Hammerschmidt was a delegate to the Republican National Conventions in 1964, 1968, 1972, 1976, 1980, 1984, and 1988. He was twice the state chairman of the Republican Party of Arkansas, serving from 1964 to 1966 and again from 2002 to 2004. His successor as chairman in 1966, Odell Pollard of Searcy in White County, died three weeks before the death of Hammerschmidt. In the 1966 election, Hammerschmidt won the Republican nomination for his 3rd district and then defeated the incumbent Democrat, James William Trimble, by more than nine thousand votes. He became the first Republican to represent Arkansas in Congress since Reconstruction. Hammerschmidt was elected twelve more times, having served twenty-six years from January 3, 1967 to January 3, 1993, from the 90th Congress to the 102nd Congress. He became very popular in his district, even though most of its residents had never been represented by a Republican before. The 3rd has always been a rather conservative district; it has only supported a Democrat for president twice since 1952. Hammerschmidt would only face another contest anywhere near as close as his initial bid for the seat. In the 1974 election, he defeated Bill Clinton by only 6,400 votes. Clinton had harshly criticized Hammerschmidt for being one of the few Republicans to stand by Richard Nixon in the wake of the Watergate scandal. This election was one of only four in which Democrats received more than one-third of the vote against Hammerschmidt. The district reverted to form in 1976, when Hammerschmidt was reelected unopposed. In 1978, Hammerschmidt faced weak opposition from the Hot Springsreal estate broker William C. Mears and instead had the resources to help the Republican gubernatorial nominee, A. Lynn Lowe, a farmer from Texarkana, win in Boone County. Lowe, who also was the state party chairman, lost, however, to Hammerschmidt's former opponent, Bill Clinton, by an approximate margin of 63-37 percent. Hammerschmidt was a member of the President's Commission on Aviation Security and Terrorism which was organized in September 1989 to review and report on aviation security policy in the light of the sabotage of Pan Am Flight 103 on December 21, 1988. Hammerschmidt had a conservative voting record on foreign policy and social issues, but a slightly more moderate record on economic issues. He supported an amendment proposing to enact Flag Desecration Laws. Hammerschmidt was in the Air Force Reserve from 1945 to 1960 and the Army Reserve from 1977 to 1981. He was a Presbyterian and a member of the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Freemasons, Shriners, Elks, Rotary International, and had alumni status at the Alpha Zeta chapter of the Pi Kappa Alphafraternity at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. From 1999 to 2004, he was a trustee of Arkansas State University at Jonesboro. Hammerschmidt died at the age of ninety-two of heart and respiratory failure at a hospital in Springdale, Arkansas.
