Jonesboro Republican John Cooper handily defeated Jonesboro Democrat Steve Rockwell in Tuesday’s special election to fill a state Senate seat formerly held by Democrat Paul Bookout.
Cooper received 4,314 votes, while Rockwell had 3,227, according to final, unofficial results released by the Craighead County clerk’s office.
Cooper’s election increases the Republican ranks in the Senate from 21 to 22, leaving the Democrats with the other 13 seats.
Cooper will serve the rest of Bookout’s four-year term, which ends in January 2017.
But unlike Bookout, Cooper is a staunch foe of the Legislature’s decision last year to authorize the use of federal Medicaid funds to purchase private health insurance for poor Arkansans through the state’s health-insurance exchange. Rockwell supported what’s called the “private option.”
Last year, Bookout was one of 28 senators to vote to authorize the federally funded program as the appropriation measure narrowly cleared the35-member Senate with one more vote than required for approval.
Cooper stopped short of calling his victory the death knell for the private option, saying he’ll leave it to others to analyze the future of the program.
“This win was about the private option,” Cooper said in a telephone interview. “I think the headline was the private option. I think this is an important statement going forward.
“This was a grass-roots effort, and we had very broad support,” said Cooper, 67, a retired manager for AT&T who lost a 2012 state House race to Rep. Butch Wilkins, D-Bono.
The newly elected lawmaker said he’s going to sup-port the area’s hospitals and Arkansas State University, stick to his conservative values and represent District 21 in “a very honorable way.”
Rockwell, 59, an executive of his family’s publishing companies who was making his first bid for elected office, said he called Cooper to concede the race, but he declined to speculate about why Cooper won.
“Tonight we are not talking about that,” he said. “We put forth a good effort … and the voters spoke and the voters are never wrong.”
Rockwell declined to say whether the vote was a referendum on the private option, saying he didn’t want to speculate on that Tuesday night.
Bookout of Jonesboro resigned Aug. 20 after the state Ethics Commission fined him $8,000 for four violations of state ethics laws and a special prosecutor was appointed to review Bookout’s actions. Among other things, Bookout improperly used more than $53,000 in campaign funds on personal expenses that were unrelated to his campaign.
But ethics wasn’t a major issue in the Senate campaign, though Rockwell called for Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Darr’s resignation and Cooper said Darr probably should resign in the wake of multiple ethics violations. On Friday, Darr announced his resignation, effective Feb. 1, days after receiving a public letter of reprimand and an $11,000 fine from the Ethics Commission, the largest the panel ever levied.
The special election came less a month before the Republican-controlled Legislature considers reauthorizing the use of federal funding made available under the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act for the private option.
The 2014 fiscal session, which also will approve a fiscal 2015 budget, convenes Feb. 10.
The Jonesboro-area seat had been held for decades by Democrats, including Bookout’s late father, Jerry Bookout. But Republicans have made recent inroads in northeastern Arkansas and tried to link Rockwell to Democratic President Barack Obama, while Rockwell tried to tie himself to a popular ASU alum - Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe.
In the waning days of the campaign, Cooper described himself as “the mainstream candidate” on economic and social issues, while Rockwell said his business and education experience made him better prepared to represent the district.
Cooper favored freezing overall state spending, while Rockwell said freezes would harm public schools and universities.
The candidates differed on social issues.
Cooper said he favors banning abortion except in cases of rape and incest or if the life of the mother is in jeopardy. Rockwell was critical of legislative efforts to further restrict abortion rights, saying recent state laws barring many second-trimester abortions are unconstitutional.
Cooper said he favored the traditional definition of marriage: a union between one man and one woman. But Rockwell questioned same-sex marriage bans, saying the government shouldn’t “tell people who they can and cannot love.”
In their latest campaign-finance reports, Rockwell reported raising $66,498 in contributions and spending $32,376 as of Jan. 4, while Cooper reported raising $37,253 in contributions and lending his campaign $16,500 and spending $29,788 as of Jan. 6.
State Democratic Party Chairman Vince Insalaco of North Little Rock congratulated Rockwell in a written statement on “a hard-fought and well-run campaign.”
“Ordinarily we would be happy to congratulate the winner, but in the case of Mr. Cooper, we cannot condone the negative and divisive methods he used throughout his campaign,” Insalaco said
Cooper on Tuesday night declined to comment on Insalaco’s remarks.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 01/15/2014