Gov. Sarah Sanders has been traveling the state for years, allowing the state’s taxpayers to fund her visits to cities here and there. She calls them Capital for a Day events. But now that we’re getting close to an election – her election – at least one set of eyebrows is being raised at the ethical lapse these trips represent.
Actually, forget the eyebrows thing; Rex Nelson is just plain old upset.
Nelson, a columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, has bounced around in politics for decades, once working for Sanders’ father, Gov. Mike Huckabee. Daddy Huckabee, now the U.S. ambassador to Israel and chief Israeli apologist, was himself far from being a paragon of ethical virtue – but he is apparently light-years ahead of his daughter.
Nelson said that when he went to work for Mike Huckabee in the mid-1990s, the capital for a day events were part of the game plan.
“I was in charge of communications and those visits were something we wanted to do,” he said. “Former Gov. Jim Guy Tucker really was the one who started them, going out about once a month.”
But when the calendar got near to an election in which Mike Huckabee was on the ballot, the trips stopped, Nelson said.
“We wouldn’t have dreamed of doing those during election season,” he said. “That would be using taxpayer dollars to campaign.”
And yet, Sanders has not only continued the trips; they’re now happening with more frequency than monthly. On Oct. 15, she is scheduled to trip No. 26 when she will be in El Dorado, for example. A week before, on Oct. 8, she was in Springdale. On Sept. 30, she went to Cabot, and 15 days before that, she was in Russellville. And on and on.
Nelson said Mike Huckabee used to make the trips three or four times a year.
“Now they’re on a weekly basis,” he said. “It’s the campaign season so it just outrages me that tax dollars are being spent this way. When she goes, the cabinet members have to go with her, so there’s travel expenses for them, and all that gets charged back to those departments. It’s just wrong.”
Nelson said Sanders could be – should be – paying for the trips out of her own campaign coffers, especially the trips that are in the shadow of the general election on Nov. 3 where she is up against Libertarian Colt Shelby and Democrat Fred Love.
“She’s got plenty of money and could have easily paid for these trips at this point,” Nelson said. (She has raised close to $8 million.)
He likened what Sanders is doing to what Donald Trump got recently flagged for – paying for national campaign ads on TV with tax dollars to the tune of more than $20 million and calling them public service announcements.
“It’s the same thing that’s happening in Arkansas that we are seeing at the national level with Trump,” Nelson said. “And no one seems to care. We have so normalized this behavior that people are not outraged when it happens. They’ve actually come to expect this type of outlandish behavior. What Sanders is doing is the very same thing as Trump.”
Sanders’ trips are prefaced, a day or two in advance, with a Whereas-heavy resolution in which various attributes of the town being visited are listed. Did you know Ken Hatfield was born in Helena? Yep. He’s in the Capital for a Day resolution for Helena-West Helena, which the governor visited on Sept. 3.
“NOW, THEREFORE, I, SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS, Governor of the State of Arkansas, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the laws of the State of Arkansas, do hereby name Helena-West Helena, Arkansas, our Capital for a Day on September 3, 2026,” the resolution states, “and invite our senior state government officials to join me in a visit to the city.”
We emailed the governor’s office asking for comment for this story and have not heard back. We also asked them how much these trips are costing taxpayers. We will update this story if and when they respond, although remember that Sanders spearheaded a successful effort to shield her travel expenses from the public, even though the public is footing the bill.
For more Sanders-bashing commentary, Nelson said he will be bringing it in Sunday’s Democrat-Gazette.