# Wendell Griffen Wendell Griffen is the **County Judge-elect of Pulaski County**, having defeated incumbent County Judge [[Barry Hyde]] in the 2026-03-03 Democratic primary. He takes office 2027-01-01 as the county's chief executive officer and the presiding officer of the [[Pulaski County Quorum Court]]. Before his county-executive candidacy, Griffen served as a circuit judge of the Sixth Judicial Circuit of Arkansas (Pulaski and Perry counties) and as a judge of the Arkansas Court of Appeals. ## Role and affiliations - **County Judge-elect, Pulaski County** — takes office 2027-01-01 as chief executive officer of county government and presiding officer of the Quorum Court. The County Judge chairs the Court but is not one of its fifteen Justices of the Peace. - **Predecessor in office:** [[Barry Hyde]] (term ends 2026-12-31). - **Prior public service:** Judge, Sixth Judicial Circuit of Arkansas (Pulaski and Perry counties); Judge, Arkansas Court of Appeals. - **Party:** Democratic (won the 2026-03-03 primary against the incumbent Hyde). ## Contact The County-Judge-elect's office is not yet operationally separate from the sitting County Judge's office; the institutional mailing address is 201 S. Broadway, Little Rock, AR 72203. ## Data center positions - **2026-05-26 Quorum Court moratorium vote.** As reported by *Arkansas Times*, Griffen — then a County Judge candidate — characterized the as-reported moratorium ordinance as one that *"exempts AVAIO from any land-use regulations,"* a critique of the [[Phil Stowers|Stowers]] floor amendment grandfathering the AVAIO Project Leo site (Tier-3 *Arkansas Times*, 2026-05-27, [archive](../../web%20archive/2026-05-28/arktimes.com/2026-05-27-pulaski-county-data-center-moratorium.md)). He spoke as an observer and candidate; he held no Quorum Court vote and no county-executive role at the meeting. - **Posture entering office (2027-01-01).** The Clerk's 2026-05-28 correction — that the moratorium did not pass — leaves the data-center regulatory posture of unincorporated Pulaski County unsettled at the moment Griffen takes office, with the AVAIO Project Leo site already operational and the 2027–2028 Quorum Court class newly seated. Whether his campaign framing translates into county-executive action is a corpus-relevant follow-on. ## Appearances in the corpus - [[2026-05 Pulaski County Quorum Court Vote on Data Center Moratorium]] — public commenter at the contested vote; quoted by *Arkansas Times*. - [[Pulaski County Government]] — incoming chief executive. - [[Pulaski County Quorum Court]] — incoming presiding officer as County Judge-elect. ## Notes Griffen's judicial record on the Arkansas Court of Appeals and the Sixth Judicial Circuit is outside the scope of this corpus (Tier-3); his relevance here is as the incoming county executive whose tenure begins with the county's data-center regulatory posture unsettled.