U.S. Rep. Steve Womack won Tuesday’s Republican primary election for Arkansas’ 3rd Congressional District against state Sen. Clint Penzo of Springdale.
With an estimated 85% of the votes counted, unofficial returns were:
Womack 41,595
Penzo 36,369
“I am honored, I am thrilled and I will carry this vote to the general election and do the things necessary to push back against this Biden agenda, secure our border, provide for the needs of our men and women who faithfully and voluntarily serve our country in uniform and be that voice of the conservative values that define our nation,” Womack said after he was declared the winner. “That’s what I will do. And that’s what I’ve done for over 13 yeas now. And I will continue to do it with honor, with integrity, and I am eternally grateful for the vote of confidence given to me by the voters of Arkansas’ Third District.”
Womack will face Democrat Caitlin Draper in the general election on Nov. 5.
Womack, 67, is a former Rogers mayor and retired Arkansas Army National Guard colonel who has served in Congress since 2011. Womack said he hasn’t missed a vote in Congress since he took office.
Womack is a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee.
“To win a preferential primary, there is a certain amount of political purity that goes with that,” Womack said late Tuesday night. “And trying to make government work, sometimes works in conflict with political purity. In my case particularly because I’m an appropriator. There’s an expectation that I’m going to negotiate and vote for appropriation bills. And sometimes the base voter out there, because they have a problem with federal spending, they may not fully understand the dynamics involved in federal spending. Sometimes trying to make government work and appease your primary voter can be conflicting.”
Penzo, 48, is a Realtor who served in the Arkansas House of Representatives from 2017 to 2022 and has been in the state Senate since January 2023.
Penzo describes himself as a Christian conservative.
On X, formerly known as Twitter, Penzo wrote that Womack’s third vote against U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, for House speaker was “the catalyst that got me in the race.”
“Nobody in Arkansas is a member of the Freedom Caucus, and that’s something I would like to see changed in this next election,” Penzo was quoted as saying.
Jordan is a longstanding member of the House Freedom Caucus.
“Ideologically, Freedom Caucus members and allies are among the most conservative of House Republicans, with several falling on the right-most end of the spectrum,” according to the Pew Research Center.
Penzo told Breitbart News in January that he aspired to be Arkansas’ House Freedom Caucus representative.
Instead of Jordan, Womack supported House Majority Leader Steve Scalise as the replacement for ousted House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, but Scalise withdrew his bid before it went to the House floor for a vote. Womack then voted for U.S. Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., who was elected speaker.
Republicans have made up the majority in the House of Representatives since January 2023, but they have a thin majority, Womack said.
“Our margins are desperately thin,” he said. “And that means that every single member of our caucus has an enormous amount of power. They can stop things from happening if they have any particular disagreement with it.”
A small group of House Republicans who disagree with the majority can make it difficult for the governing party to govern.
Carl Hulse, chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times, described 2023 as a “year of paralysis and dysfunction” for the House of Representatives — “one of the most tumultuous and unproductive legislative years in recent memory, characterized by Republican infighting and a tiny majority that left House G.O.P. leaders toiling to do even the bare minimum of governing.”
“It was historical and hysterical,” Womack said when the House adjourned in December.
He elaborated during an interview with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in January: “So it’s pretty historical that we’ve been somewhat this dysfunctional and hysterical from the perspective of ‘You’ve got the majority but you can’t govern.’ So what does that say? And what is the message now to the rest of America as you approach the 2024 presidential election? I worry that we’ve put our majority in jeopardy because we haven’t been able to move legislation in keeping with majority rule.
“It’s not just difficult for us as a party, it proves to be difficult for America.”
Changing things in Congress won’t be easy, Womack said.
“I have always advocated that changing the status quo under the current construct of Congress means it’s going to have to be done incrementally,” he said. “Because every single member of the House has the power now to be able to take something down, whether it’s a rule or more, the vote on the underlying bill, if they find some fault with the legislation. And trust me, they do. They do it every day. I could give you many examples of how legislating in the 118th Congress is actually not happening. … Here we are fiddling while the rest of the country is waiting on us to get our act together. And that bothers me. It bothers me deeply.”
Womack said the national debt had been a major concern of his.
“We’re concentrating on the wrong side of the ledger,” he said of Congress. “We’re targeting discretionary spending, but that’s not the real driver. The true drivers of where we are today are on the mandatory side. …
“The problem is Congress, at least the 118th Congress, has had this major food fight over the discretionary budget. And the discretionary budget, for the last 13 years, has only grown at about a 2% clip. And that’s consistent with what the [Federal Reserve’s] recommended growth rate is. These entitlement programs have more than doubled in that time frame, and nobody is talking about that. And that’s where we need to concentrate our discussion. If we’re going to make an appreciable difference in the fiscal glide path of this country, it’s going to have to come by dealing with the entitlement programs.”
Womack said he wasn’t saying entitlement programs will have to be cut.
“But if we’re going to save those programs, we’re going to have to do some fundamental things differently that give long-term sustainability to them and keep America’s promise to our seniors at the same time in a more fiscally responsible way,” he said.
Womack said in his proposed 2019 budget, he advocated for moving the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67 to equalize it with Social Security.
“But I couldn’t get that budget on the floor of the House because it was politically toxic, and I understand that,” Womack said.
Making changes to mandatory spending like Medicare is “third-rail politics” and may get a person voted out of office as a result, said Womack.
“But you know what, our job right now is to help save our country from this fiscal crisis,” he said.
The 3rd District includes five counties — Benton, Carroll, Crawford, Madison and Washington — along with the northern part of Sebastian County.
Womack was the only one of Arkansas’ four congressmen — all of whom are Republicans — to face a challenger in the primary election. Arkansas’ other three Republican congressmen are Rick Crawford of Jonesboro, French Hill of Little Rock, and Bruce Westerman of Hot Springs.
This story has been updated. It was originally published at 10:01 p.m. under the headline "Womack projected to win Republican nomination for U.S. House in Arkansas' 3rd Congressional District."