Pratt C. Remmel

Who was Pratt C. Remmel?

Pratt Cates Remmel, Sr., was the only 20th century Republican elected on a partisan ballot to have served as mayor of Little Rock, Arkansas. He was elected to the first of two two-year terms in 1951, was reelected in 1953, and then defeated in 1955 by the Democrat Woodrow Wilson Mann, who like Remmel was in the insurance business. In 1954, Remmel was the unsuccessful Republican gubernatorial candidate against the Democrat Orval Eugene Faubus, who won the first of his six consecutive two-year terms as the state's highest constitutional officer. Remmel's 37 percent of the general election vote was the greatest then attained by a Republican candidate since Reconstruction. In some ways, he paved the beginning of a long route that would bring fellow Republican Winthrop Rockefeller to the governorship in 1967. Rockefeller moved into the state only a year before Remmel ran for governor.