Mark Pryor (born January 10, 1963) is a politician in Arkansas. As of 2006, he is a Democratic Senator for the state of Arkansas, having defeated incumbent Republican Tim Hutchinson in 2002. He was the only Democrat to defeat a Republican incumbent in that election cycle. Pryor currently sits on the Commerce Committee, Committee on Small Business & Entrepreneurship, and the Select Committee for Ethics.
On May 23, 2005, Pryor was one of fourteen senators who forged a compromise on the Democrats' use of the judicial filibuster, thus blocking the Republican leadership's attempt to implement the so-called "nuclear option". Under the agreement, the Democrats would retain the power to filibuster a Bush judicial nominee only in an "extraordinary circumstance", and the three most conservative Bush appellate court nominees (Janice Rogers Brown, Priscilla Owen and William Pryor) would receive a vote by the full Senate.
Pryor is one of the few Democrats in the Senate to oppose legal abortion.
