calsfoundation@cals.org
November 7, 2006
Mike Beebe was elected Arkansas’s forty-fifth governor with an overwhelming majority of the vote. Beebe received 55.6 percent of the vote, holding Asa Hutchinson to only 40.7 percent; each of the two other candidates received approximately two percent of the vote. Beebe’s victory also had great geographical reach; he lost only fifteen of the state’s seventy-five counties. His campaign emphasized a mixture of progressivism on economic issues (strong support for reducing the state’s sales tax on groceries, for raising the state’s minimum wage, for universal access to pre-kindergarten educational opportunities, and for maintenance of the state educational standards) and traditionalism on cultural issues (strong support for private property rights and gun ownership rights).