Sarah Sanders Corruption & Ethics Arkansas

Sarah Sanders Is Making Weekly Taxpayer-Funded 'Capital for a Day' Trips in the Final Weeks of Her Campaign. She Signed the Law That Hides What Her Travel Costs.

With weeks to go before she's on the ballot, Gov. Sarah Sanders has stepped up her 'Capital for a Day' tours to roughly once a week, bringing cabinet secretaries along on the state's dime. A former aide to her father says his administration stopped the trips at election time because it 'would be using taxpayer dollars to campaign.' The public can't see what they cost: Sanders signed a 2023 law shielding her travel records.

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Sarah Sanders Is Making Weekly Taxpayer-Funded 'Capital for a Day' Trips in the Final Weeks of Her Campaign. She Signed the Law That Hides What Her Travel Costs.
Photo: Southern Arkansas University, via Arkansas Times

Sarah Sanders is on the ballot on November 3. In the weeks before it, she's been touring Arkansas towns almost every week — and the taxpayers are picking up the bill.

The trips are called "Capital for a Day." The governor declares a town the state capital for the day, issues a proclamation full of local trivia, and shows up with her cabinet secretaries. According to the Arkansas Times, the stop in El Dorado on October 15 is trip No. 26. Before that came Springdale on October 8, Cabot on September 30, Russellville 15 days before that, and Helena-West Helena on September 3.

Her father's own aide says it crosses a line

Governors have done these trips for decades — Nelson credits Gov. Jim Guy Tucker with starting them, "going out about once a month." Sanders has been making them for years; El Dorado is No. 26. The difference now is the timing and the pace.

Rex Nelson, an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist, ran communications for Sanders's father, Gov. Mike Huckabee, in the 1990s. He told the Arkansas Times that Huckabee did these trips three or four times a year — and shut them down when an election was coming.

"We wouldn't have dreamed of doing those during election season," Nelson said. "That would be using taxpayer dollars to campaign."

Now, he said, "they're on a weekly basis. It's the campaign season so it just outrages me that tax dollars are being spent this way. When she goes, the cabinet members have to go with her, so there's travel expenses for them, and all that gets charged back to those departments."

Nelson said Sanders could pay for the trips out of her campaign account. By the end of June her campaign had raised $7.7 million.

How much does it cost? She made sure you can't find out.

The Arkansas Times asked the governor's office what the trips cost taxpayers. It had no answer by the time the story ran.

That's not an accident. In September 2023, Sanders called a special session and signed a law letting the state withhold records about her travel and security — including who flies on the State Police airplane with her and the cost of individual trips. It passed while a blogger was suing the State Police for records about her security, including what it cost.

So the public pays for the travel, and the governor decides whether the public gets to see the bill.

Part of a pattern

Nelson compared it to the Trump White House, which spent tax money on TV ads praising the president. We covered how $20 million in border agency money ended up paying for those ads.

What we know

Sarah Sanders has stepped up her taxpayer-funded "Capital for a Day" trips to about once a week in the final stretch of a race she's on the ballot in, with El Dorado marking the 26th, according to the Arkansas Times. A former communications director for her father says his administration stopped those trips near elections because they would amount to "using taxpayer dollars to campaign." What the trips cost is hidden from the public under a 2023 law Sanders signed shielding her travel records.

Source

Sanders amps up taxpayer-funded travel, but don't call it campaigning — Arkansas Times

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