Webb to seek fifth term as GOP chair

Republican Party of Arkansas Chairman Doyle Webb said Tuesday he will seek a fifth two-year term in December, saying, “I love my job.”

He made his comments after speaking to the Political Animals Club at the Governor’s Mansion. Webb would have been ineligible to run under previous party rules, but those rules were changed last summer to allow chairmen to serve 12 years.

Informed of Webb’s comments, U.S. Rep. French Hill, R-Ark., said, “Doyle Webb has worked hard to put the party on sound financial footing and has experienced record success in recruiting candidates up and down the ballot, and I’m pleased to learn that he’s interested in running for an additional term.”

Webb, a former state senator from Benton who then served as Lt. Gov. Win Rockefeller’s chief of staff, was elected chairman in December 2008.

He has presided over a party that moved from a permanent minority status to a strong majority. Republicans now control all six congressional offices, all statewide offices, 63 of the 100 state House seats and 24 of the 35 state Senate seats. This year, 800 Republican candidates filed at the county level, more than 500 of them running unopposed.