Sarah on November ballot
Sarah Sanders surely has no serious worry about getting re-elected in 2026. But surviving the election unscathed this November, when she won’t appear on the ballot, could be a tougher matter.
Individual issues pose harder challenges than human opponents who are doomed by having the scarlet “D,” for Democrat, beside their names.
Winning a policy argument standing on its own is a more substantive undertaking than simply spouting the right-wing automaton’s handy phrase that one’s Democratic opponent is a radical leftist trying to destroy America with “open borders” and school courses teaching true history.
In the absence of a viable opposition party (that’s in a statewide sense; there are three or four pockets including Little Rock and Fayetteville where Democrats still roam the Arkansas earth more-or-less freely), Sanders’ loyal opposition comes from activist citizens springing up to try to get single issues on the ballot for direct voter consideration.
She knows that and has essentially put herself on the ballot, and on the line, this year. She was going to be forced there anyway.
Sanders has engaged for combat. She has assigned some of her best troops to form two political operations. One is to oppose ballot proposals that would widen medical marijuana availability, allow abortions for 18 weeks and for exceptions after that, and force private and parochial schools taking state money in Sanders’ new school vouchers to meet all the requirements imposed on public schools. The other is to double-down specifically on the school proposal.
She probably doesn’t care much about medical marijuana but feels an obligation by her conservative brand to oppose it. Losing anything on abortion would harm her national conservative bona fides, which are her most precious assets. But the school thing threatens her where it would most hurt.
If private and parochial schools had to endure all the hamstrings and accountabilities imposed on ever-beleaguered public schools, they probably wouldn’t take the voucher money. Her signature issue would be kaput.
It may have been telling when I described those three ballot issues to a couple hundred mostly left-of-center people last week. They listened politely on medical marijuana. They listened more intently on abortion. But they broke into happy applause only at the mention of private schools having to live by rules that apply to public schools.
Fair play with the public money taken from all of us for the good of all of us— that’s a marketable concept. Sanders’ best hope may be that the state’s voucher opponents are typically divided over whether this amendment is a sound idea as written. One anti-LEARNS group has left the coalition and declared neutrality. It worries that, by putting a reference to state money for private schools in the Constitution, the amendment would lift vouchers from statutory status to more lofty constitutional status, thus making them harder to destroy.
I don’t think so. The language merely says that, if private schools take generic public money, they must meet the same standards as public schools. It never remotely mandates a voucher for anyone.
But to be fair, my law license is unavailable right now on account of never having been earned. And I don’t trust the Republican-ized Arkansas Supreme Court.
Bear in mind that none of these proposals has yet turned in the minimum number of signatures needed to qualify for the ballot. That takes money, organizational skill and passionate drive. The Legislature, hostile to direct democracy, has made signature requirements harder. I’m not confident that any of these proposals will get the necessary signatures.
Also keep in mind that the proposals have only been pre-approved by the unbinding guidance of the attorney general. All of them are still susceptible to direct lawsuits—about unclear or misleading wording, for example—filed directly with that heavily Republican and Sanders-allied Arkansas Supreme Court.
In announcing her two organizations to fight the proposals, Sanders made a point of saying the fight would be waged either to disqualify or defeat the proposals. Disqualifying them would come by a court ruling, which would be easier and cheaper than having to beat them in public voting.
One thing that seems true in all this, though, is that the people of Arkansas aren’t as consistently conservative on public policy as the Republicans who consistently win their votes. The only thing the people and the Republicans have fully in common is disdain for Democrats.
That is enough for Republicans to win races if not all hearts and minds on all things.
We’ll pick up this discussion later if the issues get qualified for the ballot and survive court challenges, which would put Sanders’ agenda on the chopping block in early November.