He died of a massive heart attack while awaiting to appear on Little Rock ABC television station KATV on the night of the 1978 general election.
[1] Ranchino was a strong supporter of his fellow Democrat, future U.S. President Bill Clinton,[2] who that night easily defeated the Republican Lynn Lowe to win the first of five non-consecutive terms as governor of Arkansas.
After her husband's early death, Veda continued to live in Clark County and the next year married local prosecuting attorney Henry Morgan.
[2] At Ouachita Baptist University, where he started in 1965,[8] his teaching colleagues included two other Arkansas political figures, Bob C. Riley, the lieutenant governor from 1971 to 1975, and the Clinton friend and Whitewater associate James B. McDougal, who subsequently ran unsuccessfully for the United States House of Representatives in 1982 against the late Republican John Paul Hammerschmidt in Arkansas's 3rd congressional district.
In 1969, the program was co-sponsored by OBU and the Arkansas Council on Human Relations and described at the time as the largest of its kind in the nation.
...[12]In the 1968 general election, Arkansas was declared "schizophrenic" by political observers for having cast its electoral votes for George Wallace, its gubernatorial majority for Moderate Republican Winthrop Rockefeller, and its U.S. Senate ballots for J. William Fulbright.
As a result, Ranchino in 1972 published the book From Faubus to Bumpers: Arkansas Votes, 1960-1970,[13] a political analysis of state election during the preceding decade.
In the study he concludes that Arkansas voters are flexible and independent and can make consistent ballot choices even if they appear inconsistent.
In his own words, Ranchino offers this analysis from 1970 which has been rendered obsolete by the development of political events in the 21st century: Republicans have never had a party in Arkansas in the strictest sense.
...Whichever way the moderate vote leans in any specific election does make the essential difference between victory or defeat for the candidates.
[17] The article was published at the height of Anita Bryant's "Save the Children" campaign against homosexual rights in Miami, Florida.