Steve Teske, a Lutheran pastor in Alexander and an archive assistant at the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, will announce next week as a Republican candidate for Pulaski County judge.

Long-time Judge Buddy Villines is retiring. Democrat Barry Hyde has announced a campaign to succeed him. I forgot to mention originally that Democrat Wilma Walker also has announced.

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Teske said he knew Hyde was a businessman who has said he’d run government like a business. He said he’d run it more like a public servant.

Teske, 51, has lived in the area for 10 years. He’s a Chicago native. He was careful about county issues, saying, for example, that he’d prefer to wait for a task force on Lake Maumelle watershed land use to complete its work before commenting on where he stands on existing land use ordinances that will take effect unless task force recommendations are adopted to modify them. He said the watershed presented a “balancing act,” between private property interests and water supply protection. He said he believed county government could operate more efficiently than it has and, notably, said he probably wouldn’t have made the investment in showpieces of the Villines administration, the Big Dam and Two Rivers bridges for pedestrian and bike use on the Arkansas River. He said he’d prefer to spend county road money on vehicular roads and bridges.

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Teske has written books on Arkansas topics and teaches ASU-Beebe history courses at Little Rock Air Force Base. He is married and has seven children.

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