Hammerschmidt was a delegate to the
Republican National Conventions in
1964,
1968,
1972,
1976,
1980,
1984, and
1988. He was twice the state chairman of the
Republican Party of Arkansas, serving from 1964 to 1966 and again from 2002 to 2004. In the
1966 election, Hammerschmidt won the Republican nomination for the 3rd district and then defeated 11-term incumbent Democrat
James William Trimble, by more than nine thousand votes. He became the first Republican to represent Arkansas in Congress since
Reconstruction. Hammerschmidt was elected twelve more times, having served twenty-six years from January 3, 1967 to January 3, 1993, from the
90th Congress to the
102nd Congress. The 3rd district had begun shaking off its
Solid South roots before the rest of Arkansas; it has only supported a Democrat for president twice since 1952, and its voters had begun splitting their tickets at the federal level as early as the 1930s. Hammerschmidt became very popular in the 3rd district, even though most of its residents had never been represented by a Republican before; indeed, Democrats would hold most state and local offices well into the 1990s. He only faced one contest anywhere near as close as his initial bid for the seat. In the
1974 election, he defeated Bill Clinton (then a
University of Arkansas law professor) by only 6,400 votes. Clinton had harshly criticized Hammerschmidt for being one of the few Republicans to stand by
Richard Nixon in the wake of the
Watergate scandal. This election was one of only four in which Democrats received more than one-third of the vote against Hammerschmidt, the others being Hardy Croxton in 1968, Donald Poe in 1970, and former Clinton associate
James McDougal in 1982. The district reverted to form in 1976, when Hammerschmidt was reelected unopposed. In 1978, Hammerschmidt faced weak opposition from the
Hot Springs real estate broker William C. Mears and instead had the resources to help the Republican gubernatorial nominee,
A. Lynn Lowe, a farmer from
Texarkana, win in Boone County. Lowe, who was also the state party chairman, lost to Hammerschmidt's former opponent, Bill Clinton, by a margin of 63%–37%. Hammerschmidt was a member of the President's Commission on Aviation Security and Terrorism (PCAST) which was organized in September 1989 to review and report on aviation security policy in the light of the sabotage of
Pan Am Flight 103 on December 21, 1988. Hammerschmidt had a conservative voting record on foreign policy and social issues, but a slightly more moderate record on economic issues. He supported a constitutional amendment proposing to enact
flag desecration laws. Hammerschmidt did not vote on the
Abandoned Shipwrecks Act of 1987. Hammerschmidt was in the Air Force Reserve from 1945 to 1960 and the
Army Reserve from 1977 to 1981. He was a
Presbyterian and a member of the
American Legion,
Veterans of Foreign Wars,
Freemasons,
Shriners,
Elks,
Rotary International, and had alumni status at the Alpha Zeta chapter of the
Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity at the
University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. From 1999 to 2004, he was a trustee of
Arkansas State University at
Jonesboro. Hammerschmidt died at the age of 92 of heart and respiratory failure at a hospital in
Springdale, Arkansas. ==Legacy==