Will Jones held a slim lead Tuesday night over Alicia "Lisa" Walton in the race for prosecuting attorney for the Little Rock-based Sixth Judicial District of Perry and Pulaski counties.
The winner will replace the retiring Larry Jegley, the man who has held the post without opposition for the past 25 years.
With 45,896 votes cast, unofficial returns were:
Jones 23,954
Walton 21,942
Early tallies showed Jones, a career prosecutor who got his start working for Jegley and was endorsed by his former boss, leading Walton, a public defender who ran as a progressive reformer.
Returns will not be official until they are formally reviewed by the Pulaski County and Perry County election commissions in the next two weeks.
Will Jones, currently the Jefferson County chief deputy prosecutor, ran on his record, touting a 20-year career that mostly targeted child abusers and sexual predators of children. Jones, 47, positioned himself as the only experienced candidate, capable of managing a large office of lawyers to address a backlog of criminal cases caused by the covid pandemic while also offering his own ideas about better serving crime victims, addressing recidivism while tackling the Capitol City's growing crime rate.
Walton, 51, ran as the reform candidate, promising she would do more to reach out to crime victims, divert more children into juvenile court rather than try them as adults, increase opportunities for rehabilitation, especially for non-violent offenders, create diversion programs to help reduce recidivism and take steps to reform the money bail system.
A former Marine, Walton said she would also bring a perspective seldom seen in the prosecutor's office as a crime victim herself, overcoming domestic violence as well as being the sister to a murder victim killed on Little Rock streets in the 1990s.
While the candidates outwardly ran a cordial race, efforts funded by out-of-state billionaires on each candidate's behalf attacked both Jones and Walton.
Walton's candidacy was backed by Democratic activist billionaire George Soros, who put $321,000 into the Arkansas Justice & Public Safety PAC. The group, managed out of Washington, D.C., paid for polling services, video ads and mailers, most of them promoting Walton.
A PAC flier labeled a "voter's guide" and a March poll disputed whether Jones could be an effective advocate for rape victims, using out-of-context quotes from a 14-year-old criminal case.
Jones' campaign had its own, Republican billionaires supporting it. Fair Courts USA, a political interest group affiliated with Republican billionaire activist Richard Uihlein of Illinois, funded with $100,000 from Arkansas chicken magnate Ron Cameron, put out $66,594 in fliers that praised Jones on one side while deriding Walton on the other side as a "soft on crime" defense attorney dedicated to "defending violent criminals" while she supported reforms "that put criminals back on the street."
Closer to home, banker Warren Stephens was the top contributor with $75,000 to Safer Cities Arkansas, another political interest group dominated by local Republican business interests, that put together $216,000 to pay for a radio and TV ad touting Jones for prosecutor.
Also Tuesday, Pulaski County voters were choosing two new circuit judges to replace the judges Alice Gray and Wendell Griffen when they retire at the end of the year. Cara Connors and Latonya Austin Honorable were leading their respective races, the preliminary voter counts show.
According to those unofficial numbers, Connors, a former prosecutor in private practice, was leading Brenda Stallings, a public defender in juvenile court, to succeed Gray, the district's senior judge.
With 8,190 votes cast, complete but unofficial totals were:
Connors 4,600
Stallings 3,590
For Griffen's seat, Honorable, after two unsuccessful judicial campaigns, was ahead of attorney Ernest Sanders, who had been Griffen's predecessor on the bench as an appointed judge, on her third run for judicial office.
With 8,231 votes cast, complete but unofficial totals were:
Honorable 4,758
Sanders 3,473