By John Lyon
Arkansas News Bureau
LITTLE ROCK — Arkansas’ first Green Party legislator said Wednesday he plans to switch his political affiliation to the Democratic Party.
Rep. Richard Carroll of North Little Rock said he will rejoin the Democratic Party, the party he belonged to before switching to the Green Party to run for the state House of Representatives last year.
“I pretty well voted Democrat anyway, and I wasn’t basically a Green Party member prior to running for the seat. I felt like I needed to get with my core beliefs,” Carroll said.
He said he would present a letter stating his intent to switch parties to House Speaker Robbie Wills, D-Conway, on Friday when lawmakers formally adjourn the 2009 legislative session.
The switch will give Democrats control of 72 seats in the 100-member House.
Carroll, 52, a boilermaker for Union Pacific, filed to run for the District 39 House seat as a Green Party candidate last year during an uproar over former Democratic Rep. Dwayne Dobbins’ decision to run for his old House seat.
Dobbins had resigned as a legislator in 2005 as part of a plea agreement with prosecutors to settle a sexual assault charge involving a teenage girl who said Dobbins fondled her. Dobbins pleaded guilty to misdemeanor harassment.
Dobbins’ wife, Sharon Dobbins, was elected to her husband’s former House seat in a special election and was re-elected in 2006. She was expected to run again in 2008, but on the last day of the filing period Dwayne Dobbins filed to run instead. No other major-party candidate filed before the deadline.
The state Democratic Party refused to certify Dobbins for the November ballot, and Dobbins lost a court fight to get on the ballot. Carroll wound up defeating two write-in candidates to take the seat, making him the Green Party’s highest elected official in the country.
Carroll said Wednesday he switched to the Green Party because at the time he entered the race, it was the only way he could get on the ballot.
“Since they gave me the opportunity to run on the ballot, that’s why I stayed with the Green Party until now,” he said.
Carroll said he found it difficult to build support for bills as a minority of one, and he was disappointed with the support he received from the Green Party of Arkansas, though he said he understood the party has limited resources.
“I did expect more. But with a young party, you have to expect those things. It’s not a well-established machine like the Democrats have,” he said.
Switching parties also means Carroll won’t have to run as a third-party candidate against a potential Democratic challenger in next year’s race. Carroll said he plans to seek re-election and has heard that a Democrat may run against him, though no one has yet announced for the office.
Green Party state coordinator Mark Swaney said he was disappointed by Carroll’s decision.
“We like Richard Carroll,” Swaney said. “We think Richard’s an excellent legislator. We didn’t know him well when he came to us, but we’re very pleased with Richard’s work in the Legislature and we agreed with all the bills he introduced.”
One of those bills, which was signed into law, increased the signature-gathering period for new parties and independent candidates seeking a spot on the state’s ballot from 60 days to 90 days.
Carroll was unsuccessful with another bill that would have allowed political parties to stay on the ballot if they received at least 3 percent of the vote in any statewide race in the previous two election cycles. Parties now have to receive 3 percent of the vote in the presidential race in the most recent election, or in the governor’s race in an off-year election.
Ironically, that bill faced opposition mainly from the party Carroll is about to join.
“That was an issue that the Republicans didn’t have a problem with and the Democrats did, because they stood to lose more and the Republicans stood to gain by eroding the Democratic base — that’s just the bottom line on that,” Carroll said. “That’s just politics.”
