INQUISITR.COM / News & Politics

Arkansas Senator Wants Bill & Hillary Clinton National Airport Renamed: ‘Arkansas Does Not Support Them’

By Steph Bazzle
Published on: 07:48 PST, Dec 4, 2016

It’s been over four years since the Little Rock Municipal Airport Commission voted and agreed unanimously to rename the airport in honor of Bill and Hillary Clinton. As the Inquisitr reported at the time, the event was something of a glass-ceiling-buster in itself: though airposts have been named after presidents, this was the first to be renamed to include a First Lady.

The dedication ceremony took place the following year, May, 2013, with the Clintons present for the event.

Earlier this year, many Americans may have thought the airport was due for another change: instead of bearing the name of a President and First Lady, it could soon bear the names of two U.S. Presidents, including the first female president. Not that the signs were to change — but many voters thought Hillary Clinton would gain a new title in the 2016 election.

However, that didn’t happen. Instead, the electoral vote went to Republican nominee Donald Trump, and an Arkansas Senator now thinks that perhaps the airport shouldn’t bear either name, regardless of the titles either Clinton holds.

[Image by Mark Wilson/Getty Images]

Senator Jason Rapert started with a Twitter poll, asking if people would support a bill to remove the names of Bill and Hillary Clinton from the airport in Little Rock.

He gathered over seven thousand votes, but even Rapert admits that there’s no way to tell whether the votes come from fake Twitter accounts, as he jokes that those voting in support of keeping the Clinton name on the building are doing so “from Arkansas cemeteries.”

There’s also no realistic way to determine if the votes, on either side, come from Arkansas voters — people outside the state, or even the nation, and those who are ineligible to vote, can certainly voice opinions in polls on Twitter.

In the end, the poll tipped slightly in favor of Rapert’s view, and he declared a win.

However, Rapert says he’s not the one considering the bill. It’s a colleague in the Arkansas Senate, he says, who is thinking of drafting legislation that would rename the Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport, eliminating the names of the political pair. Which colleague? When Arkansas Online asked, Rapert refused to say, hinting that his colleague wasn’t willing to be publicly identified.

Instead, he called the decision four years ago “hasty,” and said it was disrespectful to Captain George Geyer Adams, for whom the airport has previously been named — Adams Field.

He also said that he hopes the airport will take the initiative, following his poll (in which 53 percent of respondents agreed that Bill and Hillary Clinton’s names should be removed), so that no legislation is needed, but that if the commission failed to do a bill could force their hands.

Though Senator Rapert says the plan for the bill isn’t his own, he told Drew Petrimoulx, of Capitol View, that many citizens had approached him over the past months, asking him how to get Bill and Hillary Clinton’s names off the airport.

[Image by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images]

Rapert suggests that perhaps the name change, as well as a mural in the building, was an electioneering effort, done with public funds, and cites an ethics complaint about the matter. That complaint, however, was dismissed in August, according to the Pine Bluff Commercial, with a unanimous vote by the state Ethics Commission.

Rapert’s other expressed concern was that when people entered the state, they would be greeted by the following.

“…the names of two politicians that have just been rejected by the entire nation.”

Further characterizing the Clintons, Rapert mentioned the infamous Monica Lewinsky case and Hillary Clinton’s private server.

“These people are….still under FBI investigations. They do not represent the values of Arkansas voters.”

Arkansas Secretary of State website lists Clinton as receiving 380,494 (33.65 percent) to Donald Trump’s 684,872 (60.57 percent), in that state’s polls. Hoever, in the nationwide election, Hillary Clinton currently leads the popular vote, according to BBC, by over a million votes, despite losing the electoral vote. It’s not a win, but also may not support the notion that Bill and Hillary Clinton have been “rejected by the entire nation.”

[Featured Image by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images]

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