Charlene Fite


Edna Charlene Harris Barnes Fite, is an educator and politician from Van Buren in western Arkansas, who is a Republican member of the Arkansas House of Representatives from District 80, which includes the northern part of Crawford County that extends through the Ozark National Forest into Washington County.

Background

Fite received a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, Tennessee. She received a master's degree from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.
Since 2000, Fite has been employed as a school psychology specialist by the public schools in Fort Smith. She was previously a special education teacher in Fort Smith except for one year in the middle 1990s in Pulaski County.
A member of the First Baptist Church of Alma in Crawford County, Fite formerly served two terms as a board member of the Arkansas Baptist Executive Committee. She is a former officer of the Crawford County Republican Party.

Political life

Fite's husband, Thomas Lile "Tom" Fite, was the Republican legislative candidate in 2010 in the former District 83. His name was disqualified from the ballot by a judge in Pulaski County who declared that Fite's guilty plea in 1984 to Medicaid fraud constituted an "infamous crime." Democratic Representative Leslee Milam Post hence won that election by default. Tom Fite's name remained on the ballot, but votes for him were not counted.
In the 2012 Republican primary in the new District 80, Fite defeated Terry Bibbs, 1,106 to 936. She then topped Democrat Jack Norton in the general election, 6,173 to 4,575. The District 80 seat was vacated by the Republican Linda Collins-Smith, who instead ran unsuccessfully for the Arkansas State Senate in District 19. Meanwhile, Leslee Post was unseated in District 82, to which she was transferred, by the Republican Bill Gossage of Ozark in Franklin County.
Fite is a member of these House committee: Advanced Communications and Information Technology, Aging, Children and Youth, Legislative and Military Affairs, and Judiciary.
In 2013, Fite joined the required majority to override the vetoes of Democratic Governor Mike Beebe to enact legislation to require photo identification for casting a ballot in Arkansas and to ban abortion after twenty weeks of gestation. She co-sponsored both of those measures. Fite supported related legislation to ban abortion whenever fetal heartbeat is detected, to forbid the inclusion of abortion in the state insurance exchange, and to make the death of a fetus a felony in certain cases. She voted for a proposed spending cap in the state budget, but the measure failed to gain approval by two votes in the House. She co-sponsored amended state income tax rates. She co-sponsored the bill to allow officials of religious institutions to carry concealed weapons. Fite backed similar legislation to permit university officials to carry concealed weapons. She co-sponsored legislation to prohibit the governor from regulating firearms in an emergency. Fite opposed legislation to make the office of prosecuting attorney in Arkansas nonpartisan. She voted for a law, signed by Governor Beebe, to permit the sale of up to five hundred gallons per month of unpasteurized whole milk directly from the farm to consumers. She voted to prohibit the closure of public schools based on declining enrollments over a two-year period, but the measure was defeated.