Senator Clarke Tucker

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District: 14
Seniority: 20
District Address: P.O. Box 7268, Little Rock, 72217
Phone: (501) 246-4933
Email: clarke.tucker@senate.ar.gov
Party: Democrat
Legislative Service: Senate 2021
House 2015, 2017

Biography

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Senator 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 and runs north of all of I-630 and northwest Pulaski County. Senator Tucker served in the Arkansas House of Representatives from 2015 to 2019.

Senator Tucker is vice chair of the Senate State Agencies and Governmental Affairs Committee and vice co-chair of the Medical Marijuana Oversight Subcommittee. He is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Joint Retirement and Social Security Committee, the Senate Efficiency Committee, the Senate Ethics Committee, the Joint Budget Committee, the Arkansas Legislative Council, the Charitable, Penal and Correctional Institutions Subcommittee, the Hospital and Medicaid Study Subcommittee, the Lottery Oversight Subcommittee and the Policy-Making Subcommittee.

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.

Committees