From left: Republican U.S. Rep. French Hill, Republican Chase McDowell, Democrat Chris Jones and Democrat Zack Huffman are running in Arkansas 2026 U.S. House primary elections for the 2nd Congressional District. | Photos courtesy of Arkansas Secretary of State
By TESS VRBIN | Arkansas Advocate
Four candidates are vying to represent central Arkansas’ 2nd Congressional District, a seat held by Republicans for more than a decade that Democrats have tried unsuccessfully to flip over the years.
Republican U.S. Rep. French Hill is Arkansas’ only incumbent congressman with a primary opponent, former state legislative candidate Chase McDowell. On the Democratic side, first-time candidate Zack Huffman faces 2022 gubernatorial nominee Chris Jones. All four candidates live in Little Rock, the urban center of the eight-county 2nd District.
Arkansas’ four U.S. House seats have been held by Republicans since 2013. Democrats have portrayed the 2nd District as winnable given its diversity and youth, but have fallen short in efforts to reclaim the seat. The majority-GOP Legislature redrew the district in 2021, moving thousands of predominantly Black voters out of the 2nd District.
Arkansas’ other three Republican Congressmen have no primary opponents, but all will have a Democratic opponent in November.
The only other contested Democratic primary is in the 4th Congressional District. Steve O’Donnell faces James Russell, who lost to Jones in the 2022 gubernatorial primary. Russell and Jones both said some of the voters they’ve met remember them from 2022.
The winning Democrat in the 4th District will challenge U.S. Rep. Bruce Westerman. The district contains parts of Pulaski and Sebastian counties and the entirety of 31 more counties from the state’s southern and western borders to part of northern Arkansas.
Hill and O’Donnell did not respond to requests for interviews. The other four candidates said voters have expressed frustration about the rising cost of living and a perceived lack of leadership from their sitting congressmen.
In the 2nd District, Arkansans are “seeing an unwillingness of their leaders to admit that things aren’t working and seek actual solutions” to everyday problems like the costs of groceries and health insurance, Huffman said.
Russell said people in the 4th District often tell him “they’ve never met a congressman in their life.”
“Whether it’s Westerman or anybody else, literally nobody has ever shown up to just talk to and find out what’s going on,” Russell said.
Hill, Westerman chair key House committees
Westerman is a forester who chairs the House Natural Resources Committee, and Hill is a former banker who chairs the House Financial Services committee. Both are in their sixth terms in Congress.
O’Donnell is a businessman and Navy veteran whose policy priorities are job training, government transparency and supporting Arkansas’ farming industry, according to his campaign website.
Russell runs the business side of his wife’s mental health counseling practice. Jones is a pastor, physicist and former teacher. Huffman is also a former teacher and now works with the nonprofit Teach for America.
“When I stepped into the classroom, I joined a movement for equity,” Huffman said. “I know that’s a voodoo term now in certain parts of the political landscape, but I firmly believe that the government’s job is to do good and to lift people up.”
McDowell has lived in Little Rock since 2023, and he unsuccessfully ran for a state House seat in his home region of southwest Arkansas in 2020. He worked for an independent pharmacy in high school and has since become a pharmaceutical policy consultant in multiple states and Washington, D.C.
“Domestication of our production, [to] fix health care and fix education — those are my main things for Arkansas,” McDowell said.
Quality of education system
Teaching in rural Mississippi taught Huffman “the absolute strength to look a child in the eyes and try to teach them fractions and hear their belly growling,” he said.
Jones has also been a teacher and agreed that making sure children are fed improves their educational outcomes. He criticized Hill for voting for the Keep Kids Fed Act of 2022, which ended COVID-19 pandemic-era waivers that increased kids’ access to school meals.
The Keep Kids Fed Act received overwhelming bipartisan support in the U.S. House before then-President Joe Biden signed it into law.
Additionally, Jones and Russell both said they support fully funding public schools instead of redirecting federal money to private schools. Hill and Westerman voted for the “Big Beautiful Bill,” which includes a provision allowing federal tax dollars to go toward private and home schooling.
Russell said a robust school system has a positive economic ripple effect.
“If we’re improving on the quality of education, we’ll be able to draw in more industry and more businesses because they’ll have workers that are better equipped to fill those jobs,” he said.
According to O’Donnell’s website, he views education as “long-term Arkansas workforce development.” He supports career path counseling in public schools, making pre-K more affordable and funding vocational-technical education programs.
McDowell said he opposes “politics in the classroom,” such as discussions of gender identity, but he supports funding public schools as a “true conservative” who believes in “a localized community.”
“When I say I’m pro-life, that goes way past just birth,” McDowell said. “That’s also making sure that a child has a great education, that they have food in their belly and that mothers are taken care of.”
Health care and agriculture
Jones said the federal government needs to extend new mothers’ access to Medicaid since Arkansas is the only state to not expand that coverage to 12 months after birth.
Arkansas has among the nation’s highest maternal mortality rates. Jones said health insurance costs in general are a major concern for 2nd District constituents.
Jones and Russell both said they support the Affordable Care Act subsidies that Congress did not vote to extend by the end of 2025. Russell said he advocates for universal single-payer health care. O’Donnell’s website says he supports not only universal health care but also lowering the costs of prescription drugs and medical devices.
The U.S. House passed a bill in January to extend the ACA subsidies. Senate Republican leadership is not expected to take up the bill for a vote.
All four Arkansas congressmen voted against the legislation, but McDowell said he would have supported extending the subsidies. His work in the pharmaceutical industry taught him that “health care is a complete monopoly system,” and he supports placing profit caps on insurance premiums and drug prices.
“Pharma is actually a government organization that represents the insurance companies, and I promise you, I will be enemy number one for them,” he said.
McDowell also said he doesn’t believe in socializing the entire health care system, while Huffman listed free health care among the policies that would “actually improve the quality” of Arkansans’ lives.
Huffman also said he supports increasing subsidies to stabilize the farming industry, which has been hit hard by tariffs. Jones said he would advocate for “some serious price stability and affordability” for the industry if he were elected to Congress.
As a lifelong multi-generational Arkansan, Jones said he is proud of the state and wants it to be sustainable for families to build their lives here. He said voters have told him they are “exhausted by the chaos that’s coming out of” the federal government.
“They want leaders who would not only address their everyday pocketbook concerns to help make life more affordable, but who also bring some grounding to what’s coming out of Washington [D.C.],” Jones said.