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Baxter County Judge Kevin Litty secured a second term Tuesday, defeating District 11 Justice of the Peace Eric Payne in the Republican preferential primary by a commanding margin, according to unofficial results from the Baxter County Clerk’s office.
Litty collected 4,567 votes to Payne’s 2,732, carrying roughly 63 percent of the vote across all precincts. Because Baxter County is overwhelmingly Republican and no Democratic candidate filed for the office, Tuesday’s primary result is effectively a general election victory.
Litty, a former Mountain Home police officer with 30 years on the force, was first elected county judge in 2022 and took office in January 2023.
During a public forum hosted by KTLO, Classic Hits and The Boot on Feb. 11, Litty pointed to several first-term accomplishments while defending his record against Payne’s challenges. He cited completion of a roughly $4 million, 10,000-square-foot county Health Department building, a county road striping program that runs about $35,000 annually and a focus on employee wage increases that he said have improved retention across county departments.
“We focused on improving the roads, strengthening infrastructure and creating an environment where businesses want to invest in and families want to settle,” Litty said during the forum, which was held at the Food Bank of North Central Arkansas and moderated by Heather Loftis.
Litty frequently pointed to Baxter County’s debt-free status as a point of pride, noting it is a distinction few Arkansas counties can claim. He has also emphasized an open-door policy at his office, saying residents who contact him will receive a personal phone call in return.
He is also overseeing plans for a new building on Sixth Street to house the assessor and collector offices along with an enhanced voting center, made possible after the county demolished the long-vacant former First Baptist Church building at that site.
Roads were a central issue in the race. With more than 700 miles of county roads to maintain, Litty said roughly 80 percent of his time as county judge involves road-related matters. Payne argued during the campaign that roads across the county had been neglected, a characterization Litty rejected. On workforce challenges, Litty acknowledged it is difficult to recruit experienced road grader operators when county starting wages of around $18.50 per hour cannot compete with private sector offers of $25 to $30 per hour, and said the county sometimes hires less experienced workers and trains them on the job.
A damaged bridge in the county also drew attention during the campaign. Litty said early replacement estimates came in around $1.5 million and that he has pursued outside funding from FEMA, the Northwest Arkansas Economic Development District and the Arkansas Department of Transportation rather than committing county funds outright.
“I think as a good steward of taxpayer dollars, we can’t go spending a million and a half dollars on a bridge” without exhausting outside funding options first, Litty said at the forum.
Litty’s first term was not without controversy. He became the central figure in a legal battle with the Baxter County Airport Commission over who holds authority to execute leases on county property. The dispute, which involved a hangar lease with Brad Hasselwander, led to the temporary suspension of FAA discretionary funding before it was reinstated. Litty ultimately moved to dissolve the commission, which had existed since the 1970s, and replace it with an advisory board, a decision he said is within his authority under state law. He argued the change has already paid off, with the airport completing a six-box hangar and a third hangar that together increased monthly revenue by more than $5,000. Payne, who voted against the move on the Quorum Court, questioned the speed of the decision.
“That commission had been there since the 1970s,” Payne said during the forum, noting it took roughly three weeks to dissolve a body that had existed for approximately 40 years.
Litty also played a visible role in disclosing that Aldi is pursuing a Mountain Home location, publicly naming the long-rumored retailer during an Economic Development Committee meeting earlier this year after other officials began discussing it openly. He has backed county investment in clearing the old Chico quarry site for development, describing the county’s approximately $16,000 expenditure as a modest cost with significant potential for job creation and economic growth.
“We have to provide that for our kids and our grandkids,” Litty said at the forum, arguing that young people who leave for college need to have jobs worth coming home to.
The quarry itself became a campaign issue when Payne said he had heard from several residents who believed water quality near the county-owned site had made them ill and argued Litty owed it to those residents to conduct water testing. Litty said he did test water in the open-source area and that it came back clean, and attributed the complaints largely to one resident who built a home near the site in recent years and wanted the quarry shut down.
Payne, 68, a lifelong Baxter County resident and 25-year veteran of the excavation business, raised concerns throughout the campaign about roads, quarry water quality and government transparency. He could not overcome Litty’s incumbency advantage and countywide name recognition built over three decades in law enforcement.
Results are unofficial pending canvassing by the county board of election commissioners.
