1996 United States Senate election in Arkansas

Candidates • Bill Bristow, attorney • Lu Hardin, state senator • Sandy McMath, attorney and son of former governor Sidney Sanders McMath Declined • Mike Beebe, then a state senator in the Arkansas General Assembly and a future governor; explored a bid but didn't announce • Mack McLarty, 17th White House Chief of Staff (endorsed McMath) • Lamar Pettus, associate justice of the Supreme Court of Arkansas (ran for chief justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court) Arkansas Attorney General Winston Bryant and Arkansas State Senator Lu Hardin finished in the top two in the primary, and Bryant narrowly defeated Hardin in the runoff. Results (primary) Runoff == Republican primary ==

Candidates • Mike Huckabee, lieutenant governor of Arkansas Results Huckabee was unopposed for the nomination. Huckabee withdrawal Although Huckabee won the Senate nomination unopposed in the May primary, he abandoned his Senate bid when Governor Jim Guy Tucker resigned from office and he became governor of Arkansas. Replacement selection Following Huckabee's withdrawal, several candidates announced their interest in running: • John E. Brown, state senator from Siloam Springs • Jay Dickey, U.S. representative from Pine Bluff The main candidates were Dickey and Hutchinson, but in light of a potential impasse, some compromise candidates were floated: • Ed Bethune, former U.S. representative from Searcy and nominee for Senate in 1984 • Steve Luelf, former state senator and candidate for governor in 1994 ==Results==

Hutchinson won election to the U.S. Senate, receiving just over 5% more of the vote than his opponent Bryant. This was despite incumbent U.S. President Bill Clinton being re-elected by a 17-point margin in his home state of Arkansas, though the state had begun to trend more Republican at the time. == See also ==