James Paul Hendren (born August 12, 1963)
is an American politician serving as a member of the
Arkansas Senate from the 2nd district. From January 2019 to January 2021, he also served as Senate Majority Leader. Until February 2021, he was a
Republican; but he has left his party in the wake of the
2021 storming of the United States Capitol
On January 6, 2021, following the defeat of then-United States President, U.S. President Donald Trump in the 2020 United States presidential election, 2020 presidential election, a mob of his supporters attacked the United States Capitol, U ...
. He resides in
Sulphur Springs in
Benton County in
Northwest Arkansas.
Early life and education
A native of
Gravette in Benton County, Hendren spent a semester at
Bob Jones University and graduated in 1984 with a degree in electrical engineering from the
University of Arkansas
The University of Arkansas (U of A, UArk, or UA) is a public land-grant research university in Fayetteville, Arkansas. It is the flagship campus of the University of Arkansas System and the largest university in the state. Founded as Arkansas ...
at
Fayetteville.
Career
From 1984 to 1992, he served in the
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Signal ...
. A former F-15 fighter pilot, he flew in six intercepts of planes of the former
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
over the
Bering Sea
The Bering Sea (, ; rus, Бе́рингово мо́ре, r=Béringovo móre) is a marginal sea of the Northern Pacific Ocean. It forms, along with the Bering Strait, the divide between the two largest landmasses on Earth: Eurasia and The Ameri ...
. Since 2003, he has been a senior offensive duty guard in the Arkansas Air National Guard. He owns Hendren Plastics Company. He and his wife, Tammy Claire Hendren (born 1964), have four children, Daniel, David, Nick, and Molly. He is a
Baptist
Baptists form a major branch of Protestantism distinguished by baptizing professing Christian believers only (believer's baptism), and doing so by complete immersion. Baptist churches also generally subscribe to the doctrines of soul compete ...
.
Arkansas Legislature
Hendren was elected to the Gravette School Board in 1992.
In 1994, Hendren defeated Representative
Railey Steele in a race for the
Arkansas House of Representatives
The Arkansas State House of Representatives is the lower house of the Arkansas General Assembly, the state legislature of the US state of Arkansas. The House is composed of 100 members elected from an equal amount of constituencies across the ...
. He remained a state representative until 2000. During this time, he worked for passage of several pieces of
anti-abortion
Anti-abortion movements, also self-styled as pro-life or abolitionist movements, are involved in the abortion debate advocating against the practice of abortion and its legality. Many anti-abortion movements began as countermovements in respons ...
legislation, including a ban on
partial birth abortion
Intact dilation and extraction (D&X, IDX, or intact D&E) is a surgical procedure that removes an intact fetus from the uterus. The procedure is used both after miscarriages and for abortions in the second and third trimesters of pregnancy.
In U ...
s in 1996 and the Fetal Protection Law of 1999.
In 2001, Hendren ran unsuccessfully to succeed his uncles,
Asa Hutchinson and
Tim Hutchinson, representing
Arkansas's 3rd congressional district in a special election campaign that was hampered by reports of an
extramarital affair
An affair is a sexual relationship, romantic friendship, or passionate attachment in which at least one of its participants has a formal or informal commitment to a third person who may neither agree to such relationship nor even be aware of i ...
. Hendren finished third in the Republican primary.
In 2003, Hendren returned to military service and joined the
Missouri Air National Guard, of which he holds the rank of
lieutenant colonel
Lieutenant colonel ( , ) is a rank of commissioned officers in the armies, most marine forces and some air forces of the world, above a major and below a colonel. Several police forces in the United States use the rank of lieutenant colone ...
.
In 2012, Hendren ran unopposed for the state Senate; his initial four-year term expired on December 31, 2016. Re-elected in the 2016 election, Hendren served on the Education Facilities Oversight Committee and the Arkansas Legislative Council. He was a member of four other Senate committees: Budget, Children & Youth, Education, and Energy .
[ Hendren passed legislation exempting all active duty and National Guard personnel from state income tax in 2013. He was also appointed chairman of a Joint Task Force charged with reforming public school and Arkansas State Employee Insurance programs.
In January 2021, Hendren stepped down as the state's Senate Majority Leader. On February 19, in interview with ]MSNBC
MSNBC (originally the Microsoft National Broadcasting Company) is an American news-based pay television cable channel. It is owned by NBCUniversala subsidiary of Comcast. Headquartered in New York City, it provides news coverage and political ...
, he officially disaffiliated from the Republican Party, re-registering as an independent, citing the party's lack of safety and increased partisanship particularly in the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol
On January 6, 2021, following the defeat of then-United States President, U.S. President Donald Trump in the 2020 United States presidential election, 2020 presidential election, a mob of his supporters attacked the United States Capitol, U ...
, and announced that he would form a new organization to be called "Common Ground Arkansas".
Controversies
In 2020, a Federal judge ordered Hendren Plastics and DARP Foundation to pay more than $1.1 million in back wages and damages to workers who were forced to work without pay at Hendren Plastics. District Judge Timothy Brooks wrote that “They were businesses that manipulated the labor market and skirted compliance with the labor laws for their own private ends,” The DARP Foundation was a work-based rehab in which many participants had their participation court ordered in lieu of incarceration. DARP supplied workers to Hendren's Hendren Plastics who used them as a “captive workforce.” Not only was the misuse of rehab workers abusive but it also displaced private sector employees at Hendren Plastics who had enjoyed a significantly higher wage than the temporary laborers. Injuries to the workers at Hendren Plastics were commonplace with seriously injured workers being kicked out of the program and sent to prison, this created an incentive to massively underreport workplace injuries.
Personal life
His father, Kim Hendren
Kim Dexter Hendren (born February 6, 1938) is an American engineer and politician. He served as a Democratic and Republican member for the 6th and 9th districts of the Arkansas Senate. Hendren also served a member of the 1st and 92nd districts ...
, is a former member of the Arkansas Senate and in a second stint in office a member of the Arkansas House of Representatives from 2015 to 2017. His sister, Gayla Hendren McKenzie
Gayla Joy Hendren McKenzie is a lawyer and state legislator in Arkansas, serving in the Arkansas House of Representatives. In 2021, she began her second term. She represents District 92 which includes portions of Benton County, Arkansas. She lives ...
, currently serves in the State House, but retired to unsuccessfully run for State Senate in 2022. Another sister, Hope Hendren Duke, is running for State House in 2022. Through his mother, the former Marylea Hutchinson, his cousins include fellow State Senator Jeremy Hutchinson and former State Representative Timothy Chad Hutchinson, sons of former Senator Tim Hutchinson, and Hutchinson's first wife, Donna
Donna may refer to the short form of the honorific ''nobildonna'', the female form of Don (honorific) in Italian.
People
*Donna (given name); includes name origin and list of people and characters with the name
* Roberto Di Donna (born 1968), Ita ...
.
References
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Hendren, Jim
1963 births
21st-century American politicians
Arkansas Independents
Arkansas Republicans
Arkansas state senators
Baptists from Arkansas
Businesspeople from Arkansas
Hutchinson family
Living people
Members of the Arkansas House of Representatives
People from Gravette, Arkansas
School board members in Arkansas
United States Air Force officers
University of Arkansas alumni