Ex-Democrats Wagner, Rye set sights on House seat

A map showing the location of House District 54.
A map showing the location of House District 54.

A pair of former Democrats are vying for the Republican nomination for a state House seat in northeast Arkansas.











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Arkansas Secretary of State

Former legislator Wes Wagner

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Arkansas Secretary Of State

Longtime county assessor Johnny Rye

Wes Wagner, a former legislator who was ousted by a Republican in the district in 2014, is running against a longtime county assessor, Johnny Rye, who has spent years lobbying for county governments at the Capitol.

The House of Representatives’ District 54 seat is made up of parts of Mississippi and Poinsett counties. It is held by Rep. David Wallace, R-Leachville, who is seeking a state Senate seat. The Republican nominee will take on William Hunter Williams Jr., a Democrat from P̶a̶r̶a̶g̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ Blytheville*, in the Nov. 8 election.

The House is composed of 64 Republicans, 35 Democrats and one former Republican turned independent. The primary elections are March 1; early voting begins Tuesday.

Rye, who lives in Trumann, was a lifelong Democrat, like his father, before switching parties last year. He said that had he not decided to run for the House, and instead retired from his position in Poinsett County, he may not have switched parties publicly.

But Rye, 59, said he felt a need to serve and he couldn’t, in good conscience, do it with a label of a party he feels has left him and other Arkansans behind.

“At the federal and state level, I’d caught myself voting Republican for the last 10 years. … [My dad] died back in ’09, and he was having certain issues going on [with the Democratic Party] at the time,” said Rye, who has been assessor for 25 years. “The abortion issue and the same-sex marriage, they played a big part in me changing over.”

For Wagner, an attorney in Manila, the decision last year to switch parties came from a feeling of distance between the national party and the party he had long known, he said.

Wagner, 36, said that his move is no different from many voters in his district — people who grew up as Democrats but now identify more on fiscal and social issues with the Republican Party.

“It’s an ongoing, evolving situation I’m sure we all struggled with,” Wagner said. “There’s no denying that President [Barack] Obama has spearheaded taking the Democratic Party further to the left. I think someone like Gov. [Mike] Beebe tried to keep it in the middle, but at the national level … it overshadows that.”

After losing a 2010 primary, Wagner was elected in 2012 but lost to Wallace, who announced he would challenge Osceola Democrat David Burnett for his Senate seat.

Wagner said he wants to focus on furthering economic development in his district, as well as the region. He said the success of area steel mills has resulted in ancillary businesses popping up. The key will be looking to recruit more industry while investing more in community colleges and satellite campuses that are starting to produce more specialized workers for these burgeoning industries, he said.

“It’s a win-win all the way around. It increases the tax base for the county and the state,” he said. “But [tax incentives for companies] should not be our sole [means] of recruiting any type of industry. … But if another state is doing the same thing, we should be competitive.”

Rye said he wants to focus on economic development and help the schools in and around the district.

“We really do need to strengthen our community colleges and make sure the colleges at the local level are training people so when they come out they can go into the local industry,” Rye said.

Wagner also said he wants to improve roads and infrastructure and thinks the state should find ways to help in the cleanup of rural blight.

“We have a lot of areas that need to be cleaned up, but it costs more to clean it up than the property is worth,” Wagner said. “We need to come up with ways, maybe tax incentives, to purchase the property and clean it up so it can be an even, zero balance. Then everyone’s property values improve.”

When it comes to the future of the private-option program, which uses federal Medicaid money to purchase private insurance for poorer Arkansans, Rye said the state needs to be cautious.

Authorized in 2013, the program, which has resulted in health coverage for about 200,000 Arkansans, has constantly been under fire from conservatives in the state. Gov Asa Hutchinson wants to rebrand the program “Arkansas Works” and is seeking waivers from the federal government to encourage the insured to work.

“Honestly, when this first came out, people were calling it Obamacare. I was seriously against it. It wasn’t that I was trying to keep folks away [from health insurance] so much as I think our country is digging a hole financially we can’t climb out of,” Rye said. “The way I look at it now, the governor has a task force that’s working on it as we speak. Before I make any type of decision on [the future of the private option] I’d like to see what comes out with it and what the governor supported.”

Wagner supported the private option when he was in the House and said that the program may need to be scaled back but not necessarily torn asunder. He supports the idea of attaching work requirements to eligibility for the subsidized health insurance.

The state will begin paying 5 percent of the cost of the program in 2017, and that amount will reach 10 percent by 2020.

“If we can’t afford it, we can’t afford it,” Wagner said. “But I have two rural hospitals. … Their uncompensated care is way down, they actually have some money in the bank now. … We’ll do everything we can to keep our rural hospitals open, but we can’t bankrupt the state.”

Both candidates describe themselves as anti-abortion.

Wagner said he thinks it’s up to the state’s federal representatives to “chip away” at the legal precedents that have set out the right to an abortion.

Rye said that even though the state’s 12-week abortion ban, known as the Human Heartbeat Protection Act of 2013, was struck down as unconstitutional by federal courts, it’s something that should be looked at again.

Rye said that with the decades he spent advocating at the Capitol for the Arkansas Association of Counties, he knows the right people and understands the process and can be an effective leader.

“I’m going to make myself available to anyone and all people in our district,” he said. “I will respond to every phone call made to me. Very important.”

Wagner said that he, too, has the experience to get things done for his district.

“I don’t hide from the things I’ve been able to do in my first term. I helped bring a lot of economic development to the area,” he said. “I’ll continue to use my experience and knowledge and act at the highest professional level to help my area continue to be on the map and as some of my constituents want, to be put back on the map up here in the corner of the state that often gets left out.”

*CORRECTION: William Hunter Williams Jr., who is running as a Democrat in House District 54, is from Blytheville. This story incorrectly identified his hometown.

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