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Ark. lawmaker wants Clintons’ names removed from Little Rock airport

by Reid Wilson - 12/01/16 12:17 PM ET

An Arkansas state senator wants to take Bill and Hillary Clinton’s names off the state’s largest airport.

{mosads}State Sen. Jason Rapert (R) said November’s election results show Arkansans don’t believe the Clintons should have Little Rock’s airport named in their honor.

“The Clintons left Arkansas and do not reside here,” Rapert told The Hill. “Many in our state do not want the first thing people see and last thing they remember about Arkansas being two of the most scandal-ridden politicians in American history.”

Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton was routed in Arkansas in the presidential election, losing to President-elect Donald Trump 61 percent to 34 percent. Clinton won only eight of the state’s 75 counties — including Pulaski County, where the airport is based. No Democrat has seriously competed for Arkansas’s electoral votes since former President Bill Clinton won reelection in 1996.

The Little Rock Municipal Airport Commission renamed the field in honor of the former governor and first lady in 2012. Before that decision, the field had been named in honor of Capt. George Geyer Adams, a member of the Arkansas Army National Guard who was killed in an accident at the airport in 1937.

Adams, a member of the Little Rock City Council at the time of his death, helped secure funding from the Works Progress Administration to buy what had been federal property on which the airport now sits.

Rapert wants the airport to revert to its old name in honor of Adams.

“The nation resoundingly rejected the Clinton legacy, and many think it is not smart to have the gateway airport to our state projecting a message the rest of the country and our own voters rejected,” Rapert said. “The Clinton Presidential Library is in our state and that is enough for Bill Clinton, who is a native of Arkansas.”

Clinton served as the 40th and 42nd governor of Arkansas, from 1979 to 1981 and from 1983 to 1992, before resigning to become president.

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