Brandt Smith

Curtis Brandt Smith, Jr., known as Brandt Smith or as C. Brandt Smith, Jr. (born April 18, 1959),^[1] is an associate professor from Jonesboro, Arkansas, who is a Republican member of the Arkansas House of Representatives for District 58 in a portion of Craighead County in the northeastern portion of his state.^[2]

Background

A native of Albuquerque, New Mexico, Smith was the son of Curtis Smith, Sr. (c. 1935-2002), a Southern Baptist pastor for forty years who earlier served in the United States Navy Reserve, the United States Army, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Washington, D.C. Mrs. Smith, the former Deloris Jean Williams, was a homemaker who was also employed by Wal-Mart.

Smith's boyhood home, high school, and information prior to 1986 are not available, but his father, and presumably Smith as well, lived in a number of locations ranging from Panama City, Florida, to Birmingham, Alabama; Memphis, Tennessee, and Paragould, Arkansas.^[3]

In 1990, Smith received a Bachelor of Arts from the National Louis University in Chicago, Illinois. In 1997, he obtained a master's degree in Religious Education from Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary, in South Germantown, Tennessee, since relocated to Cordova, near Memphis, Tennessee. In 2011, he received a Ph.D. in Management Leadership from the on-line Capella University in Minneapolis, Minnesota.^[1]

Smith and his wife, Gailia Marie, who married in 1981, have four children.^[1][2]

Career

From 1992 to 2010, Smith was a Southern Baptist missionary. He was a social scientist for the United States Army from 2008 to 2012. In 2010, he received the Bronze Star; in 2011, the Global War On Terrorism Award . Since 2012, Smith has been an associate professor of Security and Global Studies at the on-line American Military University, with administrative headquarters in Manassas, Virginia.^[1]

Dismayed over liberal political advances,^[1] the conservative Smith ran for the District 58 seat in the Arkansas House in 2014. He was unopposed in the Republican primary election held on May 20. He then unseated the Democrat Harold Copenhaver, 4,396 to 3,960 votes, in the November 4 general election in which his party swept most of the offices in Arkansas.^[4] Smith is assigned to the House committees on: (1) Aging, Children and Youth, Legislative and Military Affairs, (2) Public Transportation, and (3) Joint Committee on Advanced Communications and Information Technology.^[2]

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