A Red State Arises: How a Governor's Race Transformed Arkansas and National Politics

The gubernatorial race of 1990 brought two of the state’s most prominent politicos, Sheffield Nelson and Tommy Robinson, into one of Arkansas’s most bitter political battles—and it also signaled the state’s turn toward the Republican Party. In this book, historian Revis Edmonds goes behind the scenes to uncover the relationships, personalities, and traditions that produced a famous Arkansas political rivalry and ushered in a historic shift in its politics.

Edmonds notes, “Having spent my formative years in Hope, Arkansas, which teemed with political folklore—the stories of native sons like Bill Clinton and Mike Huckabee flowed from there—I became fascinated with how relationships mold politics in small towns like Hope and how Arkansas has mirrored small-town, personality-driven politics on a grand scale.”

While en route to joining its geographic neighbors in the South’s current political realignment, the state was locked in a process in which its politics and its culture were in constant conflict. Edmonds explores how forces and personalities both inside and outside Arkansas affected this collision of two old friends—Nelson and Robinson—in the pursuit of their ambitions. Further, the book seeks to demonstrate how Arkansas’s tradition of localism often frustrated outside political forces that hoped to use this gubernatorial battle for their own ends.

Edmonds also examines the role of one of Arkansas’s top power brokers, Witt Stephens, the Little Rock financier who for decades played a substantial but quiet role in supporting some of Arkansas’s biggest political names.