Local man named interim U. S. attorney
Conner Eldridge, U. S. attorney for the Western District of Arkansas, announced Tuesday he will step down on Aug. 21, and Hot Springs native Kenneth Elser, his first assistant U. S. attorney, will serve as acting U. S. attorney in his place.
Eldridge has served as U. S. attorney since Dec. 21, 2010.
“I am extremely proud of the work we have done to make communities throughout Arkansas safer places to live. We have focused on prosecuting those who bring crime and violence onto streets across our state, threaten our children, and defraud hardworking Arkansans. I am confident that work has made a difference,” Eldridge said in a news release.
A 1982 graduate of Hot Springs High School, Elser said Tuesday that he graduated from the University of Dallas in 1986 and got his law degree at the University of Arkansas Little Rock in 1989. After working for less than a year for a Hot Springs law firm, Elser began serving as a deputy prosecutor in Carroll County in northwest Arkansas in 1990.
Elser said he worked in Carroll County until 1998 when he left to begin working as a deputy prosecutor in Garland County under then- Prosecuting Attorney Paul R. Bosson. The next year, he was offered a job at the U. S. attorney’s office and began working there as an assistant U. S. attorney in September 1999, primarily as a narcotics prosecutor.
In 2003, he headed the office’s Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement
Task Force, and in October 2010 he was appointed crime chief, supervising the criminal division of the U. S. attorney’s office. In September 2014, he was named first assistant U. S. attorney, while continuing in his role as crime chief.
Elser noted Eldridge was appointed U. S. attorney around the same time he took on the role of crime chief, so “we kind of came in together.” He said he would serve as the interim U. S. attorney until a new one is appointed by the president and confirmed.
“I didn’t know for sure ( Eldridge) was leaving until ( Monday),” Elser said Tuesday, but noted Eldridge had previously indicated he probably wasn’t going to finish out his full term and that he was “pursuing other things” toward the end of his term.
“It’s not uncommon for a U. S. attorney to leave while still in office,” he said.
During his tenure, Eldridge prioritized crimes against children, including those involving sexual abuse, child pornography, human trafficking and violent crime. He also led the prosecution of numerous large- scale, violent drug trafficking organizations, violent crimes resulting in serious injury or death, and crimes involving fraud that resulted in significant financial losses to a large number of individuals and institutions, a news release said.
In Eldridge’s first year, his office secured the first convictions in the nation under the Matthew Shephard and James Byrd Hate Crimes Act for a violent, life- threatening incident in Alpena that resulted in serious physical injury to five individuals, the release said. Eldridge also focused on prosecuting public corruption, bringing cases against a county judge and county treasurer for bribery and theft of public funds. Under Eldridge’s leadership, the office prosecuted 120 defendants that committed crimes involving children.
Before serving as U. S. attorney, Eldridge served as a deputy prosecuting attorney in Clark County; as chief executive officer of Summit Bank, also located in Arkadelphia, and as a judicial law clerk to Judge G. Thomas Eisele in U. S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas.
The Western District of Arkansas includes 34 counties stretching from Texarkana, El Dorado, and Hot Springs to Fayetteville, Fort Smith, and Harrison.