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The closest thing to a royal palace in Arkansas sits on eight acres in downtown Little Rock.
It is relatively new and the product of a once-embarrassing situation. An out-of-state delegation inquired about visiting the governor’s mansion, the true story goes, when their host had to explain that, even after more than a century of statehood, Arkansas did not have one.
Funds were subsequently raised, bricks were borrowed from a nearby school for the blind, and construction was completed in 1950. The three-story Georgian-Colonial features a grand staircase and grand pianos, a crystal chandelier from King Louis XVI’s France and battleship silverware from the USS Arkansas, a massive ballroom inside and manicured gardens outside.
While Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson will vacate the property in a year and the state searches for a new tenant, some insist there is one thing Arkansas won’t have in that regal mansion: a dynasty.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, press secretary to former President Trump and daughter of former Gov. Mike Huckabee, disagrees. With the endorsement of both men, she made her long-expected bid for governor official last week. Trump World now expects a coronation, an easy win in a conservative state to prove the populist president’s lasting influence on the Grand Old Party.
And Roby Brock sees a clear path to power for Sanders — on paper, anyway. “She has got some rock star status within the Republican Party of Arkansas from her time in the Trump White House,” said the prominent journalist and longtime state pollster. But while this is enough to make Sanders the early front-runner, Brock cautioned that Arkansas “will see some scorched earth politics” in the campaign.
As if on cue, two other Republicans candidates underscored this point.
“This is not about who has been on Fox News the most or whose daddy was governor or any of that — this is going to be about my vision for the future of Arkansas versus hers,” Arkansas Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin told RealClearPolitics.
“There is a big difference between answering questions behind a podium and making decisions behind a desk on behalf of millions of people,” added state Attorney General Leslie Rutledge. A close associate of the Huckabee family, Rutledge told RCP she delivered that same message personally “to my friend Sarah” before arguing that while the former White House press secretary “did a marvelous job of answering questions based on the president or someone else’s decision, I have experience as the general making decisions.”
The Sanders campaign did not respond to an interview request for this story. But the new candidate has telegraphed the kind of campaign she intends to run. “I took on the media, the radical left and their cancel culture, and I won,” she said in seven-minute video. The New York Times, with whom the spokeswoman regularly wrangled, reported it as evidence Sanders “planned to frame herself not as a policy-driven candidate but as a vessel for Republican rage.”
This wasn’t unexpected. Media critics never shied from questioning her credibility. And toward the end of her tenure, when the daily briefings were put on hiatus, many complained that Sanders was a spokesperson in name only, a press secretary who didn’t brief the press. But the final straw in her tenure may have come from Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
Sanders had explained away the firing of James Comey by telling reporters that “countless” rank-and-file federal agents had contacted the White House to express a lack of confidence in the FBI director. The press secretary, Mueller’s report revealed, later admitted there was no basis for that claim. Sanders never apologized. She never gave an inch to an aggressive press either. But when the cameras were off, the press and the press secretary were polite, even friendly.
When Sanders announced her departure from the administration, reporters rushed into her office to say their goodbyes and ask final questions. What was next? Would she consider running for Arkansas governor, the office her father held for nearly a decade? “I learned a long time ago,” she said, “never to rule anything out.”
Trump was less subtle. “She is a very special person with extraordinary talents, who has done an incredible job!” he wrote on Twitter later that day. “I hope she decides to run for Governor of Arkansas — she would be fantastic. Sarah, thank you for a job well done!”
Since then, Trump has been impeached. Twice. But even as the former president awaits his Senate trial on charges of inciting the Jan. 6 mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol, he remains the center of GOP gravity, a fact especially true in Arkansas. As a testament to the power of his endorsement, Sanders announced a $1 million fundraising haul four days after getting into the race. By comparison, Griffin and Rutledge, who have been running much longer, have raised a reported $1.8 million and $1 million, respectively.
“Trump is helpful to Sarah because he is still popular here in Arkansas,” Brock said in explaining the candidate’s biggest and most obvious advantage. But that, and money, will not make Sanders the governor. In the months to come, she must show a real understanding of local issues that are less polarizing and exciting than the drama that played out daily in the nation’s capital. “Today, that’s an Achilles heel for Sarah,” Brock said, adding, “You can’t just say, ‘Trump endorsed me, so you should vote for me.’”
The other candidates in the race didn’t hesitate to exploit that weakness.
“I don’t just visit troops, I am one,” Griffin told RCP. A colonel in the Army Reserve, the lieutenant governor is a conservative journeyman. He worked in the Bush White House as the right hand of Karl Rove, later decamping to serve as a U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas, and finally as a member of Congress for two terms before returning to state politics.
“There’s gonna be lots to talk about substantive policy ideas,” he said in previewing his race. “And that’s what the people of Arkansas deserve because that and not celebrity is what’s going to propel this state forward, so that we can grow jobs and educate our children.”
Rutledge has her own impressive resume. She won the race for attorney general six years ago to become not only the first woman in that position but also the first Republican AG in Arkansas history. It is a responsibility, she says, that comes with “the largest stamp of any constitutional office.” She sued the Obama administration. She threatened to sue Trump too if he didn’t follow through on his promise to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy.
Unprompted, the attorney general brought up the most serious part of her job. The state supply of midazolam, one of the drugs Arkansas uses in its lethal injection cocktail for capital punishment, was set to expire at the end of April 2017. To beat that deadline, the governor scheduled executions to take place in just 11 days. “My office was responsible for handling all of the litigation on those cases, and we worked very closely with the governor, and we carried out four of those eight executions,” Rutledge told RCP.
“It’s not a decision that comes up very often but when it does, having a governor who understands that and has worked on those issues, I believe is important,” she said, calling executions “one of the most, if not the most, serious issues a governor will face.”
Voters have plenty of time to sort through her resume and those of the other candidates ahead of the May primary. Almost everyone agrees that the Republican race will be a winner-take-all contest. This includes Jay Barth, who teaches politics at Hendrix College and who expects the contest to mirror the last GOP presidential primary. The political geography, he predicted, could give Sanders a boost as voters in rural areas have swung Republican, meaning that “a candidate who has the ability to use media effectively” to reach them rather than just relying on traditionally conservative suburbs “has got an advantage.”
The political science professor, who went to college with Griffin and plays tennis with Rutledge, says that “if I had to kind of correlate to that presidential cycle, I think Sanders is clearly the Trump candidate, Griffin is clearly the Rubio candidate, and Rutledge is probably the closest thing to a Cruz candidate.” Then again, he said, the three will probably quarrel over those labels.
All three of them know each other well, having worked together — and been rivals — throughout their careers. The politicians not named Sanders also know that the former press secretary is running as proof of concept for Trump allies harboring their own ambitions. That doesn’t give them pause.
“It is going to be a big fight,” Brock predicted. “I would not say it’s a coronation — at this point.”
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