Loy Mauch

Loy L. Mauch (born c. 1951) is a Republican former member of the Arkansas House of Representatives from District 26, based primarily in Hot Spring County in central Arkansas. A supporter of Neo-Confederate causes, Mauch is a member of the League of the South and a former head of a Sons of Confederate Veterans post. Mauch believes, among other things, that Abraham Lincoln should not be honored in Arkansas and that the Confederate flag is a symbol of Jesus Christ and biblical government. Mauch is a supporter of the Tea Party movement.^[1]

Mauch resides in Bismarck in Hot Spring County. His district included a corner of Garland County, the seat of which is Hot Springs. The district contains the city of Malvern. Mauch won the position in 2010 by 533 votes, having received 53.5 percent of the 7,531 ballots cast. He succeeded the term-limited Democrat Mike Burris. Mauch's opponent was Terry Bracy, a former city council member in Malvern who owns an ambulance company. Bracy said that he was unaware of Mauch's Confederate sympathies at the time of their campaign.^[1] Mauch is a prolific writer of letters to the editor to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. In these letters he compared Abraham Lincoln and Northern generals to Nazis, war criminals and communists and wrote that slavery couldn't have been that bad because "Jesus and Paul never condemned it".^[2] Mauch was defeated by Democrat David Kizzia in the November 6, 2012 general election.

On January 28, 2014, Mauch testified at a hearing at a committee meeting to decide to proceed with a law that would separate the holidays honoring Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert E. Lee. ^[3] Mauch stated that Lee had committed no crimes, violated no laws and violated no part of the Constitution. In the best bit of irony, Mauch followed that line with, "the historically uneducated continue to denigrate (Lee) with their false accusations." A cursory review of history reveals that Lee committed treason when he took up arms against the United States of America.

Mauch is a former bullrider and cable splicer for Southwestern Bell and AT&T.^[4]

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