Rick Delaney, 69, has lived in Eureka Springs since 2010. In contrast to his opponent, Harlan Breaux, Delaney thinks the Arkansas Legislature needs to address the real issues facing the state including poverty, food insecurity, public money for private schools and a woman’s right to reproductive choice. Instead, Delaney says, lawmakers focus on legislation to generate hatred towards transgender people and dictate forced pregnancy.
Delaney said the current leadership of Arkansas has been not only disappointing, but negligent. Arkansas has the highest maternal death rate in the country—women who died within a year of giving birth. But the Republican supermajority in the legislation has failed to extend Medicaid coverage for postpartum coverage to 12 months.
“Rural areas are seeing hospitals and clinics closed,” Delaney, who has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Memphis in health care administration, said. “Unregulated insurance companies are pricing our local pharmacies out of business. More than 50 percent of the counties in Arkansas are ‘maternal care deserts’ meaning women must travel to another city for OB/GYN or other maternal service.”
Delaney said it is a public embarrassment to Arkansas that it has received national publicity for being one of the first states to aggressively purge the number of people on Medicaid, including babies, young children and people who may have been eligible but whose paperwork was deemed lacking. Delaney said that while the Medicaid coverage from the pandemic had expired, the state’s efforts to notify people to reapply was disastrous. Any renewals or questions required an internet connection, which many rural people don’t have.
“I saw results of this action firsthand working at Flint Street as we tried to help clients through the process,” Delaney said.
He opposes public money for private schools, period. Instead, he recommends creating after-school and summer programs for the public schools, and making sure there are more qualified teachers for children with special needs.
“I am not totally anti-LEARNS Act,” Delaney said. “There are good provisions in the act. But there is much to be done to make this the legislation that future generations of Arkansans can rely on to elevate our public schools to be among the best in the nation. Children are the future of Arkansas.”
Delaney said he was a fan of Joe Biden, but Biden dropping out of the race gave him a better feeling about the presidential election, and the District 6 election.
“It definitely generated more interest in my social media sites,” he said. “Coincidentally, I had an open house scheduled at Holiday Island a couple of days after Biden’s announcement and endorsement. There was an unexpectedly large, very energized crowd there.”
Arkansas is so heavily Republican that some people feel hopeless to change the dynamic. Delaney said what is happening in Arkansas is the beta version of Project 2025, a plan put together to advance conservative views by downsizing the federal government and reforming Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid if Trump is elected. Delaney sees it not so much about the culture wars, but efforts by the richest people in the world to destroy democracy and get rid of annoying government regulations like those to protect people from pollution and the climate from disruption.
“Our elected officials could care less about the opinions of the majority of citizens here; they only listen to the money guys,” Delaney said. “They want to keep these divisions between us, so we fight among ourselves instead of fighting the politicians. We’ve got to break the supermajority. It’s scary to think what they have planned for the next legislative session.”
After retirement from a major human resources/payroll software company, Delaney said a few things raised his awareness of the role that government should play in our state. In 2021, he volunteered with ECHO Clinic when they had a drive-through Covid vaccination program. “At that time, we were swamped with conspiracy theories about the pandemic about the ‘deep state’ and government overreach.” he said.
“But at the clinic, I saw people who trusted their government and were concerned enough about their families and neighbors that they waited in line in cold and rain to receive the shots. At roughly the same time, I started volunteering at Flint Street Fellowship Food Pantry. Here I saw another group of citizens who trusted and needed their government for a different reason. These two events in my life were the start of all this.
“I later jumped onboard the Chris Jones for Governor movement, and after that election I began watching what was going on in Little Rock and I didn’t like what I saw,” Delaney said. “The Republican supermajority rubber-stamped everything the [Sara Huckabee] Sanders campaign put on their desk. A lot of bills that were passed in the 2023 legislature didn’t really do anything to address the concerns of the people of District 6, and basically were just cultural hot-button issues to divide the voters.”
Delaney said he is running because everyone, whether Democrat or Republican, wants a prosperous future for the next generation. “We want award-winning schools, we want quality healthcare, we want clean air and water, and we want to be left alone to control our own lives,” he said.