The turning point

If you’re a student of Arkansas political history, mark down the dates of Sept. 11-13. They might represent the first time Arkansas legislators realized that the empress has no clothes.

Those were the first three days of a special legislative session called by Gov. Sarah Sanders with the intent of destroying the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act, legislation that was the pride of Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller’s administration in the late 1960s; legislation that has survived countless attempts to weaken it in the decades since it was signed into law.

This may go down as the week legislators said “enough” to our young, inexperienced governor, who has attempted to govern through intimidation since taking office in January. “We’ll find an opponent to run against you in the Republican primary. We’ll stop the flow of state funds to your district for your most treasured programs.” Those were the messages delivered by the governor’s office during the first months of 2023. They’re the taunts of a playground bully. Grown men and women will only allow themselves to be bullied for so long.

This might mark a turning point, a week when legislators said enough of the threats, enough of the bullying, enough of the self-serving agenda that has little to do with improving Arkansas and everything to do with getting the governor a live interview on Fox News. It might have been the week when conservatives and Republicans realized that the governor and those with whom she has surrounded herself are neither conservatives nor Republicans. They’re narcissists and Trumpists.

It might be the week when the legislative branch grew a spine and stopped letting itself be pushed around by out-of-state political apparatchiks in the governor’s office. Is it too much to hope that we’re seeing the return of real Republicans, people who will work with others to advance an Arkansas policy agenda rather than a national political agenda?

It has been a dismal year for the new administration. Even though Sanders and her aides knew for months that they would win the 2022 election (the result was virtually pre-ordained from the day she announced she was running), they came into the legislative session woefully unprepared. With no direction from the governor’s office, attention-starved clowns like Sen. Dan Sullivan of Jonesboro, the man known around the state Capitol as Book Ban Dan, were able to run wild for seven weeks with their culture war.

Once the governor finally did release her much ballyhooed education reform bill, it was nothing more than a national template designed by out-of-state groups rather than an Arkansas-specific bill with input from teachers and administrators. A fawning Legislature passed it anyway. That lack of legislative oversight gave the governor the impression that she could destroy FOIA without legislative pushback. She was wrong.

Even during his disastrous first term in 197980, Bill Clinton didn’t make enemies as quickly as this governor is making them. She has angered teachers and administrators, using her Trump training to brand anyone who dares question her education bill as “extremists.” This is Arkansas, a state of only 3 million people. These “extremists” are people we see in the grocery store, sit next to in church and visit with in the front yard.

She next made enemies of those in the state’s tourism community by firing Arkansas icon Mike Mills as director of the state Department of Parks, Heritage and Tourism. That’s a large group of influential people given that tourism is the second-largest sector of the Arkansas economy, behind only agriculture. Sanders didn’t even have the guts to fire Mills in person. She let one of those imports from outside the state do that.

I’ve talked to dozens of people in state government. The best anyone can determine is that Mills was told to hit the road because the governor didn’t think he would kowtow sufficiently to her husband Bryan, who apparently has a lot of time on his hands these days and wants to call the shots at Parks, Heritage & Tourism and the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. Fortunately, AGFC is constitutionally independent and thus free from the whims of the governor’s office. The first gentleman could best serve our state by getting a real job in the private sector so he doesn’t have time to meddle.

Now Sanders has angered those who believe in government transparency. During last month’s legislative session, we saw a coalition from the right and left come together to oppose her gutting of FOIA. I’m certain that same coalition will support former state Rep. Nate Bell’s effort to have Arkansas voters make FOIA an amendment to the Arkansas Constitution. That’s the only way to protect it from the governor.

I worked in the Arkansas governor’s office for almost a decade. One of the things I did was teach FOIA classes to members of the governor’s cabinet and other state officials. I can’t remember a single example of FOIA compromising security. Let’s at least be honest and call last month’s special session what it was: an attempt to hide government spending from Arkansas taxpayers. Where I come from, real Republicans support less government spending. Those in the Trump cult always believe in more spending.

Just think of the tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars the governor wasted by calling a special session when there was no emergency. Even that pales in comparison to the hundreds of thousands of dollars she wasted (and the lives she upended) by sending the Arkansas National Guard on a meaningless mission to the Texas-Mexico border just so she get that coveted slot on Fox News. I join legislators in saying “enough.”

The thing that strikes me most about this governor’s office is the lack of joy. When I worked there, the office was filled with young people excited about the opportunity to make Arkansas better. Those former colleagues remain friends. In state government these days, there’s a fear of presenting fresh ideas and questioning bad policies. State employees know they might get the Mike Mills treatment. That’s no way to have to work. I feel sorry for these dedicated public servants.

Notice how there’s no wit, no humor, no smiles. There’s only the robotic regurgitation of terms like Radical Left (always capitalized in the Trumpian world) when someone disagrees with an edict from the governor’s office. Is there no one in state government who can do better than that on social media? This is a governor who refuses to answer questions after most public events and prefers to communicate through X (formerly Twitter). She might wish to visit with Clinton to see how a refusal to listen to everyday Arkansans in a first term worked out for him.

What about our Legislature? It’s still composed of four groups. There are the Democrats. There aren’t enough to matter. There are the real Republicans, fiscal conservatives who believe in efficient government. There aren’t enough of them to matter, either.

There are the Know Nothings, those loud, pious culture warriors who seek to nationalize Arkansas politics, regardless of what it means for the lives of Arkansans. Like the governor, their efforts aren’t original. The bills are drawn up by out-of-state organizations. The ranks of the Know Nothings include Sanders shills such as Bart Hester in the Senate and David Ray in the House, who push their leader’s bad ideas, think they’re smarter than everybody else and show contempt for Arkansans who come to the Capitol to testify.

The largest group remains the Cowards, men and women who know better but refuse to stand up to the governor and Know Nothings. For the Cowards, getting re-elected is more important than their integrity. But now that they see that the empress has no clothes, perhaps they’ll meet the next threat with these words: “Bring it on, governor.”

Maybe, just maybe, we’ll see them transform from Cowards into real Republicans, just as the caterpillar transforms into a beautiful butterfly. We can dream, can’t we?