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LITTLE ROCK—Democrat Barack Obama has never campaigned in Arkansas, where voters have correctly picked every president since favoring Richard Nixon in 1972.

The Illinois senator had good reason to skip over the state in the Democratic primary in Arkansas, where he essentially competed against power couple Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton, Arkansas’ world-famous son.

Obama secured 26 percent of the primary vote; Hillary Clinton won 70 percent.

Now, the presumed party nominee can claim personal ties to the state, too, according to recent genealogical research.

“Whether you like him or not, you cannot deny that he is OUR Obama,” historian Michael Dougan of Jonesboro said in a lighthearted discussion Wednesday of Obama’s family line, as traced by Madison County genealogist Joy Russell.

Obama’s ancestors lived in the Republican stronghold of northwest Arkansas in the 19th century. He most likely has distant cousins still living in the state today, Dougan said.

His great-great-great-great-great grandfather was Nathaniel Bunch, a Virginia blacksmith and mechanic who moved to Newton County in the Ozarks in the 1840s with his wife, Sarah, according to Russell’s Madison County Record article.

The Bunches and their daughter, Anna Bunch, were buried in Liberty Cemetery in Dinsmore. Anna Bunch was Obama’s great-great-great-great grandmother. The line to Obama continued through Frances Allred, Margaret Wright, Leona McCurry, Madelyn Payne, and Shirley Dunham, Obama’s mother.

At a meeting Wednesday at Little Rock’s main library, Dougan told history enthusiasts Obama would do well to reach out to Arkansans out of this personal connection. He said the mixed-race candidate undoubtedly would face resistance, though, among conservative white Southerners. Obama’s mother was white; his father, Barack Obama Sr., was black.

“Racial antagonism remains a fact in Arkansas,” Dougan said.

For their part, Dougan said, Obama’s white kin in Arkansas should acknowledge the candidate—“not because of politics but because of family.”

Dougan suggested playfully that Obama’s looks and professional interests go back to his great-great-great-great uncle Bradley Bunch, a House Speaker in the state Legislature in the 19th century who fought for the Confederacy and later became county administrator for predominantly white Carroll County.

On a large screen, Dougan displayed side-by-side photographs of Obama and Bunch under the heading: “The Right Way to Play the Race Card.” Obama and Bunch do share a resemblance.

Dougan said Obama should visit Arkansas churches, cemeteries, and any sites remotely related to his family ties in the state.

“He needs to sell himself as the rightful descendant of Bradley Bunch,” Dougan joked.