Changing Attitudes Keep Wet-dry County Debate at Forefront

In the ongoing effort by communities to spur economic development and provide for quality of life, the ability to purchase alcohol is in many places a given. A glass of wine with dinner, cocktails with clients or grabbing a six-pack for the tailgate are all things the vast majority of the nation’s citizenry can do without a second thought.

Arkansas, however, makes such ubiquitous activities decidedly more complicated, depending on where one lives. The Natural State leads the nation in dry counties, NCESC reported, but even that is not as cut and dried as it sounds. Most wet counties cannot sell on Sunday, for instance, although that is slowly changing.

“Dry” in Arkansas is even more confusing because it can mean the traditional no-manufacture, no-sale model, or it can mean restricting sales in some forms and not others. Such exceptions range from restaurants being able to sell by the drink but outlawing liquor stores to brewpubs being able to sell the product they manufacture, provided they meet other requirements.

While it can be difficult to know the players without a program on this issue, one thing is for certain — attitudes are changing and dry to wet status in many counties with it. Recent studies have shown that, for better or worse, acceptance of alcohol is running at or near all-time highs, and communities are becoming more and more nervous about watching that demand troop over the county line.

A short review of Arkansas temperance shows the battle over alcohol is not a new one, nor was it always waged for reasons that were entirely moral. Some instances show governments manipulating laws to affect people of color disproportionately to the white majority. From the earliest European settlers to Prohibition in 1920 to the present day, alcohol was a hot political and social topic. Even as the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution proposed to settle the issue, banning alcohol altogether in the U.S., the enforcement of federal law would be uglier and far trickier than expected.

Despite various efforts by law enforcement and local groups — including the Arkansas wing of the Ku Klux Klan, which mobilized stillbusters in south Arkansas, especially Union County, the Encyclopedia of Arkansas states — liquor still flowed freely, distilled in remote mountain hollers and poured in hidden Hot Springs speakeasies. In December 1933, Uncle Sam threw in the bar towel on Prohibition, and the matter of limiting or restricting alcohol fell back to the states.

With Prohibition gone, local advocates in Arkansas had to mobilize referendums to make a county dry, a process that has worked in reverse ever since. Many of these counties have voted to go wet or “damp,” an unofficial term for countries that pass half-measures as a compromise to balance community standards with retaining tax revenues. About the only consistent link to the past has been the near-statewide ban on Sunday sales, although that, too, is starting to fall thanks to recent ballot issues.

In Prohibition-era Kansas City, huckster entrepreneur and political insider Tom Pendergast was asked how he could get away with brazenly flaunting federal law by openly serving alcohol at his saloon. The corrupt bootlegger replied, “The people are thirsty.” What follows are three Arkansas communities that have tackled the wet/dry issue in an effort to slake the palate of the populace.

FAULKNER COUNTY: DRY TO DAMP

Brad Lacy, CEO and president of the Conway Area Chamber of Commerce, said while the county may not yet have rallied support to allow retail beer, wine and liquor sales, Conway deserves credit for paving the way for other dry counties to break the seal on serving alcohol.

“We were the impetus in getting the state’s liquor law changed as it relates to liquor by the drink,” he said. “We found ourselves alone in that process. There were a lot of people that wished us luck, but they weren’t going to get involved.”

Tired of watching revenue march over to the next county and seeing the cooling effect dry status had on the city’s hospitality industry, the chamber and Conway Development Corp. took their case to state lawmakers in 2003.

“We sponsored legislation that would’ve allowed communities of a certain size the opportunity to vote themselves. I guess damp would be the right word,” Lacy said. “That proved not to be so easy as we left that legislative session with nothing.”

Two years later, proponents took another run at the issue, this time pivoting away from ballot proposals to successfully push for changes in the existing requirements for club licenses in the name of economic development. Lacy said that strategic argument could also be used effectively to move the county from dry to wet entirely, although no formal plans exist for such a campaign today.

“We’re certainly not missing out on it from a hospitality standpoint. We solved that problem with the private club law,” he said. “The difference is you can’t buy alcohol in a grocery store or a package store. There’s an economic loss there. When you have a county with 130,000 people and a substantial number of them are buying it, they’re going somewhere else. I think that’s why I’m hearing more talk now on our dry status than I have in 25 years.

“This idea that the community wouldn’t vote for it, I think, is outdated, but you still have to have somebody who wants to provide leadership and raise the funds to do it. That said, I’m 51, and I’d be shocked if we didn’t go wet by the time I retired.”

HOT SPRING COUNTY: DRY TO WET

The third time was the charm for Hot Spring County changing from dry to wet. Voters approved the measure in 2022, making the county the latest dry domino to fall in the Natural State.

Lance Howell, executive director at the Malvern/Hot Spring County Chamber of Commerce, said the effort was successful thanks to the dedication and organization of the people behind it.

“Historically, there’s been an effort a couple of times in the past that have failed to make the ballot,” he said. “This time, there was a citizen-led group, a hardworking group that were dedicated to giving it one more shot. They worked extremely hard with that and got it on the ballot, and it ended up winning pretty easily.”

Howell said part of the reason for the win was the success backers had in making an economic case for allowing alcohol sales, forecasts which have come true almost immediately. He said since the election, convenience stores stocked and sold products within days, and four liquor stores that applied for permits are in various stages of opening.

The obvious economic benefit to the community also helps explain the relative lack of opposition the measure received, another big change from previous attempts.

“Traditionally, the opposition came from people who simply didn’t want [alcohol] sold here,” he said. “In the past, there was a lot more organized religious opposition to it, and that was something we didn’t see as much this time. I think that says that over time, folks have realized if people want it, they were going to have it one way or the other. We’re a mobile society, so it’s very easy for folks to travel from neighboring counties here and vice versa, so we may as well capture that here.”

Despite the relatively congenial atmosphere surrounding the ballot issue, the chamber itself stayed neutral in the run up to the election, Howell said.

“There was a split opinion on it among our members, but not enough where we felt like we had to go to bat for the proposal. It never got to that point,” he said. “We basically limited ourselves to sharing information and letting people decide for themselves.”

ROGERS: SABBATH SUDS, SYRAH, SPIRITS

In November 2022, Rogers and Bentonville extended the definition of “wet county” as far as it could go, voting in Sunday alcohol sales. The proposal carried handily in both northwest Arkansas communities.

Clay Kendall, who grew up in Rogers and is a member of the city council, said the positives of Sunday sales far outweighed any perceived negatives.

“Before we had Sunday sales, most restaurants were operating in their normal capacity seven days a week. What you couldn’t do was go to the store and get a bottle of wine or a case of beer,” he said. “What you could do is drive right across the border to Missouri and spend your money there and let them pocket the taxes.

“This keeps tax dollars in our own community. When folks went to Missouri or wherever, they would potentially stop and have lunch somewhere, maybe go into a store and generate other sales tax dollars outside of alcohol, so the whole rationale behind it was to keep our dollars local. It seemed like a no-brainer.”

The ballot issues vividly showed how far public attitudes had shifted in a short period of time. When Springdale approved Sunday sales in 2012, it did so by a nail-biting 52 percent to 48 percent margin. A decade later, the Rogers measure garnered 71 percent support, and nearly 75 percent of voters in Bentonville assented.

All told, about 20 Arkansas communities sell on Sunday, and Fayetteville is actively pursuing the idea. In July, the city council there unanimously approved putting the issue on the November ballot after proponents turned in the requisite number of petition signatures. If passed, Fayetteville would be the tenth community in northwest Arkansas to sell all week long.

Kendall said the combination of surrounding communities selling on Sunday and wider acceptance of alcohol in general were big factors in the measure’s passage.

“I never had anyone reach out to me and say, ‘This is wrong, you shouldn’t do this,’” he said. “Walmart did a poll of local churches, and even there, it was over 50 percent in support. People decided it made sense. They just didn’t believe [voting it down] would change behavior, while voting for it kept sales tax dollars within our community. It was purely taken from the approach of the economic perspective and not really a moral or ethical issue.”