Ken Coon

Kenneth Lloyd "Ken" Coon (Little Rock psychologist and political activist)
Born	October 14, 1935 Marshall, Harrison County, Texas, USA
Political Party	Arkansas Republican gubernatorial nominee, 1974; nominee, for lieutenant governor, 1972; Republican state chairman, 1988-1990
Spouse	Sue Lynn Thompson Coon (born 1938, married 1956) Two children: Catherine Lynn Coon Kenneth Coon, Jr.
Religion	Church of Christ Notes: (1) Though he polled relatively few votes in his 1974 campaign against David Hampton Pryor, Coon was part of the persistent organization which attempted to establish a in the once heavily Democratic state. (2) Before his political career, Coon was president of the Arkansas Jaycees. (3) An original supporter of reformer , Coon later worked in the early campaigns in Arkansas of Moderate Republican Winthrop Rockefeller though Coon himself was more conservative than Rockefeller. (4) In his later years, Coon became a licensed psychologist and motivational speaker in the capital city of Little Rock. (5) Coon once joked that he was "so honest that I might appear to be naive."

Kenneth Lloyd Coon, Sr., known as Ken Coon (born October 14, 1935), is a psychologist in Little Rock who was also a pioneer in the development of the Republican Party in Arkansas. He was the GOP state chairman from 1988 to 1990. Earlier, he was the party's nominee for lieutenant governor in 1972, its executive director (1973-1975), and its candidate for governor in 1974. He also ran for the United States House of Representatives in 1996 but lost in the primary.

Background

Coon was born in Marshall, a small city in Harrison county in east Texas, to Loyd Wesley Coon (1912-1998) and the former Ida Mae Sparks (1916-1994). The senior Coon was a native of Brookhaven, Mississippi, but had moved to Marshall with his family when he was a youngster. Loyd Coon was a farmer and dairyman. The family moved to Calhoun, a community west of Monroe, Louisiana. Coon was among the thirty-one 1954 graduates of West Ouachita (then Calhoun High School). After high school, he served for five years in the United States Air Force, with overseas duty on the Greek island of Crete.

In 1956, Coon married the former Sue Lynn Thompson (born 1938), also of Calhoun. They have two children, Catherine Lynn Coon (born 1957) of El Dorado in Union County in southern Arkansas and Kenneth Coon, Jr. (born 1962). Coon attended Louisiana Tech University in Ruston, at which he obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in biology. In 1962, he entered the master's program in fisheries at Utah State University in Logan, Utah, and received his degree three years later.

Jaycees state president

After receipt of the graduate degree in Utah, Coon took a job with a federal agency, the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, in Dumas in Desha County in southeastern Arkansas. He then worked for a farmer in Tuckerman in Jackson County and in 1968 was president of the American Fish Farmers . While in Dumas, Coon joined the Arkansas Jaycees . He was charter president of the Tuckerman Jaycees from 1966 to 1967. The group is now known as the Junior Chamber International. From 1971 to 1972, while living in Fort Smith, Coon became the Arkansas state Jaycee president.

Running for lieutenant governor, 1972

Recruited to run for office by both political parties, he chose the more difficult route in Arkansas: the fledgling Republican Party. It was not even until he ran for lieutenant governor in 1972 that his state party had even won its first presidential election since Reconstruction.

When he announced that he would seek the office of lieutenant governor, Coon was in his third year as a biology instructor at the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith (then West Ark Community College) in Sebastian County in western Arkansas, the more politically conservative part of the state. He challenged Democratic incumbent Bob C. Riley(1924-1994), a professor from Ouachita Baptist University, located in Arkadelphia in Clark County in south central Arkansas. [1] Having lost an eye in World War II, Riley wore a trademark black patch. ["Arkansas Gazette", Little Rock, Arkansas, November 5, 1972] He claimed on several occasions not even "to know" Coon when the Republican entered the race against him.