Update, Aug. 11: Eldridge is stepping down on Aug. 21.
Original post:
It seems surreal just seven years later, but in 2008, incumbent Democrat Mark Pryor’s re-election as U.S. senator was such a foregone conclusion that no Republican even stepped up to challenge him.
If you were thinking Republican U.S. Sen. John Boozman might go similarly unchallenged by a Democrat in 2016, think again.
The calls that Ross Whipple of Arkadelphia has been making lead us to believe that his son-in-law, W. Conner Eldridge Jr., has moved past the thinking stage and will soon announce his candidacy.
And becoming a candidate for the Senate means Eldridge will have to resign from his job as U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Arkansas.
We’ve had our eye on Eldridge for several years now. He was 29 and about to assume the job of CEO of Whipple’s Summit Bank (since acquired by Bank of the Ozarks) when he was a member of our 40 Under 40 class of 2008.
We learned then that he grew up in Lonoke and Augusta, graduated from North Carolina’s Davidson College in 1999 and worked for U.S. Sen Blanche Lincoln and U.S. Rep. Marion Berry, both D-Ark., before earning a law degree from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. He was a clerk to U.S. District Judge G. Thomas Eisele in 2003-04.
He left Summit Bank to take the presidential appointment as U.S. Attorney in 2010.
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