The 1996 United States Senate election in Arkansas was held on November 5, 1996. Incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator David Pryor decided to retire. Republican Tim Hutchinson won the open seat, becoming the first Republican to win a U.S. Senate seat in Arkansas since Reconstruction in 1872 and the first to ever be popularly elected in the state. He was the first to win this seat since 1870.
As of 2023, this is the last time that Republicans flipped a Senate seat in a presidential election year despite losing the state in the presidential election.
Lamar Pettus, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of Arkansas (ran for Chief Justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court)[8]
Arkansas Attorney General Winston Bryant and Arkansas State Senator Lu Hardin finished in the top two in the primary, and Bryant narrowly defeated Hardin in the runoff.
Although Huckabee won the Senate nomination unopposed in the May primary, he abandoned his Senate bid when Governor Jim Guy Tucker resigned from office and he became Governor of Arkansas.[10]
Replacement selection
Following Huckabee's withdrawal, several candidates announced their interest in running:
On June 11, White, Nelson, and Bethune all endorsed Hutchinson. Shortly thereafter, Jones and Dickey withdrew and endorsed Hutchinson. Brown also withdrew his candidacy to seek Hutchinson's open House seat, which he lost to Hutchinson's older brother Asa Hutchinson in a special convention. Hutchinson was ratified as the nominee by the Arkansas Republican State Committee.[14]
Results
Hutchinson won election to the U.S. Senate, receiving just over 5% more of the vote than his opponent Bryant. This was despite incumbent U.S. President Bill Clinton being re-elected by a 17-point margin in his home state of Arkansas, though the state had begun to trend more Republican at the time.
1996 United States Senate election in Arkansas[15][16]
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