The new year will see Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders embark on Year 3 as the state’s first female chief executive.
Heading into the second half of her historic first term, Sanders plans to further advance an agenda that has included implementation of a school vouchers program, a continued focus on outdoor recreation as an economic driver, recruiting new global trading partners, building more prison beds and establishing a recidivism pilot program, addressing food insecurities, and more.
Backed by a Republican supermajority in the Arkansas state legislature, Sanders was in lockstep with the 2025 general assembly. Lawmakers passed some signature Sanders legislation, including the Bell to Bell, No Cell bill banning personal electronic devices such as smartphones and smart watches in public schools; the Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies legislation improving access to maternity care; Arkansas ACCESS, a “higher education reform bill” designed to create stronger career pathways; legislation mandating free breakfasts for students in Arkansas public schools; and even legislation to bring bike lifts to the state’s downhill mountain bike trails.
Arkansas Money & Politics sat down with the governor to talk about what is ahead in the new year, from tourism and food insecurity to crime and beyond.
Arkansas Money & Politics: Recently, you announced that the iconic Blanchard Springs Caverns in Fifty-Six would become the state’s 52nd state park. Talk about your plans to continue the emphasis on outdoor recreation as an economic driver.
Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders: It can be huge for that area. Not just the caverns, but the surrounding area is so beautiful — the creek and just the landscape in that whole area — and tourism is a big part of that region. Blanchard Springs had not been taken care of and run quite as well as it can be. With the resources available with it becoming a state park, it allows us to put more into it and elevate the experience. It gives us another thing to advertise and bring people into the state and get people from our own state to explore their own backyard. It’s a really unique experience that I think a lot of people will take advantage of.
It will be an economic driver for that area. They got hit with the tornadoes all through that section of the state last year, so it can bring in additional revenue for the shops, restaurants and rental properties and things like that. It also just gives people something to look forward to and to be excited about after they’ve been through something really difficult. We worked closely with Sen. Missy Irvin and our federal delegation. Shea Lewis, [Arkansas State Parks director], has done a tremendous job, and it’s something that I’m really excited about and think will be a great kind of legacy project that we get to look back and say we got to be part of.
AMP: Since you took office, Arkansas has solidified itself as the mountain bike capital of the U.S., if not the world. What’s the potential economic impact there?
Sanders: When you think about what that area and region was even 10, 20 years ago, mountain biking wouldn’t be the first thing you think of — not at all — but we now have some world-class mountain biking not just there but in several areas around the state. It’s driving a lot of tourism. I mean, just last year alone, we welcomed more than 50 million visitors to the state of Arkansas. We’ve seen a 17 percent increase in our tourism industry, and it has about a $10 billion impact on the state, so that is a huge driver. What I think is really unique about the mountain biking side of tourism is the places that we’re competing with, like Colorado, Wyoming, Montana.
What makes Arkansas unique is that it’s something you can do year-round because our climate is as temperate as it is. You can go out not quite but almost 365 days a year and you can ride in Arkansas. So that gives us the ability to really market beyond a lot of the people that we’re competing with in that space. That’s really unique, and the Walton family has been great about developing key parts of Bentonville but specifically the trail systems. They’ve done a really tremendous job, and with the bike lifts going in at Mena and Bella Vista, it’s just a really cool and unique element. The same thing you would find in a ski town, you can now do in Mena, Arkansas.
AMP: “Conservative welfare reform” — such as the Medicaid work requirement — has been a big part of your approach to government. What can we expect from that in 2026?
Sanders: A lot of the big pushes are still in process. Obviously, we have the Medicaid work requirement that we’re working closely with the Trump administration to see that move forward and implement. We were one of the first states to put that forward and work to reform the food stamp program and remove soft drinks and junk food from that program. We’re really trying to incentivize people to purchase healthier products and more nutritious food. It’s kind of crazy when you think about the fact that in the very same building in state government, we are giving out money to go purchase junk food, and then on the back end, we’re paying for the health care costs and side effects from really unhealthy lifestyles. Those things happen within a hundred feet of each other — we’re setting ourselves up for failure.
Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders speaks during the groundbreaking of the Google data center in West Memphis.
(Photo provided)
Also, how do we continue to help the people who really need Medicaid but make sure that, long term, we’re not trapping them in a lifetime of poverty? That’s not what those programs were set up for. They’re supposed to help people get back on their feet and help them navigate the system so that they are no longer dependent on government assistance, so we’re doing that through some of these reform projects. I think one of the biggest initiatives that we launched this past year that we will see and have a lot more work on in the coming years is the 10:33 Initiative, [a faith-based program aimed at lifting Arkansans out of poverty]. It’s something that really provides that wraparound service. You know, people don’t come to us in pieces, so we shouldn’t expect that they’re going to function in this bifurcated system that we’ve created.
It will help people have a one-stop shop, a case manager and a community advocate who can put all those pieces together. Usually, when people show up needing food stamps, that’s not the only thing they need. A lot of times, they need housing or transportation or a job or education or even something as basic as the right documents to get those things, like a driver’s license or a Social Security card. This helps put things into a much easier system to navigate and having one point of contact to simplify that process and help bring all of these services together.
So often, you have people in the faith community and in community organizations who are already doing these things, but those who need their assistance don’t know they exist. We’re helping bring all that together. I think it’s going to make a really, really big difference and hopefully help us move a lot of people from being dependent on the government to standing on their own two feet.
AMP: Can this emphasis help those Arkansas dealing with food insecurity in the middle of food deserts?
Sanders: This is one of my passion areas. Frankly, Arkansas has traditionally not done a great job when it comes to dealing with food insecurity. So many who need it are so close to where the food is being grown but don’t have access. We’ve made free breakfasts available to every single student in the state and started summer [electronic benefits transfer] programs. We’re partnering with our agriculture community and our schools, and we’re doing a couple different pilot programs. One that I think is kind of fun is called the Arkansas Plate, where schools are partnering with the Department of Agriculture and Department of Education and eating Arkansas products. They’re learning about how [food is] grown. Not only are they getting a greater appreciation for what’s here in our state, but hopefully for some of them, maybe it helps create a passion to go into agriculture. It’s still our No. 1 industry. We need that next generation of kids to step into these roles. We absolutely do. Also, I think there are a lot of smaller projects that could have a bigger long-term impact as they go into further implementation this year.
AMP: Speaking of Arkansas agriculture, you’ve worked to expand the state’s network of global trading partners. How can the almost $6 billion memorandum of understanding signed with Taiwan help struggling Arkansas farmers in the new year?
Sanders: It opens up a lot of opportunity. We’ve traveled around the state, talking to our farmers and our ranchers, and the biggest thing that helps bolster them, they said — one of their biggest asks — was more federal aid. Thankfully, the president announced the $12 million at the end of the year. A lot of our row crop farmers will be direct recipients of that. The other big thing is that we have to open up new markets. We can’t continue to rely on the same trading partners that we’ve always had. They’re not buying as much. China has broken the system, so how do we open up and develop new long-term partnerships with other countries? [The Taiwan MOU] is, I think, a huge opportunity and something that I hope is the first of many different, new trading deals that will take place that will directly benefit the Arkansas ag community.
Sanders is joined by four former Arkansas governors to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Arkansas Governor’s Mansion in Little Rock. (Photos provided)
AMP: How important was it for you to revisit the state’s grocery tax?
Sanders: The grocery tax is one of the state’s most regressive taxes. Following the Biden administration, when the cost of food is up so high, we already have trouble with food insecurity in the state. How do we provide even just a little bit of relief for the average Arkansas family? Something everybody needs, something everyone is going to purchase, removing that tax helps put just a little bit more money back in people’s pockets so that they can put more food on their table. That’s a big difference maker for a lot of Arkansas families and is something I’m glad goes into effect this year.
AMP: The state has long faced a shortage of prison beds, and the planned 3,000-bed facility in Franklin County has drawn opposition. You also launched a recidivism pilot program aimed at lowering the number or repeat offenders. How do you navigate this potential mine field?
Sanders: One of the biggest responsibilities that we have in government is public safety.
While we have made tremendous strides and made big progress by passing the Protect [Arkansas] Act putting more state troopers back out in communities across Arkansas, we were at one of our state’s lows in terms of number of troopers that we had out on the road, and we’ve had a huge increase. We added a second troop school. We passed a plan allowing us to pay our state troopers more, which helps us recruit and bring more people in, but part of it is we just also recognized the work that they’re doing. We saw this kind of leftist push to demonize police officers around the country, and in Arkansas, we said, ‘We’re not going to do that.’ Not only are we not going to allow that type of thought to sink into our culture, but we’re going to go the opposite way.
We’re going to recognize our law enforcement officers for the great work that they do by paying them more, adding that second troop school, providing more for equipment at our law enforcement divisions around the state and really just supporting them in every way that we could. So, that’s one piece of it.
Then the other part is when they actually do their jobs and they arrest people, we need some place to put our criminals. Where are they going to go? So we’ve already expanded capacity and existing space by about 1,500 people. The bad part is we need a lot more space. We’ve been woefully behind, and this problem has been ignored for several decades. The last time we built a prison in Arkansas, my dad was governor, and we’ve kicked the can down the road for too long.
There’s not a person in the legislature or in law enforcement who won’t tell you we need that. It’s not one of the most fun parts, but it is one of the most necessary parts of doing this job. When people break the law, they get a consequence. It’s the same thing as a parent. Whether you have a 3-year-old, a 13-year-old or a 93-year-old, if somebody breaks rules, they should know that there is a consequence that comes with it, and we want to see that happen here in the state. We have 176,000 unserved warrants because we simply don’t have a place to put them even if we were to go after and arrest them, so building a new prison, opening up capacity, whatever that looks like, that’s something that we’re going to keep front of mind. As we move into this new year, our job is to provide a greater sense of safety, and we can’t do that if we don’t have the space to put people.
