LITTLE ROCK — For nearly 15 years, John Thurston’s life has focused on his church.
He works in maintenance at Agape Church, met his wife there and attended the college located on the church campus.
Now, after an almost 6 percentage point win in the Nov. 2 election, he will become the first Republican in Arkansas history to be land commissioner.
“I’ve been serving people for the better half of my life and the same reason I work for Agape Church is the same reason I ran for public office, and it’s to serve people,” Thurston, 37, said. “Jesus said it’s more blessed to give than to receive, and I’ve found that to be true.”
The land commissioner collects delinquent property taxes in Arkansas and auctions property on which tax isn’t paid. The incumbent land commissioner, Democrat Mark Wilcox, was term-limited.
No Republican has been land commissioner since the position was created in 1868.
Thurston of Bigelow has attended Agape Church in Little Rock since 1998.
“I don’t want to sound too spiritual, but I just felt like that’s where God wanted me to be at that time,” Thurston said. “I hope that my life will help somebody else’s life to be better.”
Perched in the hills of west Little Rock, the sprawling church campus holds a college and a youth academy with red-brick buildings and a maze of steep roads.
He does maintenance and security for the church, calling it “basically the hands of the ministry.” He said he sets up for events, such as when charities hold fundraisers at the church.
The church is constructing the stage for a performance of a musical titled The Gospel According to Scrooge.
“We are slammed here at the church,” Thurston said. “It’s probably our busiest time.”
He said he does not plan to continue working for Agape while he is land commissioner.
From 1998 to 1999 he attended Agape College, which is part of Agape Church. He earned a Diploma of Biblical Studies in a one-year program and said he took extra classes in evangelism.
Agape College is not accredited, but has applied for accreditation through the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools, based in Forest, Va.
Calls to the association regarding the status of the application were not returned.
The college is licensed with the state Board of Private Career Education. It was exempted from certification by the Arkansas Department of Higher Education because it does not offer degree programs commonly offered at other colleges and universities. It recently formed a partnership with Oral Roberts University based in Tulsa.
Thurston attended Henderson State University in Arkadelphia from 1991 to 1993. The school said he had no declared major; Thurston said he wanted to be a pilot.
He has also owned his own pressure-washing and painting company, was a minister and worked as a certified religious assistant in prisons.
Thurston grew up in Sardis, which is about a 30-minute drive south of Little Rock.
Sardis is also one of the seven churches mentioned in the book of Revelation in the New Testament of the Bible.
“I grew up at church,” he said.
His father spent 30 years building pumps at a shop in Sardis. His mother works at the Wal-Mart in Benton.
JOINING THE PARTY
Thurston was a newcomer to politics when he showed up to file for the land commissioner race, said Arkansas Republican Party Chairman Doyle Webb.
“I think he is representative of the average Arkansan ... if they see a need and they have the ability to offer service, they step forward,” Webb said. “No one grows up in Arkansas dreaming of the day they’re going to be land commissioner. He’s a very soft-spoken individual, a solid individual and Christian individual, he just seems like a hardworking individual who wants to make his state a better place.”
Thurston has never held public office and was not an active participant in the Republican Party. He has not donated to a political party in the past 20 years.
“I had never heard of him,” Webb said. “We had not targeted specifically the land commissioner as a race we were trying to recruit candidates for.”
Webb said Thurston approached the party with a desire to see a Republican in the office for the first time.
“We will certainly look to hold the seat and I think his performance will determine if that is possible,” Webb said, adding that he thinks Thurston will do well.
For his campaign, Thurston got a $4,945 loan from Regions FIA Card Services to his campaign. The land commissioner job pays $54,305 a year. Thurston said he plans to interview the current staff members in the land commissioner office in the coming weeks.
“We’re not going in with guns blazing; we want to evaluate the personnel who’s already there,” Thurston said.
HOME LIFE
Thurston met his wife at Agape Church, where she and her family also attended.
Shortly after they married in 2004, she was diagnosed with cancer, Webb said.
“He was very devoted to her and that illness for a year, year and a half before she died,” Webb said. “He was a devoted spouse. ... That told me a lot about him as a person.”
His wife, Tiffany Ann Thurston, died in February 2007 of cancer. She was 28.
“She is still to date the most awesome person I’ve ever known,” Thurston said.
Shortly before the election, Thurston said in a radio ad that he’s “one white boy” who identifies with the black community because his late wife was a “beautiful black woman.”
He said at the time that the ad ran on Hallelujah 94.9, a black gospel station in Little Rock, and a similar print ad appeared in the program for the state NAACP annual banquet. He said the ads were not aimed at the white community.
“I really didn’t think about the white community in that particular ad because it was obviously targeted,” Thurston said. “I simply wanted to acknowledge the black community in my campaign. I have a heart for the black community that many people may not understand simply because my wife was a black woman.”
He has no children and is single.
In his free time, Thurston said he enjoys bass fishing, the outdoors and running. He has also written three motivational books that he hopes to get published soon.
He said one book is based on Scripture, another is meant to be encouraging and the third is to help people overcome habits, though he would not say what habits.
“This year is probably going to add a couple of chapters to one of them,” Thurston said.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 11/15/2010