Republican House candidate Stephen Bright dogged by accusations of domestic abuse, inappropriate contact with daughter and voter fraud 

Stephen Bright, the Republican candidate for House District 71, has more baggage than a Louis Vuitton outlet. 

Just last month, Bright faced accusations of years of voter fraud related to voting in Maumelle despite living in Little Rock. Now, based on court records, it appears Bright also has a history of domestic abuse, inappropriate contact with his daughter and failure to pay child support.

As first reported by government watchdog group On AR Watch, Bright “was accused by his wife, Leah Bright, and ex-wife, Stacy Gaines (formerly Bright), of verbal abuse, sexual misconduct with minor children, and failing to pay court-ordered child support.” On AR Watch detailed some of the accusations made by Bright’s ex-wife:

Gaines told the Court that “the situation in the marital home has become extremely volatile. Disturbing and violent incidents have occurred — with the two minor children witnessing everything.” Bright changed the locks on the home, removed the children from school and refused to reveal their whereabouts, and threatened to kill Gaines’ mother.

Gaines was Bright’s second wife, and she filed for divorce in 2006. They were divorced in 2007. Stephen Bright’s current wife, Leah Bright, has filed for divorce from him twice, in 2013 and 2015, but has later dismissed the cases both times. 

The Arkansas Times obtained the complete court records of the Gaines-Bright divorce.

In March 2007, while their divorce was still pending, Gaines accused Bright of physically attacking her:

A police report from this incident said Maumelle police responded to a call of a domestic disturbance at the house the then-couple shared. Gaines told police she did not know what Stephen Bright would do and did not want to be alone with him. The responding officer said Stephen Bright tried to close a door while Gaines was between the door and doorjamb.

Gaines sought an order of protection against Stephen Bright following one of these physical altercations. She also said in court filings that Stephen Bright consistently threatened her in front of the couple’s then-minor children:

Stephen Bright admitted his inappropriate actions in a letter to Gaines while the divorce was pending. He also apparently sent a letter to Gaines’ parents, apologizing to them for how he’d treated their daughter and promising to win back their trust and support. In his letter to Gaines, Stephen Bright acknowledged his physical altercations with Gaines and that she’d begged him for years to get help of some sort, which he’d refused to do until after she filed for divorce:

Following their divorce, Stephen Bright continued to act in ways that required court intervention. In a November 2015 emergency filing, Gaines said the couple’s minor daughter had told her therapist that Stephen Bright forced his minor daughter to shower while he was in the bathroom, which was something he did not make their minor son do. The minor girl’s doctor referred Stephen Bright to the state child-abuse hotline for this.

In that same 2015 court filing, Gaines detailed other “erratic behavior” from Stephen Bright around the children:

A subsequent court order stopped short of finding wrongdoing in this incident, but ordered Stephen Bright not to bathe the children and ordered that visitation with the children occur in the presence of Stephen Bright’s mother.

Also in 2015, Little Rock Police Department records show police responded to a domestic disturbance at the home of Stephen Bright and his third wife. Stephen Bright initially tried to send officers away, saying there was nothing going on. Leah Bright motioned for an officer to come inside. 

The police report says Stephen Bright told police Leah Bright had been texting her doctor and that he believed she was cheating on him because her doctor had responded with a kiss emoji. Leah Bright told police that Stephen Bright was bipolar and had sudden fits of rage over small things. She said those tendencies had existed for at least two of their five years of marriage, that he had sudden fits of rage and that he had previously put his hands on her. 

In November 2015 — the same month that Stacy Gaines filed the emergency motion regarding Stephen Bright’s conduct around their minor daughter — Leah Bright sought an order of protection against him. An Arkansas Times FOIA request for Leah Bright’s petition for order of protection remained pending as of press time. This story will be updated to include Leah Bright’s allegations once that petition is received.

At the same time that she filed for this order of protection, Leah Bright also filed for divorce from Stephen Bright for the second time. (She’d previously filed in 2013, but had dismissed the case a few months later after the couple reconciled.) While that divorce was pending, Leah Bright sought unpaid child support and credit card payments from Stephen Bright, and the court found him in arrears on both in a total amount of nearly $2,500. The court ordered him to make payments on both to catch up. Leah Bright filed another motion for contempt nearly a year after the first one to force Stephen Bright to make the payments he’d already been ordered to make, along with another $2,500 or so in additional unpaid support and credit card payments.

Leah Bright abandoned the divorce case in 2017, and it was officially dismissed in 2019. The couple remain married as of this writing.

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All of this comes barely a month after Stephen Bright’s opponent, Cassandra Mayes, alleged that Stephen Bright had committed years of voter fraud by voting from an address where he did not live.

According to Mayes, Stephen Bright was registered to vote — and did in fact vote — from 2009 through 2015 at the Maumelle address he’d shared with Stacy Gaines. Multiple police reports from that period, however, showed Stephen Bright living at the Little Rock address he shared with wife Leah Bright. Additionally, court records show that the bank foreclosed on the Maumelle house in 2008. 

State law requires a person to update the address on their voter registration when they move, even if it’s within the same county. Stephen Bright, who works for the Arkansas Secretary of State’s office, chalked his seven votes in Maumelle elections during this period up to “a simple oversight.”