Walton is quite conscious of grounding his analysis theoretically. He lays out the line of research on native sons in American voting, beginning with V.O. Key's highlighting of “friends and neighbors” voting in the Old South (Southern Politics in State and Nation, 1949). Walton clearly presents the ways in which later scholars built on this tradition, culminating with his own examination of Jimmy Carter's linkages to fellow southerners (Walton, The Native-Son Presidential Candidate: The Carter Vote in Georgia, 1992). Because of the tremendous shifts in southern partisanship since Key's work, an analysis of the persistence of regionalism in voting in the Clinton era is certainly pertinent.

Walton is less clear in another theoretical chapter. He notes the inadequacies of the frameworks traditionally used to describe electoral outcomes (e.g., realignment theory) and presents what he terms a “more complete” approach. His “political party perspective” posits that individual voters' choices as well as the historical context of a particular election are both important and, of course, linked. Walton goes on to make the (quite logical) contention that race is the central driving force in this vision of electoral politics in the United States. Yet, the discussion of the political party perspective is muddled, and, more important, Walton's argument about race is not well grounded in the literature on the interaction between race and American politics. In addition, the linkage between the native son theory and the political party perspective is never made.

Walton then sets out to paint a picture of the political-historical context of Arkansas and, more specifically, of its racial context. In the second of these chapters Walton makes his greatest contribution, one that is of primary relevance for students of Arkansas politics. As he makes clear, voting by African Americans in Arkansas has not received adequate attention, and Walton employs creative techniques that he terms “political archeology” to recapture their role in the state's politics in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century.

Walton then discusses Bill Clinton's political entrance into this context and undertakes a chronological journey through the ups and downs of his political career in Arkansas. The roles of Clinton's home counties and counties in which black voters are most prevalent are examined as the two parts of the state that serve as “friends and neighbors,” to use Key's term. Unfortunately, a variety of methodological problems undermine Walton's attempts to investigate the two tangentially related parts of his theory as they relate to Clinton's electoral life.

By necessity, scholars of American electoral politics often rely upon county-level data. Walton, however, is not careful to note the limitations of such analysis in gaining an understanding of the voting behavior of the individuals living in those counties. Moreover, Walton fails to introduce key control variables to enhance one's confidence that home county or racial composition are the true explanatory factors of electoral patterns. Throughout this portion of the text, Walton moves back and forth between analyzing vote percentages and raw votes. Because county populations differ, any statistical analysis of raw votes is irrelevant, but Walton relies upon correlation data on raw votes in drawing conclusions. He also ignores the fact that presidential and nonpresidential elections affect turnout, which undermines other of his points. In short, the rudimentary statistical analyses are very questionable.

More specific problems arise with the two theoretical arguments. Regarding the native-son phenomenon, Walton examines only electoral behavior in Clinton's home counties, not the homes of his opponents. In addition, in his analysis Key employs maps, and more of these would have made Walton's points much clearer than the series of confusing tables he uses.

Even more problematic is the analysis of race. Throughout the text, Walton uses the three counties in the state that have remained majority black to provide empirical insights. The electoral results in those counties, which have a large number of white voters, are his gauge of Clinton's support from African Americans in the state as a whole. Issues of statistical validity aside, Walton fails to discuss the fact that white southern voters, as Key found, behave differently depending on the size of the black population in their locale; whites in counties with a majority of African Americans feel “threatened” and base political actions on this fear. Furthermore, the role of African Americans in Arkansas politics is never united with the theoretical framework presented earlier in the work. This disconnection between the theoretical and empirical portions of the work is a weakness.

The descriptions of Clinton's races in the state are surprisingly weak. In the coverage of his first race for Congress in 1974, there is no discussion of the role of Watergate in aiding the Democrat Clinton against a long-time Republican incumbent, and the coverage of other races is lacking in crucial detail. Moreover, there are some obvious errors, including the outcome of a key gubernatorial election in the 1960s, the fact that Governor Winthrop Rockefeller (from New York) was not “homegrown,” and the identity of the congressional district in which Little Rock lies.

Factual errors mar the credibility of the work more generally. These range from stating that Richard Nixon ran for president in 1964, to misidentifying both the states that George Wallace won in his 1968 bid for the presidency and the southern states captured by Clinton in 1992 and 1996, to the date of the Lewinsky scandal. Also, the writing is not of high quality, and arguments are not pulled together or clearly explained.

Walton attempts to compare the performance of Clinton as a presidential candidate in his home state and region with that of Jimmy Carter. It quickly becomes apparent, however, that dramatic changes in southern presidential politics during the Reagan-Bush era make comparisons of limited relevance. In the end, Walton makes the point that there remains a “regional variable,” at least for southern candidates in presidential elections, but this work fails to move our understanding of contemporary southern politics beyond this truism.