Arkansas Law And Government

The current Governor of Arkansas is Mike Beebe, a Democrat. He was elected on November 7, 2006.

Both of Arkansas's U.S. Senators are Democrats: Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor. The state has four seats in U.S. House of Representatives. Three seats are held by Democrats—Marion Berry (map), Vic Snyder (map), and Mike Ross (map). The state's lone Republican congressman is John Boozman (map).

The Democratic Party holds super-majority status in the Arkansas General Assembly. A majority of local and statewide offices are also held by Democrats. This arrangement is rare in the modern South, where a majority of statewide offices are held by Republicans. Arkansas had the distinction in 1992 of being the only state in the entire country to give the majority of its vote to a single candidate in the presidential election—native son Bill Clinton—while every other state's electoral votes were won by pluralities of the vote among the three candidates. In 2004 George W. Bush won the state of Arkansas by 10 points, leading some to speculate that the state was shifting toward the Republicans. In 2006, however, Democrats were elected to fill all statewide offices by the voters in a Democratic sweep that included the Arkansas Democratic Party regaining the governorship.

Most Republican strength lies mainly in northwest Arkansas in the area around Fort Smith, while the rest of the state is strongly Democratic. Arkansas has only elected one Republican to the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction. The Arkansas General Assembly has not been controlled by the Republican Party since Reconstruction and is the fourth most heavily Democratic Legislature in the country, after Massachusetts, Hawaii, and Connecticut. Arkansas is also the only state among the states of the former Confederacy that sends two Democrats to the U.S. Senate and the overwhelming majority of registered voters in the state are Democrats. The state is socially conservative – its voters passed a ban on gay marriage with 74% voting yes, the Arkansas Constitution protects right to work, and the state is one of a handful that has legislation on its books banning abortion in the event Roe vs. Wade is ever overturned.

In Arkansas, the lieutenant governor is elected separately from the governor and thus can be from a different political party.

Each officer's term is four years long. Office holders are term-limited to two full terms plus any partial terms prior to the first full term. Arkansas gubernatorial terms became four years with the 1986 general election; before this, the terms were two years long.

Some of Arkansas's counties have two county seats, as opposed to the usual one seat. The arrangement dates back to when travel was extremely difficult in the states. The seats are usually on opposite sides of the county. Though travel is no longer the difficulty it once was, there are few efforts to eliminate the two seat arrangement where it exists, since the county seat is a source of pride (and jobs) to the city involved.

Arkansas is the only state to specify the pronunciation of its name by law.[4]