A McGehee man announced his intention this week to be a Republican candidate for the state House seat currently held by state Rep. Mark McElroy, D-Tillar.
Ricky Lattimore, the 59-year-old pastor at the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Dermott, said in a phone call Tuesday that he is studying McElroy's voting record over his three terms in the House. McElroy represents District 11 and said he plans to seek re-election.
Lattimore said he will focus on health care, jobs and prison re-entry in the rural southeast Arkansas district, which includes parts of Desha and Chicot counties.
A volunteer religious counselor in the Department of Correction, Lattimore said he is concerned that inmates are re-entering society without first getting solid footing in employment. The 600-bed Delta Regional Unit is in District 11.
As for Arkansas' private-option Medicaid expansion program -- one of the most closely contested issues in the Legislature -- Lattimore said he likes the program and would be hesitant to change it.
"If we don't have a better option than Medicaid, I want them to stay on Medicaid," he said.
More than 300,000 low-income Arkansans receive health care through the expansion program, though Gov. Asa Hutchinson has requested that the federal government allow the state to remove from Medicaid rolls about 60,000 people whose incomes are above the poverty level.
Lattimore said that in a phone call with the governor earlier in the day, he spoke about his concerns of people losing their health insurance.
Lattimore's campaign was announced through a news release issued by the Republican Party of Arkansas. District 11 has been one of the last Democratic strongholds in the increasingly red-hued Delta.
McElroy says he is planning to run for re-election in 2018 and that he will point voters to his record to gain support.
"Everybody's got the right to run, that's what's good about the United States," he said.
Metro on 11/17/2017