Plans for a massive prison facility are fracturing MAGAworld.
Republican Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is planning to build a 3,000-bed prison on 815 acres of land in a deeply Republican area of the state. But residents and local officials of Franklin County, a close-knit county in Western Arkansas, are furious with her for it, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Billboards and yard signs in the region now read “SAY NO TO THE PRISON!” and “Keep the country, country.”
“In the state of Arkansas, we’re a very split Republican Party,” Johnny Crocker, the local sheriff, told the Journal. “It’s big government against small government… These people want power. And that’s simple.”
J.B. Jackson, a resident who lives across the street from the proposed prison site, runs a popular, local Facebook page called “Arkansas Alcatraz.” The page is riddled with memes against the prison.
The page oftentimes ridicules Sanders.
“I never gave a rat’s cr-p about politics, now I have a third of the legislature following my Facebook page,” Jackson told the Journal.
Jackson has also covered his property with signs reading “Make AR Great Again—Impeach Sanders” and plastic skeletons wearing T-shirts opposing the prison.
Funding for the project has stalled at the state level as the local feud has boiled over into Arkansas politics.
Allies of Sanders suffered major defeats in the state’s primary elections earlier this month as she unsuccessfully attempted to primary two Republican state senators, Bryan King and Ronald Caldwell, both of whom have repeatedly voted against the facility.
“The problem is that I pay attention to the money and read bills more than other people do,” Caldwell said, adding that Sanders “tried to throw me out of a job,” for doing just that.
Sanders, a former Trump press secretary and daughter of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, has made cracking down on crime one of the pillars of her administration. She has argued that the new prison is necessary because facilities in Arkansas, which is just behind Louisiana and Mississippi in incarcerations per capita, are already overflowing with inmates.
The governor told the Journal that her administration chose not to tell Franklin County until after the state had purchased the land for $3 million to avoid a bidding war. Her administration estimates the jail will cost about $825 million, but critics have warned that the rocky land it sits on will drive up costs and that its remote location will make it difficult to find staff.
Sanders said the facility is the culmination of “months of research.”
“This wasn’t something where we just kind of threw a dart at the board and hoped it would work out,” she said.
The Daily Beast reached out to Sanders’ office for further comment.
Still, some area residents have grown so fed up with Sanders that they have begun calling themselves RASH, or “Republicans Against Sarah Huckabee.” Jackson said he is prepared to launch a statewide campaign against Sanders.
“I’m going to light her up,” he told the Journal. “Our governor wants to be president. That piece of property is going to stop her.”
“I’m a Republican, and I voted for most of them, but now, seeing the truth, I think we need to clean house,” Crocker, Franklin County’s sheriff, said. “Like Trump said, drain the swamp. Well, there’s a swamp in Little Rock right now, and it needs to go away.”
