Arnold

Brad Arnold, the 47-year-old cofounder and lead singer of the Mississippi rock band 3 Doors Down, died Saturday, nine months after revealing a diagnosis of kidney cancer.

The band announced Arnold’s death in a social media post, which said he had “helped redefine mainstream rock music, blending post-grunge accessibility with emotionally direct songwriting.”

In May 2025, Arnold announced that the band would be canceling its summer tour because he had advanced-stage kidney cancer that has spread to his lungs.

“That’s not real good,” he said of his diagnosis. “But you know what? We serve a mighty God, and He can overcome anything. So I have no fear. I really sincerely am not scared of it at all.” He added, “I’d love for you to lift me up in prayer every chance you get.”

He was public about his battle with alcoholism. He said he started drinking in his teens, an addiction fueled by the pressure of stepping on a tour bus at 20 years old.

“It’s just a lot to hand a 20 year old,” he told a Christian podcaster. He thanked religion for his sobriety and took to proclaiming his faith on stage.

Born in Escatawpa, Mississippi in Sept. 1978, Arnold formed the band with friends Todd Harrell and Matt Roberts in the mid-1990s.

As a 15-year-old in algebra class, he wrote the song “Kryptonite,” drumming out the beat on his desk.

“I used to be our drummer,” he told the lead vocalist of the band Candlebox in an interview. “I only became the singer because we didn’t have a singer. That beat just came from just sitting on a desk. I probably wrote that song in the length of time that it took to me to just to write it down. It really was just one of those that kind of fell out of the sky.”

It became the band’s breakout hit in 2000 and earned a Grammy nomination.

“The Better Life,” the first of the band’s six albums, sold more than 6 million copies, and the 2005 album “Seventeen Days” entered the national charts at No. 1. That year, reviewing a Los Angeles performance, a critic noted Arnold’s “heartland drawl” and sleeveless denim shirt, calling him “less punk than Springsteen.”

The band released its final album, “Us And The Night,” in 2016. The following year, the band played at the inauguration of President Donald Trump. Arnold is survived by his wife, Jennifer.

IN RECENT WEEKS, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislators have talked about giving California a well-deserved bigger say in the presidential campaign by moving up the state’s primary. However, if Democrats really want to put the party in the strongest possible position to succeed in presidential elections, let’s completely rethink the current primary system and replace it with a nominating process designed to pick the candidate best able to win.

In 2004, the primary season was frontloaded around a few early, relatively small and not especially diverse states in order to identify as quickly as possible the “most electable” candidate and to conserve money for the general election. Because these were small states that are historically won one voter and one constituency group at a time, candidates were rewarded for their retail campaign skills: one-on-one politics, constituency group building and a good biography. Unfortunately, these skills are about as relevant to a 21st century national presidential campaign as horseback riding is relevant to driving a car.

Modern presidential campaigns are tests of character; they’re a hunt for candidates who have broad appeal (as opposed to a biography attractive to only a limited range of voters). They’re about identifying candidates with the ability to articulate a message that speaks to all Americans, rather than those who rely on the typical 12-point plans constructed for one constituency group or another. Modern presidential races are about the ability to connect with voters over the TV in their living rooms — not about a candidate’s charm when he meets with them in person in their own living rooms. And they’re about the capacity to assemble and run a far-flung organization capable of raising well in excess of $100 million in just a few years.

With three reforms, the Democrats can put in place a nominating system that will produce the strongest and, yes, most electable candidate.

First, the Democratic primary schedule should open with a group of states that, when taken together, represents the mosaic that is America. Along with a Midwestern Iowa and a Northeastern New Hampshire, let’s have a state from the Southwest, South and West all voting on the same day.

A multi-state campaign taking place on one day and involving a diverse set of states will begin the process of identifying the candidate who can put together the winning qualities of a national campaign.

Second, the primary season needs to be spread over a longer time period — not just in theory but in practice as well, so candidates are truly tested. Beginning in early February and going until May, Democrats should schedule a series of 10 primaries, with each involving five geographically diverse states voting every two weeks. The diverse and multi-state nature of the races would make it far more likely that the campaign would be competitive for a longer period. (Under the current system, the 2008 primary could effectively be over after four early states vote in a span of a few weeks, as it was in 2004. The compressed time period and winner-take-all nature of the existing system means that whoever does well in these first states, especially the first two, is in all likelihood the presumptive nominee.)

This sort of diverse process over an extended time period worked in 1992 — the only time in the last 25 years that the Democrats nominated a candidate, Bill Clinton, who went on to be sworn in as president. That year, because Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin was running in the Iowa caucuses and because New Hampshire voters chose former Sen. Paul Tsongas of neighboring Massachusetts, neither Iowa nor New Hampshire played their historically determinative roles. In fact, the 1992 election was the first time in history that a candidate became president who did not win the New Hampshire primary. Instead, Democrats had to compete vigorously over the course of several months in such places as South Dakota, and then in Georgia (where Clinton got his first win), Maryland, Colorado, South Carolina, Arizona, Super Tuesday, and then on to Connecticut, New York and eventually California, where Clinton wrapped up the nomination in early June.

If Democrats had been using the 2004 primary system in 1992, their nominee could well have been Tsongas. The longer, diversified schedule, however, allowed Clinton to prove himself to voters, exposed the candidates’ relative strengths and weaknesses and allowed the Democrats to stay on the offensive and define the terms of the general election. Democrats ended up with a candidate who actually won a number of states in the South and all the states in the upper Midwest — and who had the message, the battle-hardened ability and the proven campaign operation needed to beat the Republicans.

The third reform, in order to encourage more voter participation and loosen the grip of the Washington establishment on the Democratic Party’s nomination process, is a three-part proposal: Eliminate the “super delegate” system. Super delegates are a significant pool of at-large, free-agent delegates representing the Democratic apparatus (including both party and elected officials) in the nominating process. In addition, the party should establish a system that more closely resembles the system that states such as Maine and Nebraska use in the general election, in which they divide nominating delegates by congressional districts, with votes for each district and additional points for whichever candidate wins the majority of the state’s total vote. Finally, as in New Hampshire, independents should be allowed to vote in Democratic primaries.

These changes would force candidates to compete for an ideologically broader range of voters throughout all regions of a state, including in urban, suburban, exurban and rural districts.

Even a cursory glance at a red-and-blue color-coded map that divides the country’s counties up shows that Democrats need to compete in more than just the major cities and coastal regions. Not only will this be of enormous help to producing a candidate who can compete nationally — it will help the party’s candidates lower down on the ballot, where Democrats face challenges in traditional swing communities.

The winning coalition for Democrats will in all likelihood not be the old Democratic coalition of labor, minorities, women and coastal progressives. As the 2006 midterms demonstrated, for the Democratic Party to regain a permanent majority status, our candidates must win by talking to all Americans.