Arkansas Conservatives Will Have an Uncommon Opportunity in 2012

Redistricting requires that every Arkansas state senator be elected in 2012.

Curtis Coleman, Contributing Author:
Arkansas conservatives (who are the clear majority in the State) will have an uncommon and extraordinary opportunity in 2012. According to Arkansas’s State Constitution, representatives stand for election or re-election every two years and may serve a maximum of three terms. But Arkansas’s state senators are elected for four-year terms and may serve only two consecutive terms. Except in the general election immediately following re-districting (or “reapportionment”).

A Little Reapportionment Background
The U.S. Constitution requires a census of residents in the U.S. every ten years. It also requires that states “apportion” their congressional districts as equally as possible so that every resident of Arkansas has an approximately equal vote in the House of Representatives. There are 435 members of the U. S. House of Representatives and, based on Arkansas’s population, Arkansas is allowed four of them. So Arkansas has four congressional districts. Currently, each of these districts is represented as follows:

• First Congressional District (roughly northeast Arkansas) – Congressman Rick Crawford (Republican)
• Second Congressional District (roughly central Arkansas) – Congressman Tim Griffin (Republican)
• Third Congressional District (roughly northwest Arkansas) – Congressman Steve Womack (Republican)
• Fourth Congressional District (roughly the southern half of the State) – Congressman Mike Ross

Every state is allowed two U. S. Senators regardless of the state’s population, so U.S. Senators are unaffected by the census or reapportionment.

Re-Sizing Congressional Districts
According to the 2010 census, northwest Arkansas’s population grew dramatically in the last 10 years, central Arkansas’s population increased by less than 10%, but the population in eastern and southern Arkansas generally decreased. To meet the Constitutional requirement of equal representation following these population changes, the lines demarking each congressional district must be redrawn. The Third Congressional District (northwest Arkansas) will have to “shrink,” covering less area and therefore including fewer people than currently. The Fourth Congressional District will have to be enlarged, covering more area and therefore including a number of people approximately equal to the new Third Congressional District. In short, the lines demarking each congressional district will have to be changed, making the topographical areas of each district different from their current size, but making their populations adequately equal to meet Constitutional requirements.

These four congressional districts are being redrawn by the Arkansas Legislature’s State Agencies and Governmental Affairs Committee:

Senator Steve Faris Senator Gilbert Baker Senator Ed Wilkinson Senator Steve Bryles Senator Kim Hendren Senator Randy Laverty Senator Bobby Glover Senator Bill Pritchard Representative Clark Hall Representative Mark Slinkard Representative Duncan Baird Representative Eddie L. Cheatham Representative Ann V. Clemmer Representative Larry Cowling

Representative Ed Garner Representative Debra M. Hobbs Representative Karen S. Hopper Representative Andrea Lea Representative James McLean Representative Jim Nickels Representative Tracy Pennartz Representative Johnnie J. Roebuck Representative Tiffany Rogers Representative Nate Steel Representative Linda S. Tyler Representative John T. Vines Representative Butch Wilkins

Arkansas representatives will be affected by re-districting in that their districts will be either topographically larger or smaller and will have, to some extent, different constituents than when they were elected.

Redrawing Arkansas’s Legislative Districts a Significantly Different Matter Arkansas’s state legislature is composed of 35 senators and 100 representatives, so the State has 35 senate districts and 100 representative districts.

Article 8 of the Arkansas Constitution (as amended by Constitutional amendments 23 and 45) institutes a “Board of Apportionment” and requires this Board to reapportion each of these 135 districts immediately following the decennial Federal census. The Arkansas Board of Apportionment is composed of the Governor, the Secretary of State and the Attorney General. In 2011, the Board’s members will be Governor Mike Beebe (D), Secretary of State Mark Martin (R) and Attorney General Dustin McDaniel (D).

Redrawing both the congressional district lines and the legislative district lines is subject to gerrymandering, a practice that attempts to establish a political advantage for a particular party or group by manipulating geographic boundaries to create partisan, incumbent-protected, and neutral districts. (Redrawing of legislative districts by a small Board of Apportionment is significantly more subject to gerrymandering than redrawing the congressional districts, but that will be the subject of a future column.)

An Uncommon Opportunity for Conservatives
The Arkansas Constitution (Article 8 as amended) requires that every Arkansas senator be elected by the constituents in their (possibly) redrawn districts following reapportionment. Because state representatives are elected every two years anyway, all 100 state representatives and all 35 state senators will be elected in the next general election in 2012, a phenomenon that only occurs once every ten years. Even state senators who were elected to a four-year term in 2010 will be required to stand for re-election. But all state senators elected in 2012 will not initially serve four-year terms. After their election, senators will “draw lots” to determine which will immediately serve two year terms and which will serve four year terms. Those who initially serve two-year terms will not have their two-year terms “charged” against their normal eight-year terms limits, so some senators elected in 2012 will be able, if re-elected, to serve for ten years in the Arkansas Senate.

Normally, only one-half of Arkansas’s state senators will be up for re-election. But the general election in 2012 gives conservatives an extraordinary opportunity to make prodigious gains in electing constitutionally faithful state legislators who will aggressively limit the size and growth of an otherwise burgeoning state government.

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Curtis Coleman is the President of The Curtis Coleman Institute for Constitutional Policy and contributing author to the ARRA News Service.

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