BioSenator Clarke Tucker was elected to the Senate in November of 2020 and is serving
his first term as an Arkansas Senator representing District 14. His district includes
downtown Little Rock, Hillcrest, Heights, Pleasant Valley and parts of Chenal Parkway
north of I-630 and northwest Pulaski County. Senator Tucker served in the Arkansas
House of Representatives from 2015 to 2019.
Senator Tucker is the vice chair of the Senate Efficiency Committee. He is a member
of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Senate State Agencies and Governmental
Affairs Committee, the Joint Retirement and Social Security Committee, the Joint
Budget Committee and the Arkansas Legislature Council.
During the 94th General Assembly, Senator Tucker sponsored legislation to allow a
student an excused absence to go with their parents or legal guardian to vote. He also
sponsored legislation to amend the filing of campaign finance reports and to amend the
law regarding a vacancy on a county board of election commissioners.
During his tenure in the House, he worked across the aisle to strengthen families and
create educational opportunities for children. His legislative agenda included bills to
protect workers and senior citizens, and included several bills to enhance penalties for
offenses against women and children, such as Act 301 of 2017 to make the penalties
for domestic battery equivalent to the penalties for battery in the first degree.
In 2017, he sponsored Act 538 to require lifetime registration on the sex offender
registry for persons convicted of forcible rape. Act 130, also sponsored by Tucker,
includes the use of electronic media in the legal definition of harassing
communications.
Also in 2017, then Representative Tucker was the lead House sponsor of Act 430 and
Act 431, ethics legislation that broadened the definition of criminal offenses concerning
abuses of public office.
In 2015 he was the lead House sponsor for Act 1023, to require risk and needs
assessments of juvenile offenders. Juvenile judges now use a uniform system across
Arkansas, and young people who commit minor offenses are not sent to a detention
center to be with serious and violent offenders.
Tucker was the lead House sponsor of Act 1270 to increase the penalties for abuse of
a public trust, making it a Class B felony if the offender benefitted by $25,000 or more
and a Class C felony if the benefit is greater than $5,000.
He was a co-sponsor of Act 895 of 2015, the Criminal Justice Reform Act. It updates
standards for managing prison overcrowding with new rules for granting parole to
inmates, for revoking parole when those inmates commit major or minor infractions, for
preparing inmates for life outside prison and for classifying offenders who go through
drug courts.
Senator Tucker earned a B.A. in government from Harvard University in 2003. He
graduated with a J.D. degree from the University of Arkansas School of Law in 2006.
Senator Tucker is active at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, where he has served on the
Vestry, as Chancellor and as Senior Warden. He is a member of the Board of Directors
of Just Communities of Arkansas and of the Arkansas Imagination Library, and he is
the founder of the Pulaski County Imagination Library. It works with Dolly Parton's
Imagination Library to deliver age appropriate books to all children in Pulaski County
up to the age of five.
He is founding Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Tiger Foundation, an
organization that benefits and supports Little Rock Central High School. A proud
alumnus and former student body president, Senator Tucker is a past coach of
Central's mock trial team. He also serves on and is past president of the Central High
School Alumni Association Board of Directors.
Senator Tucker lives in Little Rock with his wife, Toni, and their two children.
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