Pryor's Thesis Isn't Pro-Segregation, But It Shows Why He May Lose
Pryor's 1985 thesis predicted the weaknesses in his 2014 re-election campaign.
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The key to Senator Mark Pryor's fate in the midterm elections lies in the pages of his 1985 college thesis, which reemerged Tuesday thanks to The Washington Free Beacon. The Beacon story implies that Pryor may be a racist who bemoaned desegregation in Arkansas, but Pryor's real problem lies in the paper's theory on how Arkansas Democrats win elections: they have to prove they put state before party.
Under the headline “Arkansas Democrat Mark Pryor: Desegregation an ‘Unwilling Invasion,’” The Free Beacon published a report Tuesday that selectively quoted from Pryor’s thesis, pointing to a section where he described Arkansas’s rejection of federal desegregation efforts.