With the primary elections months in the rearview and the general election more than four months away, it’s easy to forget that we are technically in the middle of campaign season. We got a reminder of that on Friday in Eureka Springs, as the Arkansas Press Association hosted debates between candidates for governor and secretary of state. 

While Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders “declined an invitation” to participate, the two men seeking to oust her from office in November — Libertarian Colt Shelby and Democrat Sen. Fred Love — took the stage and answered questions about everything from school vouchers to prisons and from the LEARNS Act to the economy.

Opening statements

Before the debate, candidates drew lots to decide who would give their opening statement first. Love drew the opening slot in the gubernatorial debate. He opened with three questions: 1. How many people know that we can’t afford another four years under Sanders’ leadership? 2. How many people know that Shelby doesn’t have the experience necessary to run state government? 3. How many people know that Love has been serving Arkansas for 16 years in the state legislature? He recited some statistical areas in which Arkansas is near the bottom nationally — infant mortality, food insecurity, maternal mortality, death from preventable diseases — and said that so many failing grades means Sanders gets an F on her report card.

Love’s swipe at Shelby in his opening seemed to surprise the Libertarian candidate — Shelby said after the debate that Love “rattled” him with the dig — which breifly derailed Shelby’s opening statement initially. He said we need to address crime, economic development and affordability; help poultry and row-crop farmers; focus on women’s health and become a pro-life state, not a pro-birth state. He stressed that, in all matters, from data centers to wind turbines, the decision-makers should be the people, not state government, and he accused Sanders of having her eye on a bigger position in Washington D.C., rather than focusing on Arkansas.

Why run for governor?

Roby Brock, who brought his usual easy charm and did an outstanding job moderating the debate from the outset, started the questions with a softball: what went on behind the scenes in each man’s decision to run for governor?

Love said multiple people asked him to run, but that he wasn’t sure he wanted to do it at first. He said he prayed on it multiple times and ultimately “God said, ‘Fred, you’re going to be governor.’” He added that he takes every big decision to God.

Shelby said he got into politics via the fight over Sanders’ plan to build a prison in Franklin County. During that fight, he said, he saw how many legislators do what benefits them personally, rather than doing what their constituents want them to do, and how so many of them just follow instructions from the governor. In his administration, he said, legislators would be encouraged to do their jobs and not expected to walk in lock-step with him.

School vouchers

Looking at the numbers of students and dollars currently involved in the Education Freedom Accounts under LEARNS, Brock said, it would likely be difficult to repeal the program outright, and he wanted to know what the candidates thought of tying voucher eligibility to income level and/or what other solutions they might have for the shortcomings they see in the LEARNS Act.

We know we can’t afford the program the way it is now, Shelby said, though he acknowledged that LEARNS has helped a lot of students receive opportunities they otherwise wouldn’t have been able to afford. He said he would like to see voucher eligibility tied to income so that maybe the program could help more people who need help. He also said that Arkansas is lacking in pre-K opportunities, though he added that he doesn’t support universal pre-K and believes that question should be left to each district. Ultimately, he said, we need to teach kids to learn, not just to pass standardized tests.

Love, as he would do more than once during the debate, took a more hardline stance. He said we can’t afford the LEARNS Act as it currently functions, that the majority of the public does not want the EFA program and that his administration would not administer the EFA program at all. Instead, that money would be reinvested into public schools. Brock pressed Love on this, asking if Love’s comment about not administering the EFA program meant he would not follow state law. Love said he would issue an executive order on day one of his administration, prohibiting the state Department of Education from issuing vouchers.

Shelby said immediate repeal was impossible in part because it would hurt some students by removing opportunities. He said he would prefer to scale the program back incrementally. 

Love countered that 90 percent of students in Arkansas are in public education anyway and that 95 percent of LEARNS vouchers went to people who were already in private school. He said he was going to focus on the 90 percent.

Prisons/criminal justice

Both candidates were on the record as opposing the Franklin County prison, Brock said. But, assuming the prison is not built there, Brock asked what alternative plans each candidate had for finding additional prison beds.

Disputing that we need more prison beds, Love said what we really need is to create more opportunities for young people. He said he’s always talked about young people having summer jobs, and Love wants to create a program that would let summer workers earn career-readiness certificates. He said there’s a correlation between literacy and prison rates, and if we build a foundation of literacy from the earliest days of a child’s life, we can reduce the number of people going into prisons.

Shelby countered that, with the thousands of state inmates currently awaiting prison beds in county facilities, we’re in a situation that has to be addressed in the short term. He said he’s been talking to county sheriffs about programs that have worked in their jurisdictions, and he singled out Pulaski County Sheriff Eric Higgins as someone whose ideas and programs have drastically reduced recidivism rates in his county. He touted expanding county facilities to help with rehabilitation and diversion programs, in order to keep people close to home where they have built-in support networks. Nevertheless, he said, the county jail backlog means we need to expand the existing prison at Calico Rock. He also said the state needs to lock up the right people, saying we too often see rapists walk free while low-level drug offenders get prison time. 

Healthcare

According to a recent report, Brock said, the rate of uninsured children in the state has doubled from 4% to 8%, while hospitals around the state close. Given that, he asked, what was each candidate’s plan for addressing healthcare issues?

Shelby said these problems were caused at the federal level by President Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, which he said imposed a 77/23 Medicaid cost-sharing split between the feds and the state. He said the state has no choice but to comply with federal mandates, unless it wants to foot the full bill for Medicaid, meaning the state had to acquiesce to the federal work requirements under Medicaid. To combat these impacts, Shelby said, we need to make sure people have access to the internet and other job resources, as well as transportation to get to jobs and meet the work-requirement rules.

As for hospital closures, Shelby said that is due to higher rates of uninsured Arkansans making costs too high for providers. He said some counties — specifically citing Mississippi County — have come up with plans to address these problems, and he said he would be willing to take good ideas from around the state and help implement them in other counties.

Love said he was in the legislature when Medicaid expansion was passed, but that recent federal laws have put Arkansas back in the same position it was 10 years ago as far as uninsured people. He said 500,000 Arkansans have been kicked off Medicaid rolls, including 100,000 kids, and that’s unacceptable. We need to put people back on the rolls, even if we have to defy the federal government and pay the full amount.

Economy

What is the most important economic issue facing Arkansas right now, and what is your plan to fix it? Brock asked.

A prepared workforce, Love said. He said we have workforce shortages in a lot of areas and that we need to get young people into the pipeline. He said one way to do this is to bring labor unions to schools and teach kids about skilled trades as a career option. He also again mentioned the career-readiness certificates for teens with summer jobs.  

Shelby said the biggest issue was affordability. The cost of everything has increased, he said, while wages have stagnated. He noted that the average first-time homebuyer in 2026 is roughly 40 years old, and he wants to bring that down. He said a big part of the blame for increased costs is Arkansas not doing a good job of holding companies accountable. He wants an insurance commissioner who will “actually do his job” and make sure insurance companies aren’t ripping people off. He wants to find ways to return money to the people. 

Data centers

People have lots of concerns about data centers, Brock said. He asked whether the candidates supported moratoriums on data center construction.

The state’s policy should be whatever the people want, Shelby said. Local populations should decide whether they want data centers, and the state and local governments should not force centers into communities that do not want them. The state’s involvement should be limited to making sure people will have enough water and electricity if a data center comes in, and that should be figured out on the front end, before approval for a data center is given. Ultimately, he said, moratoriums should be a county or local decision.

Love said he definitely favors a moratorium. He said centers are popping up at alarming rate, and Arkansans have every right to be worried because we don’t know the long-term impact of these centers. In one of the stranger answers of the day, he said we all carry cell phones, so we know data centers are needed, but we should pause and figure out how to move forward safely.

Asked if they would recruit data centers to Arkansas, Shelby said he wouldn’t mind helping recruit one if it was for a community that wanted it and would be a net benefit to the state and community. Love said he would not recruit them.

Recreational marijuana

Brock asked whether each candidate supports legalizing recreational marijuana.

No, Love said. Brock pressed him as to why not. He said it is because he lives in a community where he sees children getting out of the car at school smelling like marijuana. He said he’s seen the long-term impact of marijuana — though he did not specify what that was — so his answer was no.

Shelby said he’s for whatever Arkansans want. If the people pass recreational marijuana, he said, he would support it. Everything should revolve around what the people want, he said, and that’s where the legislature has lost focus. Let the people decide, he said.

Love retorted that the question was about whether he would support it personally, not whether he would support it if the people passed it. If the people vote for it, he said, he would support it. He just doesn’t support it personally.

Sanders’ failures

Addressing the governor-sized hole on the dais, Brock again mentioned the governor’s absence and asked each man what he thought Sanders’ biggest failure was as governor.

Listening and a lack of leadership skills, Shelby said, adding that Sanders failed us by not being a steward of the people and a steward of the land. He said her biggest current flaw is wanting to go to D.C. too early. If she’d put her head here and focused on Arkansas, he said, she could have succeeded. Former Gov. Asa Hutchinson left Sanders a good situation and she “pissed it away.” 

Love said the LEARNS Act was her biggest failure because it will do the most damage to the most people. He said LEARNS is crippling public schools and that the state must invest in its children. He said, when the state takes $400 million and puts it in private schools for tuition for kids who already had that choice, government is leaving the other 90% to fend for themselves.

Freedom of Information Act

Brock asked what changes, if any, each candidate would make to the state’s Freedom of Information Act.

Love said he gets FOIA requests all the time — he did not mention that the working-papers exemption in the FOIA excludes most of the documents and communications legislators have — and that we need to strengthen the FOIA in general. He said we need to repeal recent limitations that have been placed on the FOIA.

Shelby said that the FOIA needs to be opened up completely so the government can’t hide anything. He said he thinks people should have to pay for the time it takes county and local governments to comply with large FOIA requests, but other than that he doesn’t think there should be restrictions on transparency. He added that he thought the state might ultimately save a lot of money if it was easier for people to see where and how money is being spent.

Day one

To wrap up the questioning, Brock tossed the candidates a final softball: on day one of your administration, what would you do?

“Fire a lot of people,” Shelby said. If people have consistently done a bad job, he said, singling out Education Secretary Jacob Oliva and former corrections czar Joe Profiri, you’re not good at your job and need to go. Whether their failure was because of their own limitations or Sanders’ “dictatorship” didn’t matter — poor performance needs to be replaced.

Love said his first act would be an executive order to end EFA vouchers.

Closing

Love ended the debate like he began, reiterating the same three questions. He said he’s running because he loves the state and the people and loves serving.

Shelby said he’s qualified for the job because he’s been in business leadership roles for 20 years and owns his own business. He said he would put his credentials and background up against any candidate in the race. His focuses in the campaign are access, accountability and affordability for all Arkansans, and he asked people to give him the opportunity to earn his vote.