Before we hop in to Arkansas, I want to share an exciting collaboration! A couple weeks back, I sat for a short interview with Brandon Pytel, writer of the climate-focused newsletter Planet Days. We chatted about Ohio’s political environment in the wake of the recent train derailment in East Palestine and he did a fantastic job of using my thoughts to show how recent Republican dominance has bolstered energy companies at the expense of environmental policy.

Click the button below to give it a read and subscribe to Planet Days while you’re at it!

Read the interview HERE!

Topline Takeaways

• Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R), daughter of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, made state history as Arkansas’s first female governor.

• The Arkansas Republican party holds extreme views on abortion, yet nearly half of the state’s counties are considered maternity care deserts and the state has a pregnancy-related maternal mortality rate nearly double that of the national average.

Post-Roe Arkansas

During her gubernatorial campaign Sarah Huckabee Sanders shared extreme views on abortion. She professed that she would “push for the strongest pro-life legislation that we can possibly have in our state,” stating that she would not support exceptions in case of rape or incest. The Arkansas legislature recently followed her lead as a bill to allow abortions in cases of sexual assault of a minor or incest failed to pass the lower chamber’s Judiciary committee, meaning this issue won’t even make it to Sanders’s desk.

A Monument to the Unborn?

Instead of preparing the state’s medical system for these forced births, Sanders has been preoccupied with erecting a monument to the unborn. As a newly elected governor, one of her first actions was signing a bill that allows for a monument listing the number of abortions committed in Arkansas on the grounds of the state capitol. This feels especially shortsighted as Arkansas has a pregnancy-related maternal mortality rate nearly double the national average. The state’s birthing centers are also few and far between: almost half of Arkansas’s counties have no birthing centers nor hospitals with obstetric (birthing) care, making them maternity care deserts.

So to recap: Arkansas’s government supports forced births yet fails to provide the necessary infrastructure for these births to occur safely. How the hell did we get here? The answer lies in Arkansas’s looooooooong history of one-party rule.

Single-Party State

Arkansas has been dominated by a single political party throughout most of its state history. During the 1900s, Republicans never held a majority in either of the state’s legislative chambers and only held the governorship for roughly 10 years of the 20th century. There were several years where Democrats literally held all of the seats in either chambers of the Arkansas legislature, including during Bill Clinton’s first term as governor. Then at the turn of the millennium, conservative Democrats switched parties en masse. In the year 2000, the Democratic party held super-majorities in both the State House and the State Senate. Thirteen years later, it was Republicans who held a supermajority in the State Senate and a majority in the State House. Democrats have continued to lose ground ever since: of the state’s 135 legislature seats Democrats now only hold 24.

During the turnover period in the early 21st century, political researchers found that politicians aligned more closely with the views of Arkansas’s citizens due to increased competition. But when Republicans’ consistent wins cemented the party’s dominance, researchers found that this lowered competitive environment led to less adherence to public opinion.

“Public policy is incongruent with public opinion under Republican years of single-party dominance, which occurs during a low competitive environment. This indicates that single party dominance flourishes when it has an electoral advantage, giving parties less incentive to adhere to public interests and greater political room to pass more extreme policies that do not necessarily align with what the public may want.”

We can clearly see this today with the current government’s approach to abortion. Circling back to the aforementioned failed abortion bill: a whopping 73% of Arkansans disagree with the legislature and support making abortions illegal if the pregnancy was caused by rape or incest. Yet instead of addressing one of the most important issues to Arkansas’ voters, the legislature has been preoccupied with criminalizing gender-affirming care and drag shows.

Leftover Links

• Former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson has announced that he is running for president in 2024.

• Arkansas legislators produced a congressional map that’s being sued for racial gerrymandering as it split the state’s concentrated Black community across several districts.