Pratt Cates Remmel, Sr. (October 26, 1915–May 14, 1991), was the only 20th century Republican elected on a partisan ballot to have served as mayor of the capital city of Little Rock, Arkansas.
The Republican Party, also referred to as the GOP, is one of the two major political parties in the United States; the other is its historic rival, the Democratic Party.
In many countries, a mayor is the highest-ranking official in a municipal government such as that of a city or a town.
Little Rock is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Arkansas. As the county seat of Pulaski County, the city was incorporated on November 7, 1831, on the south bank of the Arkansas River close to the state's geographic center. The city derives its name from a rock formation along the river, named the "Little Rock" by the French explorer Jean-Baptiste Bénard de la Harpe in the 1720s. The capital of the Arkansas Territory was moved to Little Rock from Arkansas Post in 1821. The city's population was 198,541 in 2016 according to the United States Census Bureau. The six-county Little Rock-North Little Rock-Conway, AR Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) is ranked 78th in terms of population in the United States with 738,344 residents according to the 2017 estimate by the United States Census Bureau.
Remmel was elected to the first of two two-year terms in 1951, was reelected in 1953, and then defeated in 1955 by the DemocratWoodrow Wilson Mann, who like Remmel was engaged in the insurance business. In 1954, Remmel was the unsuccessful Republican gubernatorial candidate against the Democrat Orval Faubus, who won the first of his six consecutive two-year terms as the state's highest constitutional officer. Remmel's 37 percent of the general election vote was the greatest then attained by a Republican candidate since Reconstruction. In some ways, he paved the beginning of a long route that would bring fellow Republican Winthrop Rockefeller to the governorship in 1967. Rockefeller moved into the state only a year before Remmel ran for governor.
The Democratic Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. Tracing its heritage back to Thomas Jefferson and James Madison's Democratic-Republican Party, the modern-day Democratic Party was founded around 1828 by supporters of Andrew Jackson, making it the world's oldest active political party.
Woodrow Wilson Mann was an American politician who was the mayor of the capital city of Little Rock, Arkansas, from 1956 to 1957.
Insurance is a means of protection from financial loss. It is a form of risk management, primarily used to hedge against the risk of a contingent or uncertain loss
Family, education, military
Remmel was born in Little Rock to former Arkansas Republican state chairman Augustus Caleb "Gus" Remmel (1882–1920) and the former Ellen Lucy "Nell" Cates (1888–1961), who was the Arkansas Republican national committeewoman, a position equivalent to membership on the Republican National Committee, having served from 1928 until 1957. Remmel's father died when he was five, and his mother reared her children without a husband. One of Remmel's great-uncles, Harmon Liveright Remmel (1852–1927, usually known as H. L. Remmel), served as Republican state chairman from 1900 to 1925 and GOP national committeeman in 1924 and ran unsuccessfully for Arkansas governor in 1894, 1896, and 1900 and for the United States Senate in 1916.[1]
The Republican National Committee (RNC) is a U.S. political committee that provides national leadership for the Republican Party of the United States. It is responsible for developing and promoting the Republican political platform, as well as coordinating fundraising and election strategy. It is also responsible for organizing and running the Republican National Convention. Similar committees exist in every U.S. state and most U.S. counties, although in some states party organization is structured by congressional district, allied campaign organizations being governed by a national committee. Ronna Romney McDaniel is the current committee chairwoman.
The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, which along with the United States House of Representatives—the lower chamber—comprises the legislature of the United States. The Senate chamber is located in the north wing of the Capitol, in Washington, D.C.
A bachelor's degree or baccalaureate is an undergraduate academic degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to seven years. In some institutions and educational systems, some bachelor's degrees can only be taken as graduate or postgraduate degrees after a first degree has been completed. In countries with qualifications frameworks, bachelor's degrees are normally one of the major levels in the framework, although some qualifications titled bachelor's degrees may be at other levels and some qualifications with non-bachelor's titles may be classified as bachelor's degrees.
Economics is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.
The University of Virginia is a public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. It was founded in 1819 by Declaration of Independence author and former President Thomas Jefferson. It is known for its historic foundations, student-run honor code, and secret societies. UVA is the flagship university of Virginia and home to Jefferson's Academical Village, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries—including all the great powers—eventually formed two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. A state of total war emerged, directly involving more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. The major participants threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history, marked by 50 to 85 million fatalities, most of whom were civilians in the Soviet Union and China. It included massacres, the genocide of the Holocaust, strategic bombing, premeditated death from starvation and disease, and the only use of nuclear weapons in war.
The United States Navy (USN) is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most capable navy in the world and it has been estimated that in terms of tonnage of its active battle fleet alone, it is larger than the next 13 navies combined, which includes 11 U.S. allies or partner nations. with the highest combined battle fleet tonnage and the world's largest aircraft carrier fleet, with eleven in service, and two new carriers under construction. With 319,421 personnel on active duty and 99,616 in the Ready Reserve, the Navy is the third largest of the service branches. It has 282 deployable combat vessels and more than 3,700 operational aircraft as of March 2018, making it the second-largest air force in the world, after the United States Air Force.
A lieutenant is the junior most commissioned officer in the armed forces, fire services, police and other organizations of many nations.
Harvey Crowley Couch, Sr., was an Arkansas entrepreneur who rose from modest beginnings to control a regional utility and railroad empire. He is regarded as the father of Arkansas Power and Light Company and other electric utilities now part of Entergy; he helped mold the Louisiana and Arkansas Railway and the Kansas City Southern Railway into a major transportation system. His work with local and federal government leaders during World War I and the Great Depression gained him national recognition and earned him positions in state and federal agencies. He also established Arkansas' first commercial broadcast radio station.
Pine Bluff is the tenth-largest city in the state of Arkansas and the county seat of Jefferson County. It is the principal city of the Pine Bluff Metropolitan Statistical Area and part of the Little Rock-North Little Rock-Pine Bluff Combined Statistical Area. The population of the city was 49,083 in the 2010 Census with 2017 estimates showing a decline to 42,984.
Entergy Corporation is a Fortune 500 integrated energy company engaged primarily in electric power production and retail distribution operations in the Deep South of the United States. Entergy is headquartered in New Orleans, Louisiana, and generates and distributes electric power to 2.9 million customers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. Entergy has annual revenues of $11 billion employs more than 13,000 people.
Remmel spent decades trying to build the Arkansas Republican Party. In 1940, he became chairman of the Pulaski County (Little Rock) Republican Executive Committee. Thereafter, at various times he was treasurer of the Republican State Central Committee, finance director of the Arkansas Republican Party (1949–1951), chairman of the Young Republicans of Arkansas and vice chairman of the Young Republican National Federation. Remmel attended the national Republican conventions as a delegate in 1952 and 1956 and as an alternate in 1948 and 1960.[5]
Election as mayor, 1951
In the 1951 mayoral race, Remmel unseated the Democrat Sam M. Wassell, who sought a rarely given third term. Not since Ben D. Brickhouse (1919–1925) had anyone served longer than four years as mayor of Little Rock.[6] Wassell ignored Remmel, for he viewed the Republican nominee as too weak to warrant the reactivation of the precinct organization from the summer Democratic primary. Wassell claimed incorrectly that a Republican could not be elected in Little Rock because the party during Reconstruction had "left such an awful stink they haven't been back in seventy years."[7]
Remmel termed the Wassell administration "ineffectual, half-hearted, do-nothing government".[8] Near the end of the race when Wassell detected that Remmel was making rapid gains, the mayor listed his own accomplishments as (1) a newly constructed airport, (2) the establishment of a municipal budget system, (3) modern garbage disposal, (4) a revised building code, and (5) improvements in city-owned properties.[9]
The Arkansas Gazette (since the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, a WEHCO Media, Inc., publication) remained neutral in the mayoral campaign but instead urged the establishment of a nonpartisan city commission-manager form of government. "We don't know what the Democratic Party or the Republican Party has to do with municipal taxation and revenue, streets, sewers, drainage, health and sanitation, parks and recreation," the newspaper declared.[10] Little Rock established a nonpartisan city manager government starting in January 1958.[11] Therefore, Remmel's election victory as a Republican cannot be duplicated in Little Rock.
Remmel not only defeated Wassel: he won by a landslide, 7,794 votes (68 percent) to 3,668 (32 percent). He won all but three of the city's then twenty-six precincts. He was the first Republican to have sought the position in a quarter century. Then Democratic Governor Sid McMath attributed Remmel's victory to local factors, particularly a divisive Democratic primary between Massell and Alderman Franklin E. Loy (February 10, 1915 - February 6, 1999), also an insurance agent.[12]
The Little Rock election caught the eye of Republican U.S. SenatorRobert A. Taft of Ohio who told an audience in Biloxi, Mississippi, that he hoped Remmel's victory would be "indicative of a new trend in the South."[13] In the 1952 Republican convention in Chicago, Remmel first favored a largely ceremonial choice, GeneralDouglas MacArthur, a fellow Little Rock native whom he had hosted when the general visited the city.[14] Delegates Remmel, his mother "Nell" Remmel, National Committeeman Wallace Townsend and state GOP chairman Osro Cobb all voted at the convention for Taft. The Arkansas delegation split 6-4 for Taft, and an eleventh delegate abstained.[15] When the nomination went to Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Texas native who grew up in Kansas, Remmel worked for the national ticket, but the Adlai E. Stevenson and John J. Sparkman electors still won in Arkansas, a traditional Democratic political bastion at that time.
Reelection, 1953
Remmel announced that his second campaign would not accent the party issue, and the GOP declined even to offer an aldermanic slate. Remmel claimed that his record had been "fair to all and partial to none." [16] He spent some $15,000 in his second race and, in a technological innovation, linked six Little Rock radio stations to carry a simultaneous rally.
In his bid for a second term, Mayor Remmel faced the Democrat Aubrey Robert Kerr (1912-2001). The race assumed broader ramifications in that Remmel was expected to run for the United States Senate in 1954, if former Governor McMath who was defeated for renomination in the 1952 primary by Francis A. Cherry should unseat Democratic Senator John L. McClellan of Camden in the senatorial primary. Or, Remmel was seen as a possible Republican of Congress from Little Rock.[16] The Democrats denounced Remmel as the "silk-stocking candidate" and the "tool of the Republican Party." Such rhetoric came from Alderman Franklin Loy and Arkansas Attorney General Thomas J. Gentry, who had become hostile critics of the Remmel administration.[17]
Remmel defeated Kerr, 9,724 (59.2 percent) to 6,693 (40.8 percent). While Remmel claimed that his reelection had partisan implications because Kerr had emphasized party, state Republican Chairman Cobb said that the results merely reflected that Little Rock "places good government ahead of party labels."[18] Kerr's campaign manager, Frank H. Dodge, said, quite prematurely it turned out, that Remmel's reelection meant that "the two-party system is now at work in Little Rock."[19]
Remmel the Christian
A devout Christian, Remmel was a member of the board of stewards of the First United Methodist Church in Little Rock and the Methodist Men's Club. He was a former state president of the Gideons International, the men's organization which distributes Bibles in public places, such as hotel and motel rooms.[4]
On his mayoral reelection, Remmel said that one of his objectives would be to "help Little Rock grow more righteous."[20] He addressed a high school graduating class in Corning in 1953 and urged the young people to accept the "fundamental belief in God as the key to success."[21] At a Mena civic club, Remmel warned that the United States was "moving farther away from the Constitution and is giving up freedoms which were bought by the blood of the founders of the country."[22]
In his second inaugural address, Remmel quoted from Proverbs and stressed that "in this era of our world's history, we need to turn to God."[23]
In the 1954 gubernatorial race, Remmel conceded that "some folks have said that Remmel is too religious, but that's exactly why Remmel has a chance at all."[24] While campaigning for governor, Remmel sought the prayers of ministers he met, carried his Bible in his hip pocket, and read five chapters daily.[25]
1954 gubernatorial results
Faubus defeated Remmel, 208,121 (51.1 percent) to 172,004 (47.9 percent). The turnout was forty thousand fewer than in the Democratic runoff. Faubus polled just 16,793 more votes against Remmel than he had against Cherry. Theoretically, large numbers of Cherry supporters either stayed home in the general election or voted for Remmel. The Republican won six counties: Arkansas, Pulaski, Sebastian, Garland, Searcy, and Newton. He received at least 40 percent in five other counties, including Jefferson, Union, and Washington. He carried the cities of Fayetteville, El Dorado, and Brinkley though he lost the respective counties.[26]
Faubus recalled Remmel as "a most gracious loser. The day following the election, he and his brother, Roland (Roland R. Remmel, September 26, 1917 - July 2, 2006), came ... to congratulate me on my victory and to wish me well. Their attitude made a strong, favorable impression on me which I never forgot."[27]
Among Democrats supporting Remmel was governor was Odell Pollard, an attorney from Searcy, who switched parties himself in 1958 and later served as the GOP state chairman from 1966 to 1970.
Defeat in 1955
Woodrow Mann (November 13, 1916 – August 6, 2002) won the Democratic mayoral nomination over the opposition of persistent Alderman Franklin Loy, who had campaigned more against Remmel than he did against Mann by asking voters why they would even consider giving Little Rock "a black eye" by reelecting Remmel.[28] Mann claimed that Remmel lacked interest in the office, had refused to allow the city attorney to oppose utility rate increases, had ignored the need for parks and playgrounds, and had failed to secure a third bridge across the Arkansas River.[29] Remmel did not commit himself to seeking a third term until a month before the election.[30] In retrospect, Remmel said that he should have been contented with the customary two terms and not reached beyond his grasp, but he wanted voters to have a second choice in regard to Mann, whom he considered to have an unsavory reputation in the insurance business. Remmel spent $18,000 in his losing campaign.[31]
The third-term bid brought out the united Democratic hierarchy, including Governor Faubus, Senator James William Fulbright, and U.S. Representatives Brooks Hays, and Wilbur Daigh Mills. All urged the rejection of a two-party system. Faubus later expressed regret over his support of Mayor Mann, whom he called the "mouthpiece" of anti-Faubus forces in the 1957 Little Rock desegregation crisis.[32]
Mann upset Remmel by 1,128 votes in a moderately close outcome. Mann polled exactly 10,000 votes (53 percent) to Remmel's 8,872 (47 percent). After his tenure as mayor, Mann relocated to Houston, where he was engaged in the life insurance business. His primary rival, Franklin Loy, also in the life insurance business, later moved to Lexington, Kentucky.[33]
Remmel was a board member of the Arkansas River Basin Commission and chairman of the Arkansas Waterways Commission.[3]
Remmel died in Little Rock. Services were held in his First United Methodist Church. In addition to his wife and brother Roland, Remmel was survived by a son, Pratt Remmel, Jr. (born ca. 1948); two daughters, Catherine R. "Cathie" Matthews (born ca. 1942) and Rebecca Couch Remmel (born ca. 1950); another brother, Augustus C. Remmel, Jr. (June 14, 1914 - February 27, 2000); two sisters, Mrs. Richard C. Butler and Mrs. H. Tyndall Dickinson, and three granddaughters, all of Little Rock.[35]
Pratt Remmel Park off Interstate 440 and Pratt Remmel Road are named in Remmel's honor. In addition, Pratt Remmel, Jr., the director of the Arkansas Ecology Center, is the founder of Dunbar Garden, an urban park and green space in Little Rock.[36]
The Remmels are interred at Roselawn Cemetery in Little Rock.[37]
Orval Eugene Faubus was an American politician who served as 36th Governor of Arkansas from 1955 to 1967. In 1957, he refused to comply with a unanimous decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1954 case Brown v. Board of Education, and ordered the Arkansas National Guard to prevent black students from attending Little Rock Central High School. This event became known as the Little Rock Crisis.
Winthrop Rockefeller was an American politician and philanthropist, who served as the first Republican governor of Arkansas since Reconstruction. He was a third-generation member of the Rockefeller family.
Frank Durward White was an American banker and politician who served as the 41st governor of Arkansas. He served a single two-year term from 1981 to 1983. He is one of two people to have defeated Bill Clinton in an election, the other being the late U.S. Representative John Paul Hammerschmidt of Arkansas' 3rd congressional district.
David Hampton Pryor is an American politician and former Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives and United States Senator from the State of Arkansas. Pryor also served as 39th Governor of Arkansas from 1975 to 1979 and was a member of the Arkansas House of Representatives from 1960 to 1966. He served as the interim chairman of the Arkansas Democratic Party, following Bill Gwatney's assassination.
Bob Cowley Riley was an American educator and politician who served as Acting Governor of Arkansas for 11 days in 1975. He had previously been a member of the Arkansas House of Representatives from 1946 to 1950, the mayor of Arkadelphia, Arkansas, in 1966 and 1967, and the 12th Lieutenant Governor of Arkansas from 1971 to 1975. Riley wore a black eyepatch because of an injury sustained in World War II.
Francis Adams Cherry, Sr., was the 35th governor of the U.S. state of Arkansas, elected as a Democrat for a single two-year term from 1953 to 1955.
Homer Martin Adkins was the 32nd governor of the U.S. state of Arkansas. Prior to his public service as Governor of Arkansas, he had a career as a pharmacist, salesman, and military officer.
Thomas Dale Alford, Sr. was an American ophthalmologist and politician from the U.S. state of Arkansas who served as a conservative Democrat in the United States House of Representatives from Little Rock from 1959 to 1963.
Len Everette Blaylock Sr., was a farmer, educator, small businessman, and Republican politician from Nimrod in Perry County in northwestern Arkansas. He was state welfare commissioner under Governor Winthrop Rockefeller, the GOP gubernatorial nominee (1972), the United States marshal for the Eastern District of Arkansas (1975–1978), the appointments secretary for Governor Frank D. White (1981–1983), and the chairman of the Arkansas Republican Party (1985–1986).
Edwin Ruthvin Bethune Jr., known as Ed Bethune, is an American lawyer and lobbyist in Washington, D.C., who was a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from Arkansas from 1979-1985. His last campaign was an unsuccessful challenge in 1984 to the second-term reelection of Democratic U.S. Senator David Hampton Pryor.
Henry Middleton Britt, III, was a Hot Springs lawyer and a pioneer in the revitalization of the Republican Party in the heavily Democratic state of Arkansas, primarily during the 1960s and 1970s. He was the Republican gubernatorial nominee in 1960, having been decisively defeated by Orval Eugene Faubus. In 1966, he was elected judge of the 18th Judicial Circuit of Arkansas, having served from 1967 to 1983. Britt was also a peripheral figure in the granting of repeated draft deferments in the late 1960s to future Governor of Arkansas and US President Bill Clinton, which made not have to join the US Army.
Willis Harvey Ricketts, known as Bubs Ricketts, was the 1962 Republican gubernatorial nominee in the U.S. state of Arkansas, having been overwhelmingly defeated by the incumbent Democrat Orval Faubus.
Jefferson W. Speck was a planter and businessman from Mississippi County, Arkansas, who was the Republican gubernatorial nominee in 1950 and again in 1952. He was a leader in the Dwight D. Eisenhower faction of the Arkansas party in the early 1950s.
Odell Pollard was an attorney in Searcy in White County in central Arkansas, who was a pioneer in the revitalization of the Arkansas Republican Party in the 1960s and 1970s.
Osro Cobb was a Republican lawyer who worked to establish a two-party system in the U.S. state of Arkansas. In 1926, he was elected to the Arkansas House of Representatives from Montgomery County and served as the only Republican member in the chamber for two two-year terms. He was the United States attorney for the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas during the Little Rock Crisis of 1957–1958. He served a year on the Arkansas Supreme Court in 1966 as a temporary appointee of Democratic Governor Orval Faubus.
Danny Lee Patrick was an educator and farmer from rural Delaney in Madison County, Arkansas, who served from 1967 to 1970 as a Republican member of the Arkansas House of Representatives for Madison and neighboring Carroll counties in the northwestern corner of his state. His legislative service coincided exactly with the administration of Winthrop Rockefeller, Arkansas' first GOP governor since Reconstruction.
William Leach Spicer was a businessman from Fort Smith, Arkansas, who from 1962 to 1964 was the embattled state chairman of the Arkansas Republican Party.
Wallace Townsend was an Iowa-born lawyer who was from 1928 to 1961 the Republican national committeeman for the U.S. state of Arkansas. When he left his party's national committee, he was succeeded by Winthrop Rockefeller, who was elected five years thereafter in 1966 as the state's first Republican governor since the Reconstruction era.
Sterling Robertson Cockrill, Jr., is a retired politician and civic leader and an active artist in Little Rock, Arkansas.
↑ Bessie Butler Allard, ed. Who Is Who in Arkansas, Vol. I (Little Rock, 1959), pp. 199-200; Who's Who in the South and Southwest (Chicago, 1952), p. 603
1 2 3 Marvon Johansen Browning, "Pratt Remmel dies; GOP mayor of LR ran against Faubus", Arkansas Democrat, May 16, 1991.
↑ Bessie Butler Allard, ed. Who Is Who in Arkansas, Vol. I (Little Rock, 1959), pp. 199-200; Who's Who in the South and Southwest (chicago, 1952), p. 603
↑ John L. Ferguson, Arkansas Lives: The Opportunity Land's Who's Who (Hopkinsville, Kentucky, 1965), p. 466
↑ The New York Times, October 17, 1951; Robert A. Diamond, ed., Congressional Quarterly's Guide to U.S. Elections (Washington, 1975), p. 93, 166; interview with Remmel, September 7, 1983
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