Kwami Abdul-Bey has lived in Republican state Rep. David Ray's district for three years. More specifically, he lives in Gibson, an unincorporated Pulaski County community that doesn't have a brick-and-mortar grocery store.
“We have to travel all the way to Sherwood to get a grocery store,” he said.
Abdul-Bey says, in 2021, he got his community a grant that could turn several empty buildings into a food co-op. But he needed his state representative’s signature to make it happen.
“He would not return any calls, any texts, any emails,” he said.
He says the situation left a bad taste in his mouth, and is one of the main reasons he is running for Ray's position.
Little Rock Public Radio asked Ray to confirm the allegation, and heard a different story.
“I don't know what he is talking about,” he said. “I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt and say, maybe I missed an email. I went back and looked through my email. I have never received an email from him on that topic. None that I can locate.”
Abdul-Bey doesn't remember what email he used to reach out to Ray. He says, when he sent the email, he was “not as politically astute” as he is now.
For Ray, the claim doesn't even make sense. He has worked before to obtain grants for food pantries in his county.
“I think a lot of the things [Abdul-Bey] says, he just makes up,” Ray said. “Less than 30 minutes after the former President [Trump] was shot and the bullet grazed his ear, he tweeted this crazy tweet insinuating that the whole thing was rehearsed.”
This is true. Abdul-Bey’s post said “this is how you rev up your militant white Christian nationalist base.” And it sparked online controversy between the two candidates, with Ray believing the comments were inappropriate.
Abdul-Bey says he just meant that Trump's behavior during the incident felt like something from a movie. He also wanted to call attention to comments Trump had made about white supremacy.
All evidence shows that the attempt on the former president's life was genuine. But in the tweet, Abdul-Bey called the assassination attempt “very strange” and “too Hollywood-ish.”
The campaign tension culminated in a mailer Ray sent out depicting Abdul-Bey standing behind a podium with a label calling him an “extremist Democrat.” Abdul-Bey says the mailer is photoshopped in a racist way to darken his skin.
Ray called this claim "totally and completely false." He says Abdul-Bey was only making the accusation to distract from his "radical and extreme views."
In any case, the two candidates from District 69 don't see eye-to-eye on most issues.
Abdul-Bey thinks the legislature wastes its time on so-called “culture war” laws targeting transgender people that he interprets as being “mean.” He believes the legislature cedes too much power to out-of-state special interest groups.
Abdul-Bey also talks a lot about deserts, or places in rural areas where resources are missing.
“And we need laws that will deal with our banking deserts, deal with our food insecurity,” he said. “We have healthcare deserts as well.”
Abdul-Bey wants more government services, while Ray wants to cut spending, not to any one agency in particular, but to positions and services across state government.
“When you shop at the grocery store and you see the fat sort of marbled throughout the steak,” he said. “That's how the state government is. There is fat and bloat in just about every agency budget.”
Ray co-sponsored the Arkansas LEARNS Act, a package of legislation that gives tax money to private schools. He says it gives parents, not the government, the power to educate their children.
And this connects to one of their biggest places of disagreement. Abdul-Bey works for the Arkansas Public Policy Panel, and has been behind several grassroots ballot initiatives. Most notably, he was involved in a recent failed attempt to roll back parts of the LEARNS Act.
Abdul-Bey is especially against LEARNS. He says it takes money from needy rural schools and gives it to wealthy people. He spent a lot of the last year trying to get people to sign for the Educational Rights Amendment, which would have required private schools receiving tax money to adhere to some state standards.
In 2023, Ray co-sponsored a law requiring more signatures be collected before a proposal goes on the ballot.
“It ought to be really difficult to amend our state constitution,” she said. “Our state constitution is our charter document.”
If that law hadn’t been passed, the amendment Abdul-Bey pushed may have gone on this November’s ballot. But as it stands, the amendment fell just short of the signature threshold. If elected, Abdul-Bey says he’ll work to overturn the law.
Arkansas House District 69 covers parts of Faulkner and Pulaski counties.
