When David Pryor was governor from 1975-79, he kept a plaque on his desk that read "Arkansas Comes First."
In these first three months of the Sarah Sanders administration, it has become clear that Arkansas comes last, far behind Sanders' national political ambitions and her annoying appeals for financial contributions from members of the Trump cult.
During the week that Sanders finally introduced her ballyhooed education bill, the governor's office issued a news release about an interview with the Washington Examiner. The Examiner touted it as an "exclusive interview." The fact that Sanders would choose to do an "exclusive interview" with an East Coast media outlet rather than one here in Arkansas (especially an interview about an education bill affecting Arkansas' children and their parents) tells us all we need to know.
The Examiner isn't a mainstream outlet. It's one of those highly partisan far-right outlets. It consists of a digital presence along with a weekly printed magazine. Its stories are seen by only a handful of Arkansans.
Reaching Arkansans isn't the point for the state's new governor. The goal is to inspire those gullible Trumpsters who will in turn cough up more money.
During that same week, Sanders did a television interview about the education package. Was it with an Arkansas television station? Nope. It was with Fox News.
When Sanders signed the education bill, after rushing it through a pliant Arkansas Legislature, she refused to take questions from the media. Seeing that the governor's office had promoted this as a landmark piece of legislation, one would have thought the chief executive would have taken the opportunity to crow about it.
Rather than hiring Arkansans experienced in the ways of state government, Sanders has surrounded herself with out-of-state political apparatchiks--people with an interest in national exposure but no real interest in Arkansas. Sanders' chief of staff, Gretchen Conger, came to the state last year under an ethical cloud after working for Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey.
A Texas law firm led by a Ducey donor pressured the state's revenue department to issue tax refunds for mining companies. The refunds were worth as much as $100 million. The donor hired several Ducey assistants to lobby for him.
The Arizona Republic reported: "Conger pushed for the tax break for nearly a year before reporting she may have a conflict of interest. That's because the tax break would have resulted in about a $10 million refund for international mining firm Freeport-McMoRan, where her father, Harry "Red" Conger, was president and chief operating officer, and also was a major campaign contributor to Ducey.
"According to the state's conflict-of-interest statutes 'any public officer or employee who has, or whose relative has, a substantial interest in any decision of a public agency ... shall refrain from participating in any manner as an officer or employee in such decision.'"
I reported in last Sunday's column about the decree from the governor's office, which stated that people in departments and agencies must have prior approval from that office before speaking with certain members of the Arkansas media.
I found out quickly that I was among those on the blacklist. I've heard from numerous people out in the departments and agencies. They consider their hands tied by this decree and no longer feel they have the freedom to do their jobs.
One told me specifically that if I wanted to have the lunch meeting we had previously planned, I would need to call Alexa Henning in the governor's office. Who's Alexa Henning? She's another of what I call the Traveling Trumpettes--political drifters passing through Arkansas on their way to their next job; people who know nothing about the state and care nothing about the people who live here. Their only goal is to keep the boss happy and continue moving up that political ladder.
These people are making a mess of state government. Having spent almost a decade in the governor's office, I have tremendous respect for our veteran state employees. And they tell me the first three months of the Sanders administration have been nothing short of chaos.
Henning is the type of political drifter I became quite familiar with during my years in Washington, D.C. She worked for Sen. Ted Cruz's losing presidential campaign in 2016 and later worked in the Trump White House. She then worked in 2020 for Trump's losing campaign. After that, Henning went to work for Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who had been among the leading Trump lapdogs in the Senate.
After Trump's loss in November 2020, Johnson fell in for a time with the lunatic fringe claiming the election was stolen.
These days, Henning likes to spend time as a state employee in Twitter fights with critics of the Sanders administration. It's not only childish, it's beneath the dignity of the office. Based on what we've seen the past three months, I honestly wonder how much dignity is left.
Sanders has the advantage of legislative lemmings who refuse to question her initiatives. One Capitol source, whose insight I've learned to respect, told me members were bullied by the governor's office, succumbing easily to threats of withholding grants and fielding primary opponents.
Dozens of legislators signed on as co-sponsors of the education bill before it was even drafted. Once drafted, I suspect few actually read it; indeed, a number of them have never read 145 pages of anything in their lives.
The Sanders administration and a majority of legislators struck a deal. If they would support administration bills without asking pesky questions, the governor wouldn't push back on their crazy (and sometimes unconstitutional) culture war bills. I said in 2021 that it was the worst legislative session in my lifetime.
This one has proved to be even worse. At least in 2021, we had a moderate, pragmatic governor in Asa Hutchinson who would push back on the most egregious of the bills.
As I noted in 2021, the 135-member Legislature consists of four groups. There are the Democrats, who no longer have enough votes to make a difference. There are three groups of Republicans.
The first of those is the smallest--traditional Republicans who stand for efficient government and no longer recognize their party.
Next, there are the Know Nothings, loudmouth culture warriors who live in a universe dominated by Fox News and extremist websites.
The largest group is the one I call the Cowards, those men and women who know better but don't have the nerve to question the governor or call down the Know Nothings.
"The governor's office got the education bill approved, but it's scared to death of having to implement the whole thing," my source said. "It's relying on the courts to invalidate much of what's in there. That will allow the governor to go out on the national stage again to bash liberal judges and thus boost her fundraising."
I would like to believe that our governor and those with whom she has surrounded herself aren't that cynical. But these past three months have led me to believe that my source is right on target.
Where are those brave people who can tell the governor that she needs to communicate with actual Arkansans, not the national Fox News crowd? Where are those folks who can remind Sanders that she won't be on the ballot again until 2026, meaning there's no reason to constantly have a hand out begging for contributions?
Somebody needs to say it: Governor, the campaign ended back in November. Now is the time to govern, not play national political games. Arkansas comes first.
Rex Nelson is a senior editor at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.