When the sad news came Wednesday that former Arkansas Rep. John Paul Hammerschmidt, R-Ark., died at age 92, one of the first things that the national news media recalled was that the 28-year U.S. House member won his tightest re-election in 1974 over a young (28) Democrat and law professor named Bill Clinton.
"And Bill always tells me that had I not defeated him, he would never have become president," Hammerschmidt told this reporter in 2002. He noted that after Clinton’s narrow loss for Congress in ’74, he moved swiftly to become state attorney general in ’76, governor in ’78 and a far bigger player in national Democratic circles than he would have been as a congressman.
National reports about Hammerschmidt, who served in the House from 1966 until retiring in 1992, was one of the closest friends of another future president, George H.W. Bush. The two decorated World War II combat pilots ("George was Navy, I was Army Air Corps") came to Congress together in 1966 and often dined together with their wives.
They remained friends after Bush left Congress in 1970 and, when most of his fellow Razorback State Republicans were for Ronald Reagan in 1980, Hammerschmidt "was with George from the day he told me he was going to run," he recalled.
But the man that constituents and fellow Arkansas Republicans called just "John Paul" was much more than someone whose career touched that of presidents. The World War II veteran and owner of a family lumber business was state Republican chairman when the party was in the proverbial "telephone booth" and in 1966 became Arkansas’ first Republican member of Congress since Reconstruction.
At a time when Republicans control all statewide offices and congressional seats as well as both houses of the state legislature, it is a bit hard to believe that Hammerschmidt was not only "John Paul the First" among major state GOP figures but, along with transplanted New Yorker Winthrop Rockefeller (who on his second try won the governorship in 1966) one of the only GOP figures in the state.
"You’ll be writing about what a great Republican year we had in Arkansas," Rep. John Boozman, R-Ark., told this reporter during his winning campaign for the Senate in 2010, "And you’ve got to talk to John Paul. He was key to getting it all started way back when."
In December of that year, Hammerschmidt did talk to this reporter and recalled how he became a Republican "because I thought it was unhealthy if our state had a one-party system."
In short order, he came Republican chairman of Boone County, state party treasurer and eventually chairman. Hammerschmidt worked hard for friend Rockefeller in his first race for governor in 1964, but, like most of his fellow conservatives, backed Barry Goldwater for their party’s presidential nominee over Winthrop’s older brother, New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller.
That same year, cattle rancher and Republican candidate Jerry Hinshaw held 20-year Democratic Rep. Jim Trimble to a career-low re-election margin of 54 percent in Arkansas’s 3rd District. When Hinshaw declined to run again, party activists persuaded Hammerschmidt to make the race.
Running hard against Lyndon Johnson’s big-spending "Great Society" programs and calling for victory in the Vietnam War, attending "every chicken luncheon there was," Hammerschmidt unseated Trimble with 53.6 percent of the vote.
With a lifetime rating of 90 percent from the American Conservative Union, Hammerschmidt generally voted the conservative line in Congress and rose to become ranking Republican member of the House Public Works Committee. Largely because of his much-praised service to constituents in a district that included 35 of the 75 counties in Arkansas, Hammerschmidt was a safe bet for re-election, except when he got a scare from Clinton in the so-called "Watergate Year" of 1974.
After retiring from Congress in 1992, Hammerschmidt, ever the grass-roots Republican, remained active in his state party and served as Republican National committeeman.
Explaining to this reporter why Arkansas was behind other states in electing Republicans, he pointed out that "Democrats here [are] still able to nominate candidates who sound more moderate than liberal. Nominating someone like my friend, David Pryor [former Democratic governor and U.S. senator], Bill Clinton, or [former Gov.] Mike Beebe makes it harder for Republicans to tell conservatives the Democratic Party has left them."
That was in 2010. With most major offices now in GOP hands, with such Arkansas Republicans as former Gov. and 2008 presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee, freshman Sen. Tom Cotton and Gov. Asa Hutchinson (elected to succeed Beebe this year) making national news, Hammerschmidt’s legacy lives after him.
Soft-spoken and modest and with a wry sense of humor, Hammerschmidt once said: "I always thought I’d support prima donnas for office. I never thought I’d become one myself."
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax.
Related Stories:
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.