‘America’s best secretary of state’ is ready to be land commissioner – Arkansas Times

Arkansas Secretary of State Cole Jester has had exactly three jobs since graduating from law school in May 2022. He was a law clerk for six months starting in August 2022 and deputy chief attorney for the governor’s office for two years starting in January 2023. 

In January of this year, Gov. Sarah Sanders appointed Jester as secretary of state after fellow Republican John Thurston moved down the hall after being elected state treasurer.

Jester’s short track record remains unproven. But he isn’t letting his lack of experience or the poor optics of job-hopping stop him from targeting a new gig. On Wednesday, he announced a 2026 run for land commissioner.

Jester’s announcement was standard Arkansas Republican dreck. He called Arkansas “the best state in the country,” said Arkansas will “keep our tax dollars in state” (which isn’t something the land commissioner has any control over) and that he will “investigate Chinese influence near state lands” (despite the land commissioner having no such authority or law enforcement power).

Despite Jester’s lack of experience, both generally and as a constitutional officer, Sanders offered her “full endorsement” of Jester’s land commissioner run.

“Cole Jester did a fantastic job as my legal counsel, and he has been America’s best secretary of state,” Sanders said.

Seriously? Jester has not accomplished anything of note during his brief tenure as secretary of state, and his public appearances have amounted to little more than regurgitated, false soundbites about election fraud.

In February, just over a month after taking office, Jester held an embarrassing press conference at the Capitol to announce his support for a package of legislation purporting to address fraud in the citizen-led ballot measure process. During that conference — and in the months since — Jester said the initiative process was rife with fraud. When pressed for evidence of these claims, however, he has only pointed to people signing petitions more than once (a common occurrence that is routinely caught by existing verification measures and are not proof of fraud) and unverified anecdotes told by random Republicans during legislative committee hearings.

Jester is the third Republican to throw his hat into the ring for the 2026 land commissioner race. Christian Olson of Little Rock, former chairman of Opportunity Arkansas and former policy advisor to Gov. Asa Hutchinson, announced his candidacy in November. Arkansas Travelers’ executive Lance Restum of Maumelle — the one person in the race less qualified than Jester to run for constitutional office — announced his campaign in January. 

Following a change in the law in the recent session, the 2026 preferential primary election will be in March. Candidate filing ends on November 12.

Should Jester win the land commissioner office, he will be following a well-worn, bipartisan Arkansas tradition of making a career out of hopping from one constitutional office to another. Thurston, Jester’s predecessor in the secretary of state office, was state commissioner of lands from 2010 to 2018, then served as secretary of state from 2019 until assuming the treasurer’s office in 2025. Democrat Charlie Daniels spent 16 years as land commissioner, eight as secretary of state and four as auditor from 1985 to 2015.