John Cooper (Arkansas politician)

John R. Cooper (born 1947), is a Republican member of the Arkansas State Senate and a retiree from American Telephone and Telegraph in Jonesboro, Arkansas.

On January 14, 2014, Cooper won a special election for the District 21 seat for Craighead County in northeastern Arkansas. The seat had opened when the Democrat Paul Bookout of Jonesboro, reelected in 2012 and a former Senate President, resigned in the summer of 2013 under an ethics cloud.^[1]

With a turnout of approximately 17 percent in the special election, Cooper defeated the Democratic nominee, Steven Eric Rockwell (born 1954), 4,314 (57.2 percent) to 3,227 (42.8 percent).^[2] Rockwell manages his family printing and publishing business in Jonesboro and called himself a "centrist" in the race.^[3] Retiring Democratic Governor Mike Beebe cut ads for the Rockwell campaign.^[4]

Cooper first defeated two fellow Republicans, Chad Niell and Dan Sullivan, to gain his party endorsement.^[5] Cooper also carried the support of the Tea Party movement. Until Bookout's resignation, Cooper had intended to run in 2014 for the District 59 seat in the Arkansas House of Representatives. He lost a race in 2012 for that same House seat against the Democrat Butch Wilkins, who was term-limited in 2014.^[6]

Cooper became the 23rd Republican in the 35-member Arkansas Senate, which had been 100 percent Democratic until 1969, when Jim Caldwell, a minister from Rogers, won election the previous November in a district based about Benton and Carroll counties in northwestern Arkansas. In the campaign, Cooper said that he considers ethics reform and wasteful government spending among his legislative priorities.^[6]

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