Allen Kerr (Arkansas politician)


Allen Wade Kerr is an insurance agency owner in his native Little Rock, Arkansas, who was from 2009 to 2015 a Republican member of the Arkansas House of Representatives from District 32, which includes part of Pulaski County. In his third term in office, Kerr was term-limited in the election of 2014 and succeeded by his fellow Republican Jim Sorvillo.
Governor Asa Hutchinson in 2015 appointed Kerr as the Arkansas Insurance Commissioner.
First elected without opposition to the state House in 2008 to succeed fellow Republican Sid Rosenbaum, Kerr serves on the joint committees of Legislative Auditing and Public Retirement & Social Security Programs, of which he is the chairman. He is a member too of the State Agencies and Governmental Affairs Committee and the Revenue and Taxation Committee.
Kerr had a conservative voting record in the state House. He voted to override the vetoes of Democratic Governor Mike Beebe to enact legislation requiring photo identification for casting a ballot in Arkansas and to ban abortion after twenty weeks of gestation or whenever fetal heartbeat is felt. He voted to prohibit abortion from being included on the state health insurance exchange. He supported allowing the monthly sale of up to five hundred gallons of unpasteurized whole milk directly to consumers from the farm. Kerr voted against approved legislation to make the office of county prosecutor in Arkansas nonpartisan. He co-sponsored legislation to allow handguns on church properties and to empower university officials to carry weapons in the name of campus safety.
Kerr graduated from Jacksonville High School in Jacksonville in Pulaski County and attended the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. He is an award-winning agent with Farmers Insurance. He is a former member of the Pulaski County Quorum Court, akin to the county commission in most other states. He and his wife, the former Marliese Lea Estes, are members of the United Methodist Church. The couple has two sons and two daughters.
In the Republican primary held on May 20, 2014, Jim Sorvillo defeated intraparty rival Pat Hays, 54-46 percent, for the party's nomination to succeed Kerr.