Arkansas Politics: Tax Cuts, LEARNS Vouchers, and 2026 Race

Arkansas politics in 2026 is defined by a Republican supermajority pushing an aggressive conservative agenda under Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who is heavily favored to win a second term in November against Democratic state Sen. Fred Love. The dominant fights right now are over another round of income tax cuts, a fast-growing school voucher program, a near-total abortion ban being challenged in state court, new Medicaid work requirements set to take effect in January 2027, and a stalled $825 million prison project that has split Sanders from her own party in the state Senate.

How Arkansas Became a One-Party Republican State

Arkansas was a Democratic stronghold for more than a century after Reconstruction, and a generation of progressive Democrats — Dale Bumpers, David Pryor, and Bill Clinton — kept the state blue through the early 1990s. At least one of the three appeared on the ballot every election cycle from 1970 to 1994.¹

The turn came in stages. Term limits approved in 1992 opened long-held Democratic seats. A 1995 federal court ruling forced the state to fund joint primaries, ending a system in which Democrats ran their own taxpayer-funded contests.¹ Mike Huckabee’s move to the governorship in 1996, after Democratic Governor Jim Guy Tucker’s conviction, gave Republicans a decade to build a bench through board and commission appointments.²

The collapse came between 2010 and 2014, driven by backlash against President Obama and the Affordable Care Act. By 2014, Republicans held every statewide constitutional office, all four U.S. House seats, and legislative majorities for the first time since Reconstruction. They achieved a state House supermajority by 2016 and expanded it in 2022. Democratic influence today is largely confined to Little Rock, Fayetteville, and parts of the Arkansas Delta. For the 2026 cycle, no Democrat filed for lieutenant governor, attorney general, treasurer, auditor, or land commissioner.²

The 2026 Governor’s Race

Sanders ran unopposed for the Republican nomination in the March 2026 primary. State Sen. Fred Love won the Democratic primary over Supha Xayprasith-Mays, and Libertarian Colt Shelby is also on the November ballot.³

The financial gap is severe. As of January 2026, Sanders had more than $4.1 million on hand compared with roughly $4,400 for Love.³ Cook Political Report rates the race “Solid R” with a partisan voting index of R+15.⁴

Love’s platform centers on eliminating the state’s school voucher program, investing in literacy and mental health, raising rural teacher pay, providing free school lunches, and expanding early childhood education. At a June 26 debate, he pledged to halt the voucher program by executive order on his first day in office.⁵ Sanders is running on her first-term record of tax cuts and the LEARNS Act.³

U.S. Senate and Congressional Delegation

Sen. Tom Cotton is heavily favored for a third term. He won his March 2026 primary with about 82% of the vote over Micah Ashby and Jeb Little. His Democratic opponent, Hallie Shoffner, won her primary with roughly 81% and reported raising more than $1 million since launching in July 2025, with $500,000 on hand as of February 2026. Cotton reported more than $9.6 million available.⁶

The state’s entire congressional delegation is Republican: Sens. Cotton and John Boozman, plus Reps. Rick Crawford, French Hill, Steve Womack, and Bruce Westerman.⁷

Another Round of Income Tax Cuts

Sanders called a special session in May 2026 — her fourth round of tax reductions — and signed HB1001 and SB1 into law on May 6.⁸ The law drops the top individual income tax rate from 3.9% to 3.7%, retroactive to January 1, 2026, and lowers the top corporate rate from 4.3% to 4.1%, effective January 1, 2027. The cuts affect roughly 1.1 million individual taxpayers and are projected to reduce general revenue by $191.8 million in fiscal year 2027 and $144.8 million in fiscal year 2028.⁹

Sponsors Sen. Jonathan Dismang and Rep. Les Eaves argued the state’s recurring surpluses justify returning money to taxpayers. The Arkansas Appleseed Legal Justice Center, faith leaders, and the Arkansas Coalition of Marshallese countered that the cuts come at the expense of healthcare, education, and nutrition assistance while the state budgets more than $300 million for school vouchers in fiscal year 2027.¹⁰

Sanders’s broader fiscal session budget proposed nearly $6.7 billion in state spending, a 3% increase. Major line items include $309 million for the voucher program, $53.4 million for a state employee pay plan focused on corrections officers and troopers, and a recommended $100 million transfer to a Medicaid Sustainability Fund.¹¹

LEARNS Act and the Voucher Fight

The Arkansas LEARNS Act, signed March 8, 2023, overhauled the state’s education system. It created the Education Freedom Account program — vouchers that pay for private school tuition, homeschool curriculum, tutoring, and educational therapy — and raised teacher salaries by at least $2,000 across the board. For the 2024–2025 school year, over 4,200 educators received merit pay of up to $10,000 through a new incentive fund.¹²

Implementation has been slow. As of August 2025, the Arkansas Department of Education was still finalizing rules more than two years after passage. Over 90 rules required writing or revision, and only 35% of students were reading at grade level ahead of a new third-grade literacy retention requirement that took effect in fall 2025. Rules banning “indoctrination” in schools, previously frozen by litigation, were being drafted after a July 2025 federal appeals panel ruling upheld the state’s authority to dictate curriculum.¹³

Voucher funding jumped from roughly $187 million to over $309 million for the current school year, with an additional $70 million from the surplus to cover anticipated growth.¹¹ One proposed ballot measure would require private schools receiving voucher funds to meet the same standards as public schools.¹⁴

The Abortion Ban and Pending Lawsuit

Arkansas has enforced a near-total abortion ban since June 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and a pre-existing trigger law took effect. The only exception is to save the life of the pregnant person, and performing an abortion is a felony carrying up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $100,000.¹⁵

In January 2026, a group of women and an obstetrician-gynecologist sued in Pulaski County Circuit Court, arguing the ban violates the Arkansas Constitution’s guarantees of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and is unconstitutionally vague on when doctors can intervene in obstetrical emergencies. Defendants include Sanders, Attorney General Tim Griffin, the Arkansas State Medical Board, and several prosecuting attorneys.¹⁶

The case had a turbulent path early on. On April 30, 2026, Pulaski County Circuit Judge Cara Connors dismissed it under Act 975, a 2025 law that tried to funnel constitutional challenges away from circuit courts. The same day, the Arkansas Supreme Court unanimously struck down Act 975. Judge Connors revived the case in May 2026.¹⁵

As of mid-June 2026, the active dispute is over discovery. Plaintiffs want to depose Sanders about communications between her office and the family of lead plaintiff Emily Waldorf, and about internal discussions of the ban. The state filed an emergency motion to block the deposition, citing sovereign immunity and arguing discovery should wait until a pending motion to dismiss is resolved. The court had not ruled at last report.¹⁷

In 2024, the Arkansas Supreme Court blocked a proposed constitutional amendment to expand abortion access from reaching the ballot by disqualifying over 14,000 voter signatures. According to the Guttmacher Institute, about 2,600 Arkansans traveled out of state for abortion care in 2024.¹⁶

Gender-Affirming Care Ban Now Enforceable

Arkansas was the first state to ban gender-affirming medical care for minors when it passed the SAFE Act (Act 626) in 2021, prohibiting puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical procedures for transgender youth. A federal district court blocked the law before it took effect and, after trial, ruled it unconstitutional on First and Fourteenth Amendment grounds.¹⁸

The injunction held for four years, until the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2025 decision in United States v. Skrmetti upheld a similar Tennessee law. Relying on that precedent, the Eighth Circuit, sitting en banc, reversed the lower court on August 12, 2025, in an 8-2 ruling. The court held the SAFE Act classifies based on age and medical procedure rather than sex, survives rational basis review, and that parental rights to direct medical care are not absolute.¹⁹ The case closed in December 2025 and the ban is now enforceable.²⁰

Lawmakers have layered on additional liability: a 2023 law allows 15-year malpractice suits against providers of gender-affirming care for minors, and a 2025 amendment extended that liability to mental health professionals.²⁰

Medicaid Work Requirements Return in 2027

Arkansas’s Medicaid expansion program, ARHOME, covers over 220,000 low-income adults aged 19 to 64 by using Medicaid funds to purchase private insurance through Blue Cross Blue Shield or Ambetter.²¹²² The state is preparing to reintroduce work requirements, a policy it attempted in 2018, when over 18,000 Arkansans lost coverage before federal courts shut the program down.²³

This time the mandate is federal, from legislation President Trump signed in 2025. Starting January 2027, most non-exempt ARHOME enrollees must document 80 hours per month of work, schooling, or volunteering to keep coverage. Exemptions include pregnant individuals, disabled veterans, parents of children under 13, and people in substance use treatment programs.²³

The state Department of Human Services launched a soft rollout in July 2026 to test automated employment verification. No one will lose coverage during this phase, but critics warn that sending compliance notices before final federal rules are issued could confuse beneficiaries about their real status.²¹

The Franklin County Prison Stalemate

A proposal to build a 3,000-bed prison on 815 acres of farmland in Franklin County, which would be the state’s largest correctional facility, has become one of the most contentious infrastructure fights in recent state history. The state purchased the site near Charleston in October 2024 for $2.9 million, but the project is effectively stalled. The Arkansas Senate blocked a $750 million appropriation five times during the 2025 session, and the estimated cost had risen to $825 million by March 2025, more than double an initial projection of roughly $405 million.²⁴

Sanders did not include new funding for the prison in her fiscal year 2027 budget. She instead proposed redirecting $75 million previously set aside for the project toward recidivism reduction and expanding bed space at existing facilities.²⁴ Internal emails from the project’s architect suggest doubt that construction will ever restart.²⁵ Grassroots opposition, led by groups like “Gravel and Grit” and animated by a November 2024 town hall that drew more than 1,800 residents, has also raised concerns about water infrastructure (the site’s wells are likely insufficient, and nearby cities have refused to supply water) and staffing shortages at existing prisons.²⁶

Transparency, the Lectern Audit, and Ballot Fights

Government transparency has been a recurring flashpoint under Sanders. In September 2023, she pushed to modify the state’s Freedom of Information Act during a special session, ostensibly to exempt security records. The bill initially included far broader exemptions for the “deliberative process” and attorney-client privilege that drew bipartisan backlash and were stripped out.²⁷

That fight spawned Arkansas Citizens for Transparency, which has been working to place a constitutional amendment on the ballot to enshrine FOIA protections, impose minimum $1,000 personal fines on officials who knowingly withhold records, and require a two-thirds legislative vote plus a public referendum to weaken transparency laws.²⁷

Separately, a $19,029 lectern purchased by the governor’s office in June 2023 became a sustained embarrassment. An Arkansas Legislative Audit report released in April 2024 identified seven areas of potential noncompliance with state law. Auditors found the item was paid for before delivery, was misclassified as an operating expense instead of a capital asset, and that a bill of lading was shredded (staff called it inadvertent). Two of three copies of the vendor invoice contained handwritten notations reading “to be reimbursed,” added after a FOIA request was filed, which auditors said potentially constituted altering a public record.²⁸ Auditors could not determine whether the price was reasonable because neither the governor’s office nor the vendors cooperated with inquiries; similar non-customized lecterns were noted to retail for about $7,000.²⁹ Sanders called the audit “deeply flawed” and a “waste of taxpayer resources.”

Election Law Changes

The 2025 session produced a wave of changes to election procedures. The primary election was moved to the first Tuesday after the first Monday in March, ranked-choice voting was prohibited, write-in candidates were formally eliminated, and early voting sites outside the county seat now require approval from the County Board of Election Commissioners for each election.³⁰

The legislature also tightened the ballot initiative process. Petition canvassers must be Arkansas residents, signers must read the ballot title in the canvasser’s presence, and ballot titles must meet a specified reading level.³⁰ For the 2026 cycle, three citizen-led constitutional amendment campaigns were racing to collect 90,704 signatures by July 3, 2026: one to protect the ballot initiative process itself from legislative interference, one to establish the initiative and referendum as a “fundamental right,” and one focused on early childhood education and voucher accountability.¹⁴ A legislatively referred amendment to explicitly limit voting to U.S. citizens in state and local elections will also appear on the November ballot.³¹

The Supreme Court’s Act 975 Ruling

One of the most consequential legal developments of 2026 concerned not a single policy but where policy can be challenged. Republican lawmakers had grown frustrated that Pulaski County circuit judges, in a relatively liberal capital jurisdiction, repeatedly struck down state laws. In 2025, the legislature passed Act 975, which stripped circuit courts of authority to hear facial constitutional challenges and gave that jurisdiction to the Court of Appeals.³²

On April 30, 2026, the Arkansas Supreme Court unanimously struck the law down. Writing for the court, Justice Cody Hiland held that Amendment 80 of the state constitution fixed circuit courts as the trial courts of original jurisdiction in 2000, leaving “limited room for the General Assembly to tinker with that configuration.” The opinion continued: “The General Assembly cannot do indirectly, by modifying our procedural rules, what it cannot do directly. Act 975 rests on that impermissible premise.”³³ The ruling restored the status quo and directly revived the abortion ban lawsuit that had been dismissed under Act 975 the same day.¹⁵

1
University of Akron. State of the Parties – Arkansas Political Realignment
2
Encyclopedia of Arkansas. Democratic Party
3
Arkansas Advocate. Love Wins Democratic Nomination for Arkansas Governor
4
Cook Political Report. Arkansas Governor Race
5
UALR Public Radio. Arkansas Politics
6
Arkansas Advocate. Shoffner, Cotton Win Primaries for U.S. Senate Seat in Arkansas
7
GovTrack. Members of Congress from Arkansas
8
Governor of Arkansas. Governor’s Newsroom
9
Arkansas House of Representatives. Tax Cuts Passed in Special Session
10
Arkansas Advocate. Tax Cut Plan Sails Through Arkansas Legislative Committees as Special Session Begins
11
Arkansas Advocate. Live Coverage – 2026 Fiscal Session
12
Arkansas Department of Education. Arkansas LEARNS
13
Arkansas Advocate. Arkansas Education Overhaul Rules Still a Work in Progress, Officials Say
14
Arkansas Advocate. Arkansas Ballot Measure Groups Remain Optimistic Ahead of Petition Deadline
15
Arkansas Advocate. Arkansas Judge Revives Lawsuit Challenging State’s Near-Total Abortion Ban
16
Arkansas Advocate. Lawsuit Says Arkansas Near-Total Ban on Abortion Violates State’s Constitution
17
Arkansas Advocate. Arkansas Opposing Attorney’s Efforts to Depose Governor in Lawsuit Challenging Abortion Ban
18
ACLU. Brandt et al v. Rutledge et al
19
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. Brandt v. Rutledge, Eighth Circuit Opinion
20
Arkansas Advocate. Appeals Court Upholds Arkansas Ban on Transgender Minors Health Care After SCOTUS Ruling
21
Arkansas Advocate. Arkansas to Soft-Launch Upcoming Medicaid Work Requirement Checks
22
Arkansas Department of Human Services. ARHOME
23
UALR Public Radio. Department of Human Services Prepares to Soft Launch New Work Reporting Requirements
24
Talk Business & Politics. Hold on Franklin County Prison Plan Viewed With Guarded Optimism by One Opponent
25
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Emails Show Architects’ Doubt That Work Will Ever Restart
26
Arkansas Advocate. Arkansas 3,000-Bed Prison Site Is on Hold – What Are the Other Options
27
Arkansas Advocate. Transparency Group Unveils Proposal to Enshrine Arkansas FOIA in State Constitution
28
Arkansas Advocate. Audit Report Finds Several Potential Breaches of Arkansas Law in Governor’s $19K Lectern Purchase
29
ABC News. Sarah Sanders Office Potentially Violated Law in Lectern Controversy
30
Washington County Election Commission. 2025 New Election Laws
31
University of Arkansas Extension. How Arkansas Voting Requirements Have Changed Over Time
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Arkansas Advocate. Arkansas Supreme Court Strikes Law Changing How Constitutional Challenges Handled
33
Arkansas Times. Supreme Court Strikes Down Law Aimed at Keeping Constitutional Challenges Out of Pulaski County Courts