a sea of Republicans in statewide offices.

As much as the Republicans must have enjoyed their sweet victories, those what-if's have to be a little bitter, too. Especially considering that a combined 16 -- 16! -- candidates ran for the GOP nominations for U.S. Senate and U.S. House 3rd District. Eight candidates in each race, battling it out with each other for a Republican nomination that most of them had no shot at getting, while three constitutional offices sat ripe for the plucking. But there were no takers, and as a result, the Democrats will hold those three seats.

Is that the fault of the impetuous GOP candidates, who were focused way too much on Washington when they should have paid attention to Little Rock? Or should the blame go to Doyle Webb for not making some effort to redirect some of these candidates into more winnable opportunities?

I'll go with the latter, based on Webb's quote about the land commissioner race. He didn't target that office, and I'm willing to bet he didn't target attorney general, auditor, or treasurer either. As a result, he missed out on turning historic gains into overwhelming gains.

That's not to say that Webb is incompetent. He deserves credit for organizing the party's unprecedented gains in the state legislature, and the GOP is now in position to do what would two years ago have been unthinkable -- take control of the General Assembly in 2012.

So maybe I shouldn't be too harsh on him. But when you're a downtrodden political party, any chance to take a constitutional office from the other party is golden. The Republicans missed three such chances, and only the lucky appearance of John Thurston saved them from missing a fourth.