State senator wants to strip Clinton name from Little Rock airport

Feb. 24 (UPI) -- An Arkansas state senator introduced a bill calling for the renaming of Little Rock's Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport.

In November, Sen. Jason Rapert, a Republican, began a poll on Twitter to gauge public interest in removing the Clintons' names from the airport. The informal and unscientific poll yielded 7,337 votes, with 53 percent favoring a name change and 47 percent opposing one.

The airport, formerly Adams Field, was renamed the Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport in 2012. Rapert's proposed legislation, Senate Bill 430, would disallow any publicly funded airport from taking the name of a living person elected to office. He said the Clintons should be disqualified because they were alive at the time of the renaming, and each held a federal office.

Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola disagreed with the bill, commenting, "I happen to think that the naming of the airport as it is doesn't have any negative impact on our state or on our city. As a matter of fact I think it is the opposite."