Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Fort Smith woman voted in as state GOP chief
National committeewoman Fulmer nominated by Sen. Cotton to replace Webb
The Republican Party of Arkansas state committee has elected its national committeewoman Jonelle Fulmer of Fort Smith as party chairman to succeed Doyle Webb of Benton, who had served in the post since December of 2008.
In a secret ballot, the committee selected Fulmer over Iverson Jackson, who is a pastor and businessman and led the party’s African American Coalition of Arkansas.
The vote count among 206 committee members wasn’t announced at the meeting on Dec. 5, and the committee approved motions to declare the election unanimous and to destroy the ballots.
Fulmer, who will serve a twoyear term, has been the GOP’s national committeewoman for the past eight years. The committee later elected Rita Hamilton of Bella Vista to replace Fulmer as the national committeewoman through June 30.
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the Republicans wore masks and spread out in a meeting room for about four hours at the Benton Event Center.
U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton of Little Rock nominated Fulmer, calling her “one of the women who have been toiling in the vineyards for the Republican Party for many, many decades.
“She has been the backbone of the backbone in the Republican Party, our Republican women,” he said.
Cotton said he was grateful to Fulmer for preparing “the ground for the last 12 years of great success in the Republican Party of Arkansas.”
Fulmer said she never dreamed that she would one day ask to be elected party chairwoman, but about a year ago, several members began asking her to consider it.
“I finally came to the realization that if I am here to serve and this is where the party is calling me and needs me, then I need to be willing to offer myself for this service, so here I am,” she said.
Fulmer said she started working on campaigns in 1995 for her Sunday School teacher Asa Hutchinson, who was running for Congress. Hutchinson, a former 3rd District congressman, has been governor since 2015.
She said she envisions a stronger Republican Party, starting with equipping and empowering the chairmen at the county level.
“I can offer you a vision of growth where the Republican Party of Arkansas reaches across every demographic, and every ethnic divide, and we give them the message that our party has history on our side, that we have the platform and the principles and the policies that represent the values of every Arkansan,” she said. “It doesn’t matter where they came from or where they are going, our party is their party. We need to also share that the Republican Party of Arkansas needs them and welcomes them.”
Jackson told Republicans that in speaking with Fulmer, he had said the two were not running against each other for the chairman seat, but were running for the position. “We want to set the standard of how we should work together in this party,” he said.
“We must expand … the Republican message to other people, people who believe like us, live like us, raise their families like us,” Jackson said. “They need to know they are welcome in the Republican Party. The Republican Party is actually the home of the African American community. It is the home of civil rights. It is the party of freedom-loving people all across this great land.”
The committee also elected John Parke as the state party’s first vice chairman, Sharon Brooks as second vice chairman, Alisha Curtis as treasurer and Julie Harris as secretary.
Under Webb’s leadership, the party grew from a minority position in Arkansas to the majority party. The GOP now controls all of the state’s six seats in the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives, all seven of the constitutional offices, and more than three-fourths of the seats in the 100-member state House and 35-member Senate.
Webb said more than half of all partisan offices in Arkansas are now held by Republicans.
“I am proud of that,” he said. “I was a justice of the peace, and I think that’s where the action is. We have close to 400 Republican justices in peace in Arkansas today.”
U.S. Sen. John Boozman of Rogers told the Republicans that “you all have been the movers and the shakers, and the people that gotten us into the situation we are in.
“We are the envy of the country right now in the sense of the gains that we have made,” he said.