North Little Rock Ward 2 election may need Dec. 1 runoff after Benton’s 48.86% lead

North Little Rock Ward 2 Election Could See Runoff as Benton Leads with 48.86%

Marvin Benton holds 48.86% of the vote in North Little Rock’s open Ward 2 city council race, a plurality that falls just short of the majority threshold required under Arkansas state law to win outright in a multi-candidate field. The Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported that with four candidates splitting the vote, the election could head to a Dec. 1 runoff if no candidate achieves a majority once all outstanding ballots are tallied by the Pulaski County Election Commission.

The Pulaski County Election Commission’s election coordinator, Amanda Dickens, said Wednesday that a runoff remains a “possibility” while officials complete the final count of provisional and absentee ballots. “We still have some outstanding ballots, and I have not confirmed how many of those ballots contain that race,” Dickens wrote in an email. She later clarified that 186 ballots will be added into the absentee count, joining 937 total provisional ballots—117 absentee and 820 cast in person—plus 120 outstanding ballots from military members stationed overseas that are still in transit.

The current tally shows Benton with 1,672 votes, followed by Anna Beth Gorman with 935 votes (27.32%), John Pflasterer with 505 votes (14.76%), and Louis Dillard with 310 votes (9.06%). Under state law, if an election has more than two candidates and no one receives a majority of the votes cast, a runoff election is triggered between the top two vote-getters. With the votes counted so far, Benton sits at 48.86%, short of the majority needed to win outright, though that threshold will shift as the remaining ballots are added.

North Little Rock Ward 2 election may need Dec. 1 runoff after Benton’s 48.86% lead

An Open Seat After 24 Years of Service

The Ward 2 seat is open because Linda Robinson is retiring from the role after 24 years on the council, making this contest a significant transition for the ward’s representation at City Hall. The four-candidate field has produced a fragmented vote, with nearly half of all ballots cast going to Benton while the remaining votes are divided among three other contenders, with Gorman at 27.32%, Pflasterer at 14.76%, and Dillard at 9.06%.

Benton, 68, of Scott, brings roughly 40 years of experience working in Little Rock to the race, including nine years spent as a firefighter before he retired a few years ago as the head of the city’s parking enforcement division. His opponent Gorman, 44, of 1434 Rockwater Lane, offers a different professional background: she is a former chair of the North Little Rock Chamber of Commerce and has served as the CEO of the Women’s Foundation of Arkansas since 2016. Gorman previously sought statewide office in an unsuccessful run for Arkansas Secretary of State as a Democrat in 2022, and she has lived in North Little Rock for more than a decade, giving her established ties to the community she hopes to represent on the council.

North Little Rock City Council Meeting 10-26-26

The Path to Dec. 1

The path to avoiding a runoff depends entirely on how the remaining ballots break in the final count. With Benton at 48.86%, he needs only a portion of the outstanding votes to push his total above the majority threshold. The Pulaski County Election Commission is currently processing 937 provisional ballots and 120 military ballots from overseas voters, along with the 186 additional absentee ballots that Dickens noted will be added to the totals. If those votes do not lift Benton past the majority mark, the top two candidates—currently Benton and Gorman—would face each other in a runoff election scheduled for Dec. 1.

The 937 provisional ballots—820 cast in person and 117 by absentee—represent a significant pool of votes that could still shift the outcome, along with the 120 military ballots and 186 additional absentee votes. Each outstanding ballot must be verified before it can be counted, a process that could take several days as the commission works toward the Nov. 13 deadline for military and overseas ballots.

The Jacksonville mayoral election, which also featured three candidates in its initial round, could result in its own runoff, with a commission employee noting Wednesday that the outcome would not be known until Nov. 13, which is the deadline to receive outstanding ballots from military and overseas voters.

For Ward 2 residents, the possibility of a December runoff means the ward could be without a newly elected council member as Robinson prepares to step down after 24 years.