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Arkansas voters made history in 2012, handing control of the General Assembly to the Republican Party — a first for the state since Reconstruction.
The evolution from blue state to red state that had already occurred in other Southern states had finally arrived in Arkansas. The shift at the Capitol in Little Rock had been titanic, tectonic and remarkably swift.
Before the 2008 election, Democrats had held a 27-8 majority in the Senate and a 75-25 majority in the House. On Election Day 2012, Republicans captured 21 of the Senate’s 35 seats. They also secured control of the House, winning 51 of 100 seats.
State Sen. Michael Lamoureux, a Republican from Russellville, was tapped by his colleagues to be president pro tempore.
The newly elected House members ousted Rep. Darrin Williams, D-Little Rock, as speaker designate and elected as speaker Rep. Davy Carter, a 37-year-old Republican from Cabot, over Rep. Terry Rice, R-Waldron. This put Carter in line to lead the House in 2013 and 2014. Carter won that election with an alliance of House Democrats and a band of House Republicans who irked some of their Republican colleagues by breaking ranks on the leadership vote.
For much of its history, Arkansas had been a one-party state, a Democratic stronghold from top to bottom. Abraham Lincoln didn’t even appear on the ballot in 1860, the year he won the White House. The state GOP wasn’t officially organized until 1867, according to the Central Arkansas Library System Encyclopedia of Arkansas.
Early Republican advances, made during Reconstruction, largely disappeared after Northern troops withdrew from the South. Once Democrats retook the governor’s mansion, they would hold it until Winthrop Rockefeller’s election in 1966. At times, the state House and the state Senate had no Republicans at all.
After Reconstruction, the state’s electoral votes were also reliably Democratic. Arkansans, who favored a third party candidate in 1968, didn’t support a Republican presidential candidate until Richard Nixon’s 1972 re-election bid.
Arkansas voters, empowered in 1913 to directly elect U.S. senators, wouldn’t pick a Republican senator until 1996. When there were U.S. House races, Democrats often ran unopposed. In 1966, John Paul Hammerschmidt of Harrison was elected as the state’s first Republican congressman since Reconstruction. His seat in the 3rd District has remained in Republican hands ever since.
In 2014, Republicans swept the state’s congressional races, dislodging Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor. Today, there are no Democrats representing Arkansas on Capitol Hill.
In Little Rock today, Republicans occupy all of the state constitutional offices. In the General Assembly, Republicans have solidified their hold. Republicans currently hold 26 of 35 state Senate seats and 75 state House seats. Democrats have held on to 23 seats; two others are vacant.
— Frank E. Lockwood and Michael R. Wickline
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