Wednesday morning at 9 a public political forum featuring candidates for Baxter County Sheriff and Baxter County Judge will be held at the Food Bank of North Central Arkansas hosted by KTLO, Classic Hits and The Boot.
The live forum will be broadcast on KTLO FM 97.9, Facebook Live and Youtube at KTLOStreaming. The public is also invited to attend in person at the Food Bank of NCA. Baxter County Judge candidates will open at 9 followed by the Sheriff candidates. Candidates will be given equal time for opening and closing statements as well as debate a series of topics presented by the moderator, KTLO’s Heather Knight Loftis. All questions and topics were generated from over a hundred submissions by the public to KTLO News over the preceding two weeks.
With early voting beginning in less than a week for the March 3 Preferential Primary, Baxter County residents face a critical choice for the first change of sheriff in 21 years.
Henry Campfield has been in law enforcement since 2002 when he started at the Baxter County Sheriff’s Office as a reserve deputy. He went on to work as a patrol deputy there, was Police Chief at Flippin for five years and is currently a Patrol Sergeant with the Mountain Home Police Department.
Brian Davis began his law enforcement career with the Forrest City Police Department in 1991. His family moved to the area around 2010 and he began working for the Baxter County Sheriff’s Office in 2011 as a patrol deputy and eventually worked his way up to being a member of the command staff. He currently serves as lieutenant and commander of the patrol division.
Mark Hollingsworth currently serves as chief deputy of the Marion County Sheriff’s Department. He previously spent 36 years with the Arkansas State Police overseeing statewide operations that included the Special Investigations Unit, Cold Case Unit and Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. He also worked on an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force and was coordinator for the Arkansas AMBER Alert program.
Incumbent Baxter County Judge Kevin Litty will seek a second term in office. Judge Litty has cited his major accomplishments to date being the Denton Ferry project, the building of the new Baxter County Health Unit and equipment upgrades for Road and Bridge. The Judge has stated if elected he would like to see the building of new offices for county offices with a voting center and a continued focus on infrastructure.
Challenger Eric Payne has stated his goal if elected would be to improve county roads. Payne, a lifelong resident of the Lone Rock area and current Justice of the Peace for District 11 covering the county’s southern portion has said his experience being from rural area will keep infrastructure in the county a top focus.
During the live streams on social media viewers will be able to submit questions to the candidates via the comment section of each stream. Questions will be presented as time allows.
The Food Bank of North Central Arkansas is located at 1042 Highland Circle in Mountain Home. The broadcast will be available for replay following the event at KTLO.com/electioncentral.
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