Governor has managed to make a mess

It’s difficult to imagine a more securely entrenched politician than Sarah Huckabee Sanders was less than three years ago. Sanders was sworn in as the governor of Arkansas on Jan. 10, 2023, after receiving more than 63 percent of the statewide vote in the November 2022 general election.

Given that landslide margin of victory and her association with Donald Trump — who received 61 percent of the vote in Arkansas in 2016, 62 percent in 2020 and 64 percent in 2024 — it would seem that Sanders couldn’t possibly mess this up.

Now, though, it would seem that she’s done exactly that.

Sanders has governed with an air of haughtiness, as if she is entitled to do precisely as she pleases, with no questions asked by us pesky citizens.

First, there was the LEARNS Act, which the governor touted as the great panacea for our state’s public education system. There are those who would argue — count me among them — that LEARNS was really a thinly veiled attempt to push public money toward private schools, often with a particular religious ideology. That public money had to come from somewhere, of course, and that somewhere was the coffers of public schools — who at the same time were mandated to increase teacher salaries. Although the state absorbed some of those costs initially, public schools eventually will have to foot the bill completely on their own. Some school districts will be able to do it; others won’t. Arkansas’ poor rural school districts could face major consequences over the next several years. Meanwhile, much of the public money now going to private schools is subsidizing tuition for students who were attending those private schools even before LEARNS. That doesn’t sound quite as much like giving students more educational options as it does like handing a financial break to parents who apparently were already capable of paying private-school tuition.

Next to tarnish the governor’s reputation was her mostly failed attempt to obliterate our state’s Freedom of Information Act. Sanders did her best to paint the issue as a matter of concern for her family’s safety, but cynics would say it was more about preventing the public from knowing how our money is being spent. The groundswell of opposition to Sanders’ plan — for which the governor called the Legislature into special session — was perhaps the most unlikely bipartisan coalition in our state’s history. Conservatives and liberals alike banded together to oppose Sanders’ plans, and she wound up with only a sliver of what she wanted.

The most recent debacle has been the ongoing saga over Sanders’ plans to build a new state prison in a remote part of Franklin County. Critics of the plan — led by state Sen. Bryan King — have pointed out the rising cost estimates for the project, along with the lack of infrastructure and potential alternative sites that would seem to make more sense.

Sanders’ stubborn response has been to continue pushing the Franklin County proposal, as well as to — at least privately — back King’s challenger in the upcoming Republican primary. That would be Bobby Ballinger of Madison County, son of former state legislator Bob Ballinger. The name alone should speak for itself in Carroll County.

All of that has combined to damage Sanders politically, at least in Arkansas, in my opinion. Of course, it’s also my opinion that Sanders frankly doesn’t care much about Arkansas or those of us who live here. The governor’s office is just a steppingstone on her way to higher office.

I had occasion recently to spend some time in the company of some Republican legislators and I was a bit taken aback that even they were openly critical of Sanders. It seems as if she has lost a lot of political capital, if only in Arkansas.

Having said all that, I don’t think Sanders is particularly vulnerable. She’ll run for re-election a little over a year from now and my prediction is she’ll receive somewhere between 55 and 57 percent of the vote. That’s a comfortable margin, but it’s not 63 percent and maybe that fact alone will embolden more of our legislators to follow King’s lead and stand up for the people of Arkansas every now and again.

••• Scott Loftis is editor and publisher of the Carroll County News. His email address is SLoftis@Carroll-CoNews.com.