John Boozman

John Boozman (born December 10, 1950, Shreveport, Louisiana, U.S.) is an American politician who was elected as a Republican to the U.S. Senate in 2010 and began representing Arkansas the following year. He previously served in the U.S. House of Representatives (2001–11).

John Boozman—who was born in Louisiana, where his father was stationed in the U.S. Air Force—grew up in Fort Smith, Arkansas. While in high school, he met Cathy Marley, and the couple later married and had three children. Boozman excelled in sports as a youth, and he played gridiron football while at the University of Arkansas in nearby Fayetteville. He did not graduate, but he received a degree in optometry from the Southern College of Optometry in 1977 and established a private practice, which he operated until 2001. He also ran a small ranch in Rogers, Arkansas, the Ozarks city where he established his eye clinic and served on the school board.

In 1998 Boozman’s brother, Fay Boozman, ran as the Republican candidate against Democrat Blanche Lincoln for a U.S. Senate seat but was defeated by a large margin. John, who had won a special election for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2001, then ran against Lincoln in 2010 and won. He entered the Senate in 2011.

Boozman generally pursued a conservative agenda and reliably voted with his party, although he broke with Republican colleagues on some issues of spending and budget. He opposed gun control, amnesty or pathways to citizenship for illegal immigrants, and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. He was particularly involved in legislation that concerned agriculture and foreign trade, noting that his Arkansas constituency relied on a strong agricultural economy. While serving in the House of Representatives, he was instrumental in securing federal funding for the agriculturally oriented Arkansas World Trade Center, which was established in 2007 in his hometown of Rogers. In 2014 Boozman underwent emergency heart surgery but returned to the Senate later that year.