Jim Hendren

Hendren owns plastics manufacturer Hendren Plastics. In 2020 a Federal judge ordered Hendren Plastics and DARP Foundation to pay more than $1.1 million in back wages and damages to workers who were forced to work without pay at Hendren Plastics. District Judge Timothy Brooks wrote that “They were businesses that manipulated the labor market and skirted compliance with the labor laws for their own private ends,” The DARP Foundation was a work-based rehab in which many participants had their participation court ordered in lieu of incarceration. DARP supplied workers to Hendren’s Hendren Plastics who used them as a “captive workforce.” Not only was the misuse of rehab workers abusive but it also displaced private sector employees at Hendren Plastics who had enjoyed a significantly higher wage than the temporary laborers. Injuries to the workers at Hendren Plastics were commonplace with seriously injured workers being kicked out of the program and sent to prison, this created an incentive to massively underreport workplace injuries.

In 2012, Hendren ran unopposed for the state Senate; his initial four-year term expired on December 31, 2016. Re-elected in 2016 election, Hendren serves on the Education Facilities Oversight Committee and the Arkansas Legislative Council. He is a member of four other Senate committees: Budget, Children & Youth, Education, and Energy . Hendren passed legislation exempting All Active Duty and National Guard Personnel from State Income Tax in 2013. He was also appointed chairman of a Joint Task Force charged with reforming Public School and Arkansas State Employee Insurance programs.

His father, Kim Hendren, is also a former member of the Arkansas Senate and in a second stint in office a member of the Arkansas House of Representatives from at least 2015 to 2017. Through his mother, the former Marylea Hutchinson, his cousins include fellow State Senator Jeremy Hutchinson of Little Rock and former State Representative Timothy Chad Hutchinson, sons of former Senator Tim Hutchinson, and Hutchinson's first wife, Donna.

In 2003, Hendren returned to military service and joined the Missouri Air National Guard, of which he holds the rank of lieutenant colonel.

In 2001, Hendren ran unsuccessfully to succeed his uncles, Asa Hutchinson and Tim Hutchinson, representing Arkansas's 3rd congressional district in a special election campaign that was hampered by reports of an extramarital affair. Hendren finished a distant third in the Republican primary.

In 1994, Hendren defeated Representative Railey Steele in a race for the Arkansas House of Representatives. He remained a state representative until 2000. During this time, he worked for passage of several pro-life pieces of legislation, including a ban on partial birth abortions in 1996 and the Fetal Protection Law of 1999.

Hendren was elected to the Gravette School Board in 1992.

A native of Gravette in Benton County, Hendren spent a semester at Bob Jones University and graduated in 1984 with a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. From 1984 to 1992, he served in the United States Air Force. A former F-15 fighter pilot, he flew in six intercepts of planes of the former Soviet Union over the Bering Sea. Since 2003, he has been a senior offensive duty guard in the Arkansas Air National Guard. He owns Hendren Plastics Company. He and his wife, Tammy Claire Hendren (born 1964), have four children, Daniel, David, Nick, and Molly. He is a Baptist.

James Paul Hendren, known as Jim Hendren (born August 12, 1963), is a Republican member of the Arkansas State Senate for District 2 and the current Senate Majority Leader. He resides in Sulphur Springs in Benton County in Northwest Arkansas.