Republicans secured 21 seats in the 35-member state Senate in Tuesday’s election as they stripped control of the chamber from the Democrats for the first time since Reconstruction.
The GOP increased its number of senators by six as the number of Democratic senators dipped from 20 to 14. Two years ago, Republicans increased their number of senators from eight to 15 as Democrats saw their ranks slip from 27 to 20.
The results disappointed Sen. Larry Teague, a Democrat from Nashville who was in line to be the Senate’s leader in 2013 and 2014 if the Democrats retained control.
“I decided I was going to go play with the grandbaby a little while and get in a better mood,” he said Wednesday at noon outside the state Capitol.
Teague said he hopes Senate Republican Whip Michael Lamoureux of Russellville is elected today as the Senate’s leader - the Senate president pro tempore - for the next two years.
Lamoureux said he would like either Senate President Pro Tempore Paul Bookout, D-Jonesboro, or Teague to serve as the Senate’s co-chairman of the Joint Budget Committee. The Senate’s budget committee members selecttheir co-chairman today.
He said he talked to Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe on Wednesday morning because the election is over and the Senate is getting organized for the 2013 session.
“Part of having a good session is having a good relationship with him [and] I wanted to start that,” Lamoureux said.
“I think we have a mandate to do our job and act like adults,” he said.
Lamoureux said the Democrats will be “very influential” in the Senate with 14 senators, and people expect the Senate to have “a team approach” and to be inclusive.
“And if we don’t do it, I think people will be sorry,” he said.
Beebe said Lamoureux indicated that he wants to work with Democrats and him in a bipartisan manner, and that Lamoureux “doesn’t want it to look like Washington.”
That comes on the heels of an election in which state Senate races “to some degree were nationalized,” said Senate Democratic leader Robert Thompson of Paragould.
It proved to be a difficult election for Democrats as a result of the “bleeding over and mixing up federal politics and state politics” and increased spending by outside and partisan groups targeting Democratic Senate candidates, he said.
Term-limited Gilbert Baker, R-Conway, said the GOP secured a majority in the Senate because President Barack Obama was “a drag” on Democratic Senate candidates and because Republican candidates were high quality.
He said groups such as the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee targeted Republican Senate candidates to counter conservative groups targeting Democratic candidates.
Democratic Sens. Steve Harrelson of Hot Springs and Mike Fletcher of Hot Springs were ousted Tuesday by Texarkana Republican Jimmy Hickey Jr. and Hot Springs Republican Alan Clark, respectively.
Harrelson summarized his defeat this way: “It was a difficult time to run as an incumbent and as a Democrat. Honestly, I just got beat.”
Hickey said he gives “fullcredit to God” but acknowledged working hard since December to win the seat.
Fletcher characterized his loss like Harrelson did: “This is very apparent that everything is going pretty Republican and I respect that. I don’t have any complaints at all.”
Clark said he won the race by talking to what he estimated to be 26,000 people during the past 12 months. An anti-Obama backlash also helped, he said.
Beebe said he was surprised by one Senate race in which Democratic state Rep. Jerry Brown of Wynne lost to Wynne Republican Ronald Caldwell.
“The others were either expected or were close enough that they were so competitive that we couldn’t, I couldn’t, tell what was going to happen,” Beebe said.
In late July, the Republican Party of Arkansas nominated Caldwell to be its nominee to challenge Brown for the Senate District 23 seat. The previous Republican candidate, Tommy Caubble of Wynne, died after a heart attack in the Caubble family’s peach orchard.
Caldwell, a real estate investor who formerly owned a lumber company and hardware store, said he won because he worked hard and contacted a lot of people.
It helped, Caldwell said, that voters were looking for “a little more conservative” voice in the Senate.
Brown said he lost because, “It is just a matter that this state is turning red. It is just a continuation of what we saw two years ago.
“I got absolutely killed in the area that I farm because of the Obama coattails, and a lot of people took to believing the 14 negative mailers that they sent out about me,” hesaid, referring to mailers from conservative nonprofit groups Americans for Prosperity, the Faith & Freedom Coalition and 60 Plus Association.
“It is just the mood of the people,” Brown said.
But Sen. David Wyatt, a Democrat from Batesville, and Thompson survived challenges from state Rep. Linda Collins-Smith, a Republican from Pocahontas who switched parties last year, and Corning Republican Blake Johnson, respectively.
Wyatt said he defeated Collins-Smith because “Independence County was good to me because I had worked for them for 26 years.” In addition to his service in the state House and Senate since 2005, Wyatt was the Independence County judge for 20 years.
Collins-Smith could not be reached for comment by phone Wednesday. She was one of four Republican legislative candidates who previously ran for office as a Democrat, but only one of them won Tuesday.
Thompson said he’s glad to win “in an extremely difficult environment and frankly being overspent when you look at everything they threw at us.”
Johnson said he fell short of ousting Thompson largely as a result of Democratic groups attacking him in the last few weeks of the campaign.
According to unofficial results, the closest Senate race was in District 34, where Rep. Barry Hyde, D-North Little Rock, trailed Rep. Jane English, R-North Little Rock, by 282 votes.
Neither English nor Hyde could be reached for comment by telephone Wednesday.
Information for this article was contributed by Sara D. Wire of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 9 on 11/08/2012