Why Arkansas is a check case for a Post-Trump Republican Party

Written by Jonathan Martin
For many years, Arkansas punched above its weight in politics and enterprise.
In the Nineties, it was house to the president and the world’s wealthiest household. In the 2000s, three onetime Arkansans ran for president. A decade later, the state claimed its sixth firm on the Fortune 500 checklist.
But Arkansas could also be getting into its most consequential interval but, as a check case for the way forward for the Republican Party.
Having undergone a lightning-quick transformation within the final decade from Democratic dominance to Republican rule, how carefully the state clings to former President Donald Trump and his model of politics will supply insights concerning the celebration he nonetheless dominates.
Arkansas represents the complete spectrum of at this time’s GOP.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) at a listening to on Capitol Hill in Washington, March 25, 2021. (The New York Times/File)
There are Trump devotees absolutely behind his false claims of a stolen election and his model of grievance-oriented politics. That faction is now led by former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the daughter of Mike Huckabee, the state’s onetime governor. More ideological, and fewer Trump-centric, conservatives embrace Sen. Tom Cotton.
And then there are pre-Trump Republicans, like Gov. Asa Hutchinson, hoping towards hope the second will go they usually can return the celebration to its Reaganite roots. Finally, some Republicans are so appalled by Trumpism, they’ve left or are contemplating leaving the celebration.
Perhaps most vital, every of those factions are bunched collectively in a state powered by a handful of companies which might be more and more uneasy with the culture-war politics that outline Trump Republicanism. In a gathering of Walmart’s Arkansas-based executives final month, quite a few officers cited state measures limiting transgender rights to precise concern about how such payments might hamper their skill to recruit a various workforce, based on a enterprise chief accustomed to the dialogue.
“They’ve got to recruit people to this state, and this makes it harder for them,” mentioned Hutchinson, alluding to transgender measures that he opposed on this yr’s legislative session. “And there’s many in the base of the party that just don’t care,” he mentioned. “They would rather fight the cultural war and pay the price in terms of growth.”
In the subsequent yr and a half, Sanders will road-test Trumpism in state politics as she runs for governor in a state the previous president carried by 27 factors final yr. She will initially face a longtime good friend and former aide to her father, the state’s Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, who unsuccessfully pleaded with Trump to not endorse Sanders.
Then, if Sanders prevails, she might immediate a long-shot problem within the common election from a Republican-turned-independent who left the celebration in disgust with Trump, and simply occurs to be Hutchinson’s nephew.
At the identical time, Cotton and Hutchinson shall be circling each other, maybe in Iowa as typically as in Arkansas, as they each eye 2024 presidential bids with very totally different bets about the way forward for the celebration.
“There will be a lot of complicated relationships,” state Sen. Jonathan Dismang, an influential lawmaker, mentioned with most delicacy.
For many veterans of Arkansas politics, the intra-Republican competitors is a full-circle second, reflecting the state’s speedy shift from an overwhelmingly Democratic state to an overwhelmingly Republican one. This interval can also be eerily acquainted to an earlier period when it was Democrats like then-Gov. Bill Clinton and former Sens. Dale Bumpers and David Pryor who had been vying for supremacy. What’s totally different about at this time is how a lot politics in a small, principally rural state on the intersection of the Deep South, Midwest and Southwest is formed by a determine who has virtually actually by no means let the phrase “Woo Pig Sooie” slip from his lips.
“Arkansas Republicanism is defined by President Trump right now,” mentioned Trent Garner, a south Arkansas state lawmaker who defeated one of many remaining rural white Democrats when Trump was first elected.
If there was any doubt about that after Trump’s romp within the state final yr, it was erased in February when Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin abruptly pulled out of the 2022 governor’s race. A longtime political operative and former House member, Griffin had been accumulating chits for what many right here assumed was an inevitable run for the state’s prime job after returning house from Congress in 2014 to function lieutenant governor.
Then Sanders, who has by no means served in elective workplace, made clear she would run for governor, and Trump rapidly endorsed his former spokeswoman.
The mixture of her connection to Trump, her father’s legacy and her personal movie star from being a Fox News common made her seemingly unbeatable, based on a personal survey Griffin took, Republicans accustomed to the findings mentioned.
Now operating for lawyer common, Griffin, an Army Reserve colonel, sought to place one of the best face on his climb-down. “If bio and resume was key to politics, then George H.W. Bush would’ve been reelected, Bob Dole would’ve won and John McCain would’ve won,” he mentioned.
Hutchinson put a finer level on how Sanders had derailed Griffin. “It shows you the power of media and personality,” he mentioned.
Sanders does nonetheless have competitors for governor, notably from Rutledge, a conservative who, within the friends-and-neighbors world of Arkansas politics, served as Huckabee’s common counsel as governor and in the identical capability when he ran for president in 2008.
“She’s never made decisions,” Rutledge mentioned of Sanders. “It’s a big difference answering questions behind a podium versus making decisions behind a desk.”
She insisted main voters would finally worth her expertise, and dismissed state Capitol hypothesis that she would finally comply with Griffin to the exits, maybe to run for lieutenant governor or the state Supreme Court.
Asked about Rutledge’s criticism, Sanders ignored her rival and trumpeted her personal record-setting early fundraising. “I take nothing for granted,” she mentioned through textual content message.
Should Sanders emerge because the Republican standard-bearer, she might face a third-party opponent from properly exterior the pro-Trump orbit. State Sen. Jim Hendren, who left the GOP after the Jan. 6 riot, and Davy Carter, a former state House speaker, are each contemplating bids.
In separate interviews, they mentioned they might not compete with each other in the identical race. “I’m convinced that even in Arkansas, Trump and Trumpism is a slow-sinking ship,” mentioned Carter, who as speaker helped push by Medicaid growth. He mentioned {that a} profitable problem to Trumpism wouldn’t occur until liberals, moderates and anti-Trump Republicans “organize in one lane.”
Asked who he’d finally again within the governor’s race, Hutchinson mentioned, “I expect to support the Republican nominee.”
But he acknowledged speaking extensively together with his nephew, Hendren, saying they share “the same frustrations” concerning the celebration, besides that Hutchinson is decided to struggle from inside the tent. Offering some barely veiled recommendation for Sanders, he mentioned: “Leadership is about bringing people along and not giving in to a lie.”
The governor, and most observers, are deeply skeptical that an impartial might win statewide. Indeed, greater than a yr and a half earlier than Sanders would even take workplace, many insiders have moved on to discussing what kind of governor she could be.
Would she repurpose Trump’s media-bashing and grievance-oriented politics to remain within the nationwide headlines, and maybe propel a presidential run of her personal, or would she mirror her father’s extra pragmatic strategy to the workplace? While he’s now identified for his personal Fox News and social media profile, Huckabee ruled within the political heart, even incurring the wrath of the far proper, whom he labeled “Shiite conservatives.”
“I think she’s going to be very eager to prove that she’s a competent executive who cares about the state,” mentioned John Burris, a state legislator-turned-lobbyist.
While shunning the state media and declining an interview for this story, Sanders has quietly reached out to state Republican lawmakers to debate state coverage and convey her need to work with them, based on Garner.
Few within the state shall be watching as carefully because the enterprise titans at corporations like Walmart, Tyson Foods and J.B. Hunt, the transportation and logistics large, that are headquartered within the northwest nook of the state. Once the one Republican area of Arkansas — even Bill Clinton couldn’t win a House seat there within the aftermath of Watergate — it’s now the state’s financial engine.
The space is booming, will achieve a few half-dozen new state legislative seats in redistricting, and is turning into extra numerous. As the native enterprise alliance, the Northwest Arkansas Council, notes, from 1990 and 2019, the nonwhite inhabitants of the area grew from lower than 5% to over 28%.
To lure extra transplants, the enterprise giants have showered the area with cash, serving to develop native points of interest just like the Crystal Bridges artwork museum, which was based by Alice Walton, daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton.
But this transformation is coming into battle with the state’s shift proper.
At the peak of the transgender laws debate this spring, Tom Walton, a grandson of Sam Walton, issued an announcement decrying “policy targeting LGBTQ people in Arkansas” and spoke on to what he noticed because the risk offered. “This trend is harmful and sends the wrong message to those willing to invest in or visit our state.”
Hendren, who represents a swath of the area within the state Senate, mentioned the enterprise group must do much more to sluggish Arkansas’ dash proper.
“Continuing to do the same thing is going to lead to the same results,” he mentioned, dismissing the businesses’ technique of sending the utmost allowable donations to candidates “and thinking that’s going buy you any loyalty.”
As for the Arkansans eying 2024, neither is keen to expound on their ambitions earlier than the midterm elections. But each try to carve out house for his or her potential bids.

Cotton is fast to leap on points he is aware of will animate core Republicans — from introducing laws to handle anti-Semitic hate crimes, to lambasting what he calls “woke corporations” — whereas Hutchinson has develop into a frequent presence on the nationwide tv circuit.

“I don’t want to sit back idly and let the division grow greater and let our party just become more angry,” Hutchinson mentioned.