Republican gubernatorial nominee Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Tuesday beat Democratic nominee Chris Jones and Libertarian candidate Ricky Dale Harrington Jr. to become the first woman elected as Arkansas’ governor.
Sanders, 40, is the daughter of former Gov. Mike Huckabee — who served as the state’s chief executive from July 1996-2007 — and a former White House press secretary for President Donald Trump.
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Sanders, of Little Rock, is the first daughter of a former governor elected to fill the position formerly held by her father in the United States, according to Chelsea Hill, data services manager for the Center for American Women and Politics, which is part of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University-New Brunswick.
With an estimated 85% of the vote counted, unofficial vote totals were:
Sanders 517,692
Jones 295,125
Harrington 15,146
Speaking before an estimated 1,500 at the Statehouse Convention Center in Little Rock, Sanders said “thank you, Arkansas,” and she thanked Jones and Harrington.
“One of the most amazing things about tonight is that no matter how it turned out Arkansas was going to make history tonight,” she said.
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If either had won, Jones or Harrington would have been the first Black person elected governor of Arkansas.
“I know it will be the honor of a lifetime to serve as Arkansas’ 47th governor and the first female governor of the state,” Sanders said.
She said her gubernatorial campaign was about the people of Arkansas, including the people who didn’t vote for her.
“This election is about taking Arkansas to the top. I know that Arkansas can be first, and I am committed to being a leader that takes us there,” said Sanders, who is married with three children.
She said she would be forever grateful to Arkansans who entrusted her with this responsibility and “I promise I won’t let you down.
“I look forward to being Arkansas’ very best governor for the next eight years,” Sanders said after she was elected to the four-year term as governor.
Jones, who is from Little Rock and is a former executive director of the Arkansas Regional Innovation Hub, said “it is difficult when what you see does not line up with what you want.
“It is challenging when you fight with everything in you and you don’t quite get there,” he told about 300 people at the Democratic Party of Arkansas’ watch party at the Robinson Center in Little Rock. “But understand, the race is not over.
“Let me be clear,” Jones said. “We want every last street in this state, and we are going to count every last vote in this race. Why? Because Arkansas deserves it. And Arkansas is worth it, and when we started we made a promise to each other that we were going to do things differently.”
He said “whatever happens in this count, ya’ll watch out, because we built something. We built something we are working on. This was always just the first chapter. This was always bigger than this race.”
Harrington, who is from Pine Bluff and is a pastor at Mount Beulah Christian Church, said, “I am hoping we still stay above 3%.”
To retain ballot access as a political party through 2024, Arkansas election law requires that the Libertarian Party’s candidate for governor receive at least 3% of the vote in the the general election, according to the party. Otherwise, they will need to petition to become a “new political party” again.
Sanders will succeed Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who has served as the state’s chief executive since 2015 and endorsed her campaign in November 2021. The governor’s salary is $158,739 a year.
As governor, Sanders said during the campaign that she would push back against “the failed radical left policies coming from Washington,” and defend “our freedom and create opportunity for all Arkansans.”
She said she would lower taxes, foster an environment for Arkansas’ businesses to grow, champion good schools, and support law enforcement.
Sanders has pledged to begin phasing out the state’s income tax, and proposed the Arkansas LEARNS plan to improve education, and a public safety plan that she said would make Arkansas a safer and stronger.
She said that gradually and responsibly phasing out the state’s income tax requires a growing economy and making government more efficient and more effective. She has steered clear of prescribing a certain period for phasing out the state income tax.
For fiscal 2023 that ends June 30, 2023, the state Department of Finance and Administration projects the state will collect $3.9 billion in individual income taxes and $642 million in corporate income taxes out of $8.3 billion in total general revenues and pay out $486.4 million in individual income tax refunds and $71.9 million in corporate income tax refunds.
In fiscal 2023, the state’s general revenue budget totals $6.02 billion, and the finance department projected a $914 million general revenue surplus in May before the Legislature enacted income tax cuts in the Aug. 9-11 special session that the finance department projects will reduce state general revenues by almost $500 million in fiscal 2023.
During the campaign, Jones said he would support appropriate tax cuts that benefit as many Arkansans as possible and questioned how Sanders would eliminate the state income tax.
He pitched what he called his PB&J agenda of expanding preschool and broadband access and creating more jobs, and proposed a plan to substantially increase teacher salaries.
Jones proposed what he called his Teacher Pay Plus plan to support Hutchinson’s initial proposal to raise the state’s minimum teacher pay from $36,000 to $46,000 a year, and pledged to raise the minimum teacher pay to $50,000 by the end of his first term as governor.
Under the plan, Jones also would have provided a $4,200 raise to teachers making at least $46,000 a year and provide additional state investments to support rural teachers and deferred maintenance needs. He said his plan would have used $400 million of the state’s general revenue surplus with a sustainable long-term funding structure and provide a clear path to sustained funding for local school districts.
Sanders said she supports raising teacher pay because it’s a critical part of recruiting and retaining good, hardworking teachers.
She said her Arkansas LEARNS plan prioritizes literacy, empowerment, accountability, readiness, networking and school safety. She said she wants to improve access to quality pre-K and reading coaches for at-risk children, and empower parents with more choices so no child is trapped in a failing school and a lifetime in poverty, and curriculum transparency through innovation and online resources.
Sanders said she wants to reward good teachers with smart incentives, like higher pay, create a strong pipeline by allowing soon-to-be teachers to spend their entire last year in the classroom, and offer alternate certification improvements and better leadership training.
She said she favors offering more flexibility to students to pursue internships and apprenticeships while in school, aligning career and technical programs with jobs that are in high demand, establishing a workforce cabinet, and launching a statewide campaign to support the work of technical and trade schools and opportunities that exist for the future workforce.
She said she intends to expand high-speed internet to make educational and career opportunities accessible, and to prioritize school safety by focusing on physical security, additional resource officers, mental health and training to implement best practices.
Sanders proposed a public safety plan that says the state “must be prepared to devote the necessary resources to increase prison capacity to allow for the retention of violent, repeat offenders and to reduce the backlog in our county jails.”
As part of this plan, she proposed enacting what she described as smart, targeted Truth in Sentencing legislation aimed at ensuring violent repeat offenders are not allowed back into communities in Arkansas. The proposed legislation would require an inmate who is out on parole and commits another crime to go back and serve the remainder of the original sentence and the new sentence consecutively, she said.
Sanders’ plan also calls for increasing mental heath programming for inmates requiring those services in prison, supporting recruitment efforts of additional law enforcement officers across the state and tangible investment in training and additional resources, including overtime, and enacting a victim’s bill of rights to ensure people victimized by crime have basic protections under the law.
Arkansas bans abortion except to save the life of the mother in a medical emergency under Act 180 of 2019, which Attorney General Leslie Rutledge certified hours after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion across the country.
Jones said he considers the exception to allow abortions to save the life of a mother in a medical emergency to be ambiguous and he would want the Legislature to change the law to allow abortions to save the life of the mother and in cases of rape and incest “as a first step.”
But Sanders said, “I am pro-life, believe every life — including the mother and the child — has intrinsic value and would not advocate for any new exceptions to Arkansas’ pro-life law.”
In January 2021, she launched her bid for governor by vowing to defend Arkansas from the “radical left now in control of Washington” and to promote law and order, cut state income taxes and champion good schools and teachers.
Sanders was the third Republican to announce a 2022 gubernatorial bid after Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin of Little Rock announced in August 2019 and Rutledge, of Maumelle, announced in July 2020. In February 2021, Griffin departed the governor’s race to run for attorney general instead. In November 2021, Rutledge ditched the governor’s race to run for lieutenant governor.
In the May 24 primary, Sanders handily beat podcaster Doc Washburn of Little Rock to win the Republican gubernatorial nomination. Jones won the Democratic gubernatorial nomination over four Democratic rivals: former state Rep. Jay Martin, businesswoman Supha Xayprasith-Mays, businessman James “Rus” Russell III and educator Anthony Bland, all of Little Rock.
Sanders raised and spent far more money than Jones or Harrington and a record amount for a governor’s race, according to campaign finance reports.
Through Oct. 29, for the general election Sanders reported raising $9.2 million in contributions and spending $5.2 million. After she raised and spent $13.1 million in the May 24 primary election, she transferred $4.2 million from her primary election campaign to her general election campaign.
Through Oct. 29 for the general election, Jones reported raising $1.9 million in contributions and spending $1.7 million. After he raised and spent $1.9 million in the May 24 primary election, he transferred $69,431 from the primary election campaign to the general election campaign.
Through Sept. 30, Harrington reported raising $33,961 and spending $27,617 in the primary and general election campaigns.
Information for this article was contributed by Lara Farrar of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
