Pictured above: Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders. (Photos by Lori Sparkman)
Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders spent the first year of her historic term turning campaign promises into political accomplishments. She does not intend to ease up in Year Two.
“We have no intention of slowing down or taking our foot off the gas in terms of an aggressive, bold agenda for Year Two,” she said.
Bold agenda notwithstanding, year one of the Sanders administration set a high bar in terms of political wins. Sanders campaigned on four main priorities, each of which was addressed by legislation passed in 2023.
“We had what I think has been probably one of the busiest and most successful first years,” Sanders told AMP in an exclusive interview. “I’m a little biased, but I’m very proud of what we’ve been able to do in the first year.”
Sanders indeed spent her first year in office checking off a list of campaign promises. First up is education. The general assembly last spring passed the Arkansas LEARNS Act, which, among other things, increases teacher pay in the state, creates school vouchers, raises literacy standards for elementary students and enhances workforce development opportunities.
Then there’s criminal justice reform. The Protect Arkansas Act passed last year includes the restructuring of the state’s parole system to ensure that those convicted of violent crimes such as first-degree murder, rape, kidnapping and child trafficking must serve 100 percent of their prison sentences without the possibility for parole, as well as the construction of a $470 million, 3,000-bed prison.
Next up, an old favorite — tax cuts. Two of them, in fact, were passed, including the $124 million tax cut Sanders signed into law in April. The Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration reported 1.1 million Arkansans who make more than $24,300 a year would receive a cut — and why not? The state ended fiscal year 2023 with a $1.1 billion surplus.
Growing the state’s burgeoning outdoor recreation economy was another Sanders priority. Early on, Sanders issued an executive order creating the Natural State Initiative with an advisory council (led by her husband, First Gentleman Bryan Sanders) tasked with establishing a framework to further market the state for recreation tourism and outdoor business opportunities. Initial recommendations included enhancing an already strong state park system; promoting careers in outdoor recreation, tourism and hospitality; and growing the outdoor rec economy in the Delta.
Sanders benefited from what has grown to become one of the nation’s most ruby-red state legislative bodies, but like her policies or not — and a vast majority of Arkansans do — she just completed what even her critics would have to concede was a successful first year politically.
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It’s no surprise Sanders opted to make her office inside the Arkansas State Capitol a little less “like a cave.”
For previous occupants — including Sanders’ father, Mike Huckabee, who served as governor from 1996 to 2007 — the space had reflected a more masculine vibe.
Sanders seems at ease in her current role. She is no stranger to politics, despite this being her first go-round in public office, and it helps, of course, that she presides over a legislative body largely in tune with her politics, which was not the case for her father. Given who he is, it is almost a given that Sanders followed him into politics. She was helping stuff envelopes and putting up yard signs for her dad’s campaigns at an early age, and once Huckabee became governor, Sanders finished growing up and graduated high school from Little Rock Central while calling the Governor’s Mansion home. By the time Huckabee was running for re-election as governor in 2002, Sanders, by then studying political science and mass communications at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, was serving as campaign field coordinator.
Her later experience working for multiple state and national Republican campaigns and, ultimately, her signing on as advisor to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and rise to press secretary for the former president, of course, is well documented.
Experience has served her well, even at the relatively young age of 41, and there has been much of it behind the scenes and in front of reporters and cameras. Sanders appears as comfortable in her current role as any one-time candidate has a right to be. In an exclusive visit with AMP, she laid out her vision for Year Two, which will include a fiscal session and the same conservative legislature.
Arkansas’ chief exec is intent on seeing through her priorities at the state Capitol. She eschewed the prospect of being picked to serve as Trump’s running mate in 2024, but neither did she shut the door on the notion.
“I’ve done my time in D.C.,” she said, “and my kids love it here.”
Sanders stressed that she loves her job and, in 2024, implementation will be the key word for her administration.
Sanders: “Anytime you take on a role like this… there’s going to be a weight and a pressure that comes on you.”
“First, implementation of some of the big pieces of legislation that we passed in this first year, LEARNS and growing the Education Freedom Account access, making sure the career and workforce development piece is growing,” she said. “More and more people are engaged in that dual-track diploma. Early access to pre-K, the literacy program, all of that growing and being implemented will be a big part of next year. It’s already ongoing, aggressively taking place, and we’re already seeing the impact of it.”
Although the full impact of LEARNS will take time to measure, the law’s immediate impact manifests itself in parental empowerment and teachers’ pay.
“That’s pretty tangible,” Sanders said. “We were 48, and now we’re top five [in teachers’ pay]. I think it will take through at least this school year before we start to see some of those other pieces and get further into the implementation process, but you’re already seeing the support grow directly. Recent polling is showing that as people learn more about [the LEARNS Act] and see it in practice, support is growing.
“We’re very excited about it and just want to continue to make sure that the execution is done correctly,” she said.
Sanders said Arkansas can rid itself of the long-held “No. 49” stigma firmly attached to its reputation for education and even become a national leader.
Officials from other states and even countries, she said, have reached out to the Arkansas Department of Education about the LEARNS Act, which was modeled after Florida’s educational agenda under Gov. Ron DeSantis. In fact, Sanders tabbed Jacob Oliva, a former teacher and principal who helped craft Florida’s model, to lead ADE. The Florida approach became controversial for its so-called “don’t say gay” component, but the model was popular among rank-and-file Floridians for a focus on parents’ rights and workforce development. The Sunshine State earned its highest-ever rankings in the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress scores, which measure academic achievement for students in fourth and eighth grades.
Sanders said she would like to see Arkansas follow Florida’s lead.
According to the 2023 State of Education in Arkansas report from nonprofit Forward Arkansas, student test scores still have not rebounded to pre-COVID-19 levels. Before the pandemic sent students home for remote learning, scores were already low: 41 percent of Arkansas students were proficient in reading, and 48 percent were proficient in math.
“We’re not there yet, but I think we’re making our mark when it comes to education and workforce development,” Sanders said. “So many things are tied to that. If you want to recruit and/or retain big companies, you have to do those two things really well. I think it’s a space where Arkansas is showing itself to be a national leader. Do I think it’s going to happen tomorrow? No, but I think we’re getting there ,and we’re already seeing ourselves move up in certain categories like parental empowerment. We were middle of the pack, and now we’re top four in the country in that space. As LEARNS gets further implemented, we’ll just continue to see ourselves move up.”
Given the makeup of the legislature and the size of the state surplus, Sanders said she expects the upcoming fiscal session to include another tax cut. What it might look like will have to wait for upcoming conversations with lawmakers, she said, adding “I think there’s certainly an appetite for it, and we are in a good place to be able to do that again.”
Sanders said she hopes to see site selection and groundbreaking for the new prison in 2024, and as more components of the LEARNS Act dealing with pre-K through 12th grade are put into practice, the focus will shift to higher education.
The state has made strides in connecting post-high-school technical education and training with industries desperately in need of workers.
“We’re starting to look at what we can do to make our higher education system stronger, better and more industry-driven so that when people are graduating and completing those higher education degrees, it’s translating into meeting the demand of the workforce here in our state,” Sanders said.
As a small state, Arkansas does not need to be good at everything, but “it can be great and be the best at a handful of things,” she added.
“I think we absolutely have the ability and opportunity to do that, and you’re seeing that happen, whether it’s the steel industry, aerospace and defense, lithium, or oil and gas,” she said. “The energy sector has always been really important to Arkansas. That will continue. There are a handful of places where we have the right to be first, and we’re proving that we can get there and what that can mean for the long term.”
Sanders will continue to champion the state’s outdoor economy and wants to firmly establish Arkansas, known for its bountiful natural resources, as a top travel destination in the United States.
“We have 52 state parks and some of the best that you’ll find anywhere in the country,” she said. “We want to continue to elevate those experiences so we’re giving people a reason not just to come to Arkansas, but to keep coming back time and time again. Our tourism industry is the No. 2 industry in the state, second only to agriculture, and we think it can continue to grow exponentially over the next decade. The more it grows, the greater ability we’ll have to do things like phasing out our state income tax, so I’m excited about that space. It’s fun and it’s a great unifier.
“There are very few people who will argue that having more people in the outdoors, growing our economy and adding to that quality of life is a negative. It’s one of those few areas where you bring a lot of people together. It’s such a special industry for our state, and it’s an area where we certainly have the right to be first.”
Sanders knew much of what to expect in office through her father, who she admitted to using as her “phone a friend” once or twice. A couple of things, though, took her by surprise once she was elected in November 2022.
“One of the busiest times in my entire life was actually the transition,” she said of the interim between election and inauguration. “I knew that we would be busy and there would be a lot of things going on, but I didn’t realize just how quickly those flood gates would open up and how many things had to take place in such a short amount of time.”
The other kicker was one for which very few could have been prepared.
“Any time you take on a role like this and you have the responsibility of leading and governing, there’s going to be a weight and a pressure that comes on you,” she said. “How quickly that hits was a tiny bit surprising. I’d had a lot of conversations with my dad, obviously. It’s pretty nice to have him as a 24/7 resource, so I was able to talk to him about certain things, as well as with other governors around the country I have a good relationship with and with different people with whom I developed good mentorships. But just how quickly the weight of the office hits…
“You know, you take the oath, you’re sworn in, and you immediately come in, and you’re signing executive orders. You go directly into your first legislative session on the first day of taking office. Things get real really fast, but I’m proud of the way our team dealt with that and delivered for the people of Arkansas over the course of the first year.”
Sometimes lost in the politics is the historical significance of Sanders becoming the first woman to be elected Arkansas governor. Not only is she the first woman, but she is the first person to do so whose father also served as governor — and she beat the state’s first major-party Black candidate, Chris Jones, to boot.
The historical significance is not lost on Sanders, but on this day, her approach is more akin to late Arkansas Razorback great Alex Collins, known for calmly handing the football to the back judge after scoring a touchdown as if he expected to be standing in the end zone.
Her election surely served as an empowering symbol for any young girl in Arkansas, regardless of whether she wants to be in politics, she said.
“[The election] gives them a way to say, ‘I can do X, Y or Z,’ that there’s nothing they can’t do and try to accomplish,” she said. “I’m certainly proud of that for my own daughter. I meet girls all the time from all over the state who say, ‘I’m going to be governor one day,’ or ‘I’m going to work in the White House one day.’ Now they’ve seen somebody not just do it, but somebody from their own state.”
When asked to grade her first-year job performance, Sanders gave herself an A (“What else?” she joked), but she acknowledged there always are things one can do better and opportunities to grow.
“I don’t know that I would do anything differently because that’s how you learn,” she said. “That’s how you get better. We had four big priorities when we came into the year and into that first legislative session, and we were able to get significant things done on every single one of them. I feel proud of that and happy with the first year. We learned a lot and grew a lot. That will make us that much better for years two, three and four.”
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