Editor’s Note: Each year, the Times Record newsroom staff votes on the Top 10 local stories of the year. The election of a Republican-majority state Legislature tied with the murder of Cassie Cotta of Fort Smith for the No. 9 story of 2012.
The last time Republicans held a majority in the Arkansas Legislature, there were fewer than 50 million people in the 37 states of the United States, Oklahoma was known as the Indian Territory and Alexander Graham Bell was two years away from being awarded the first patent for a telephone.
After making gains in the GOP-controlled Legislature in 1870, Democrats took control of both the House and Senate in the elections of 1874, when Arkansas voters also approved the Constitution of 1874.
Guglielmo Marconi was born six months earlier in April 1874, and 21 years later sent and received the first radio signal in 1895. It was seven more years before he successfully transmitted a transatlantic radiotelegraph message for the first time.
According to the book, “With Fire and Sword: Arkansas, 1861-1874,” after Arkansas was readmitted to the Union in 1868, following the Civil War, the GOP initially dominated politics in the state, at the state and federal level.
The radical turn from Democrats to Republicans didn’t represent a change in party loyalty, but a function of the Arkansas Constitution of 1868 that denied most former Confederates, who were primarily Democrats, the right to vote or participate in state government.
That same year, Ulysses S. Grant was elected 18th U.S. president; John W. Menard, R-La., was the first African-American elected to Congress, although he was denied the seat by an election challenge; and the first “Decoration Day,” later renamed Memorial Day, was held.
While denying former Confederates the right to vote allowed Republicans to capture the Arkansas governor’s office, state Legislature and congressional delegation, Democrats began making gains in the Legislature in 1870 and “re-emerged as a legitimate force in both houses of the state legislature,” according to “With Fire and Sword: Arkansas, 1861-1874.”
Opposing factions in the Republican Party also assured GOP control of the post-Civil War government in Arkansas wouldn’t last, according to an article authored by Susquehanna University history professor William A. Russ, in the Arkansas Historical Quarterly in 1946.
“The experiment of building the Republican Party on the basis of inexperienced blacks, northern adventurers and illiterate original Unionists was a costly one for Arkansas,” Russ wrote.
The election of Republican Elisha Baxter as governor in 1872 was also a significant turning point in Democrats returning to power in the state, according to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture, an online resource.
Baxter alienated his Republican supporters by vetoing a bill to provide state aid to railroads, appointing Democrats to various state agencies and supporting restoration of former Confederates voting rights, which were restored in March 1873, according to the Encyclopedia.
The following year, a constitutional convention dominated by Democrat delegates was held, a new state constitution was approved by voters in October 1874, and Democrats captured the governor’s mansion, majorities in the state House and Senate and each of the state’s four U.S. House seats.
In 1876 and 1878, Democrats regained both U.S. Senate seats.
It took more than 90 years before Arkansans elected another Republican to the U.S. House or the governor’s office, both in 1966 when Winthrop Rockefeller was elected governor and John Paul Hammerschmidt was elected to Congress.
It was 118 years before Arkansans elected a Republican to the U.S. Senate, Tim Hutchinson in 1996.
Republicans made major gains in the 2010 election cycle, winning more state legislative seats than the party has held since Reconstruction. After decades of unrivaled dominance, Democrats now hold slim majorities — 53 seats in the 100-member House and 20 seats in the 35-member Senate.
When the members of the 89th General Assembly are sworn in next month, Republicans will hold a 51-49 majority in the House and a 21-14 majority in the Senate, 139 years after losing the majority in both chambers — and 10 years before the first edition of the Fort Smith Times was published in 1884.