Charles T. Bernard

Who is Charles T. Bernard?

Charles Taylor Bernard, Sr., is an American retired businessman and politician formerly from Earle in Crittenden County in eastern Arkansas. He is best known as the 1968 Republican nominee for the United States Senate seat held by long-time Democrat J. William Fulbright of Fayetteville.

Although Fulbright was comfortably re-elected, Bernard, later the Republican state chairman from 1971 to 1973, was his strongest Republican opponent, for in all previous contests Fulbright had been returned to office unopposed or without significant opposition. In the primary, Fulbright had handily defeated James D. Johnson of Conway, a segregationist Democrat who had lost 1966 gubernatorial general election to Republican Winthrop Rockefeller. Fulbright won his final election with 59.2 percent to Bernard's 40.2 percent. Bernard's ticket mate, Governor Rockefeller, scored a second two-year term by defeating the Democrat Marion H. Crank of Foreman in Little River County in southwestern Arkansas. Crank had earlier defeated Johnson's wife, Virginia Morris Johnson, in the Democratic gubernatorial runoff election.

In 1970, Bernard and then Republican State Representative George E.