District 16 race heads to runoff next month

A map showing the location of Senate District 16.
A map showing the location of Senate District 16.

Greg Standridge and Stan Berry will face each other in a runoff next month to determine the Republican candidate for the District 16 state Senate seat after Tuesday's special election.

Voters will choose between the two during the Feb. 10 Republican runoff.

Complete but unofficial results are:

Standridge 2,123

Berry 1,825

Thomas Akin 490

District 16 consists of Newton and Pope counties and portions of Boone, Carroll and Van Buren counties. The position became open when Michael Lamoureux of Russellville resigned in November to become Gov. Asa Hutchinson's chief of staff and transition director.

Standridge won close races in Boone, Carroll, Newton and Pope counties. Berry took Van Buren County.

"We'll hit the ground running hard tomorrow," Standridge said Tuesday night of his runoff campaign plans.

He said he was somewhat disappointed by the low voter turnout Tuesday. The secretary of state's office reported that less than 10 percent of the 45,538 registered voters in the five-county area of District 16 cast votes.

"We worked the phones like crazy trying to get the vote out," Standridge said. "I went door-to-door everywhere."

Berry said he will rest today and then look at the returns and tailor his runoff campaign based on results.

"We're going to look at areas where we need to obviously work on," he said. "We'll take a look at the numbers and see where we have to work harder.

"With this runoff, we're going to have to go through all this one more time."

There is no Democratic opponent in the April 14 special election. Candace Martin, the executive director of the state Democratic party, has said no Democratic candidates ran for the position because the seat was vacated by a Republican who ran unopposed in 2009.

Had there been no runoff, Tuesday's winner could have taken the position sooner, Berry said.

"This puts us another 30 days or so without any representation from this area," he said.

Standridge, 47, is the co-owner of CSI Insurance and owner of Access Mini-Storage in Russellville. He is also the volunteer fire chief of the Crow Mountain Fire Department and a Pope County emergency medical technician.

Berry, 60, of Dover, served in the state House from 2003-2009. He resigned in December as the outreach coordinator for Republican Secretary of State Mark Martin to run for the state Senate position. He retired as a telephone company manager and worked as community relations manager for Southwestern Energy Co.

Akin, 61, a businessman and poultry farmer from Russellville, ran as a Democrat for a state House seat in 2008 and lost. He changed parties because the Democratic party became too liberal, he said.

Akin did not return telephone messages Tuesday evening.

With the District 16 seat vacant, the state Senate consists of 23 Republicans and 11 Democrats.

State Desk on 01/14/2015

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