DPA Chair Will Bond Running For Re-election

Democratic Party of Arkansas Chair Will Bond told me today he is running for re-election for a second term. Today is the deadline for all candidates seeking state party office to file for office.

Bond, an attorney and former State Representative, says his top priorities are to continue to build on the DPA”s grassroots organizing efforts, working to strengthen county committees and to continue recruiting strong candidates for State House and Senate.

I asked Bond what lessons were learned from the 2012 election cycle:

“We showed in the last election cycle, although we weren”t as successful as we wanted to be, that we still know how to mobilize voters and engage people at the local level and turnout the votes for our candidates. But we have to improve and do a better job at reaching out to folks who haven”t been involved and reaching out to younger voters making sure we”re engaging people who haven”t been engaged in the political process.”

Bond emphasized the DPA”s process of recruiting candidates to run:

“The most important thing you do in any election cycle is to recruit great people to run for office. We did a Farm to fashion design schools enriches the connection communities have with fresh, healthy food and local food producers by changing food purchasing and education practices at schools and preschools. lot of that in the state house and state senate races and that”s the number focus, in addition to building the party and it”s programs, is to continue to recruit candidates for our state senate and state house races. And next year we have all the constitutional offices on the ballot and the four congressional seats and it”s important to us to field great candidates in all these races.”

Bond added:

“Arkansas Dems have proven they know how to run government efficiently and effectively and part of our continuted challenge is to make sure our successes, and the successes of Governor Beebe and Democrats in the Legislature, continue to get down to the voters. We did a better job of that in 2012 and hopefully we can continue to improve on making sure the voters understand that Arkansas Democrats are working hard for them.”

The election for all DPA officers is on February 23 in Hot Springs.