From the Arkansas Advocate:
The race to win the Republican nomination for a vacant Arkansas Senate seat at the center of the contentious Franklin County prison project is headed toward a runoff next month.
Wade Dunn, a retired businessman who received the endorsement of the late Sen. Gary Stubblefield’s family, earned the most votes in Tuesday’s special primary election, according to a final unofficial tally by the Secretary of State’s office. Brad Simon, a businessman who outspent all of his opponents, was in second. Neither candidate had the majority needed to win the nomination outright, with Dunn earning more than 37% of the vote and Simon earning nearly 31%.
Dunn wrote on his campaign’s Facebook page Tuesday night that he believed the race was headed to a runoff, and that he would be in it. He projected confidence about his footing going into a potential runoff.
“We are well positioned to continue to spread our people-first message,” he wrote. “First and foremost, we are going to stop this mega prison scam and the financial boondoggle associated with it.”
Simon said in a text message Tuesday evening that he was going to “wait on the final numbers, digest everything, and sleep on it.” He did not immediately respond to follow-up questions.
The five Republicans in the race were vying to replace Stubblefield, who died in September. Stubblefield was an outspoken opponent of the prison, which is set to be built in the district on a 815-acre property the state purchased in 2024, and was one of several senators who repeatedly voted against appropriating $750 million in state funds for its construction in 2025. The winner of the Feb. 3 Republican runoff will face independent candidate Adam Watson in the March 3 special election for Stubblefield’s seat.
Dunn, Simon and the other three candidates — former state Rep. Mark Berry, Stacie Smith and Ted Tritt — were united in opposing building a prison project in Franklin County and other issues such as cutting taxes, though their positions on alternatives to building the prison in the county were less unified. Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders in 2024 announced the state had bought 815 acres in the county for the planned 3,000-bed facility.
Sanders has said the prison is needed to address state prisons being over capacity — a longstanding issue that is predicted to worsen over the next decade and a half as the prison population continues growing due to the Protect Arkansas Act of 2023. Critics of the prison say the state didn’t consult locals about the plan and that the site doesn’t have the infrastructure needed for such a project.
The Senate special election, as well as the House District 70 special election, are also the subject of lawsuits after Sanders originally scheduled the elections to occur after this year’s fiscal session. That move would have left voters in those districts without full legislative representation during the session, when funding for the prison is expected to come up.
A voter in Senate District 26 and the Democratic Party of Arkansas sued Sanders over the original election schedules for both races in separate lawsuits. Sanders moved the special elections to their current dates after the state Supreme Court declined to pause two lower court rulings ordering her to hold them earlier.
