Clarke Tucker serves in the Arkansas State Senate. Previously, he served in the Arkansas House of Representatives, where he represented District 35 from 2015 to 2019.

Representative Tucker focused on improving early childhood education in Arkansas, both in terms of improving support for Pre-K education and by working to establish Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library (DPIL) on a statewide basis. DPIL is a literacy program that provides age appropriate books for children between birth and age 5 on a monthly basis for just over $2 per book. Representative Tucker also worked hard on criminal justice reform, aiming to improve behavioral health services for the criminal justice population in an effort to reduce crime and prison populations. In that regard, he has served as Co-Chair of the Legislative Task Force on Behavioral Health Treatment Access.

Representative Tucker also led an effort to enact several pieces of ethics legislation to increase government transparency and accountability. For example, Representative Tucker is working to require disclosure of dark money sources in Arkansas campaigns, and he has enacted legislation to enhance the criminal penalties for elected officials who accept bribes. Representative Tucker is also working to pass paid maternity leave for state employees. Perhaps most important, in the spring of 2016, Representative Tucker helped shepherd the appropriation for Arkansas’s version of Medicaid expansion through a difficult legislative process.