MAGA Arkansas governor trying to get around term limits with novel legal 'workaround'

Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a former press secretary to President Donald Trump, is working with two of her judicial appointees to get around the Arkansas Constitution's term limits.

How? Instead of running for reelection to their own seats, they are running for each other's seats.

In doing so Sanders and the two judges, Nick Bronni and Cody Hiland, are undermining the “constitutional goal” behind that provision in the first place, Bolts Magazine reports.

The provision “is certainly reflective of the populist sentiments found in the Constitution of 1874 that wanted to limit gubernatorial power” Jay Barth, Hendrix College professor emeritus, told Bolts Magazine. The law was created as "a device to lessen the power of the governor" and the Sanders/Bronni/Hiland approach amounts to "something of a workaround.”

By contrast University of Arkansas law professor Joshua Silverstein, though admitting that “obviously they're running for each other's seat because they can't run for their own seats,” dismissed this fact as a “triviality.”

"You're not going to get politicians, judicial or otherwise, to not take advantage of an opportunity to stay in office,” Silverstein said. “It's not a big deal."

Bronni and Hiland are able to get away with seeking other’s seats while seeming to pursue “reelection” because, in February, the Arkansas legislature passed a bill called HB1223 that allows interim judges to brandish their new title on the ballot even when technically they are supposed to be facing voters “for the first time” for that office.

"I just don't think it was really solving a problem, and it looked like it was more maybe doing favors for people,” Representative Richard Womack, one of two Arkansas Republican legislators to vote against HB1223, told Bolt Magazine. "That was my gut reaction looking at it: This just looks somewhat likely anyway that we're trying to help certain people on the ballot."

This is not the first time that Sanders has been criticized for her seemingly casual approach to the law. In September Sanders received pushback from her own party when she scheduled a special election to fill a state senate seat in November instead of June. Arkansas law requires a governor to schedule special elections within 150 days after a legislative seat becomes vacant unless it is “impractical or unduly burdensome” to do so. In 2024 Sanders was also criticized when an audit revealed “potential legal violations” because she spent $19,000 on a lectern.