DHS attorney in race for seat on high court

David Sterling, the top attorney at the state Department of Human Services, officially opened his campaign for the Arkansas Supreme Court on Thursday.

In a news release, Sterling described himself as a “originalist.”

“I will be faithful to the original intent of the Founding Fathers who drafted our Constitution,” Sterling said in the release. “It is never right for a court to rewrite or amend the Constitution; that power belongs to the people, not the courts.”

Sterling said a couple of weeks ago that he would run for the only open seat on the high court, Position 2. That same day incumbent Justice Courtney Goodson announced her plans to run for re-election.

In his release, Sterling did not mention Goodson or criticize any of the opinions she handed down in her first eightyear term on the court.

Judicial candidates are officially nonpartisan and often avoid taking stances on political issues.

Sterling is a Republican, having run unsuccessfully against Leslie Rutledge for the party’s nomination for attorney general in 2014. In 2015, he was appointed by Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson to serve as chief counsel at the Department of Human Services.

The department has the largest legal department of any state agency, with about 75 attorneys, according to Sterling’s release.

Goodson ran for the chief justice position on the high court in 2016, losing to then-Circuit Judge Dan Kemp in a race that saw Kemp’s campaign bolstered by out-of-state donations from groups that did not disclose their donors.

Neither Goodson nor Sterling has filed initial campaign-finance reports with the secretary of state’s office.

Sterling is originally from Texarkana and now lives in Little Rock. Between 1997 and 1998, he served as the assistant city manager of Hope.

Supreme Court justices are elected statewide and are paid $169,830 a year.