On December 31, 2025, when she thought no one was watching, Sarah Sanders made new appointments to the Board of Corrections.
It’s her right to appoint new members. Chairman Benny Magness’ expired last Wednesday, and board member Brandon Tollett had stepped down earlier this year.
However, as is so often the case with this governor, it’s the who that really matters. Sanders is desperate to get the Franklin County prison built, despite widespread, sustained, bipartisan opposition to it. So let’s take a look at two of her appointments.
The new chairman of the board is Jamie Barker, the former deputy chief of staff for Sanders and current member of the Gilmore Davis Strategy group (we’ll come back to this tidbit). Nathan Lee will take the other vacancy on the Board.
Nathan Lee will replace Tollett; Lee currently serves as the chief legal counsel for the Secretary of State. Lee has been a lawyer for just over a year, so one might wonder how he became chief legal counsel for anything, let alone one of the most important divisions in government. More importantly, Lee is… not that great of a lawyer?
Sen. Kim Hammer trotted out Lee this spring to try and help him defend Hammer’s slate of terrible anti-direct democracy bills. Hilariously, Lee did very little to defend much of anything at all. Sens. Clarke Tucker, Bryan King, and even John Payton ran circles around Lee, who failed to answer even the most basic of questions and even cited laws incorrectly.
Sarah appointed Lee to do her bidding with no pushback. There’s no other reason to promote such a patently unqualified person to an immensely complex position. This would be far from the first time Sanders handed out appointments to unqualified people as political favors to get her way.
But Barker’s position as a lobbyist for the Gilmore Davis group raises serious ethical concerns. If the name Gilmore rings a bell, it’s because Sen. Ben Gilmore runs the lobbyist outfit with his brother, Jon, and J. R. Davis. Sen. Gilmore doesn’t appear on the website, but A) we’re not stupid and B) the front page of the site features his photo. Sanders now has a die-hard ally steering the board. While the board doesn’t control the purse strings for the prison build, they do have immense influence on contracting, timelines, and project management decisions, like selecting Vanir for a huge contract despite the fact that Vanir has done very little to earn it so far.
To put it simply: the Board of Corrections should be an independent entity, dedicated to doing what’s best for Arkansas. With these appointments, they’ll answer only to Sarah. That’s bad for all of us. Remember, if this prison gets built, not only will it basically bankrupt the state for generations, it’ll signal to our leaders that they can do whatever they want instead of what we want.
The Gilmore Davis group has other connections to the prison, incidentally. They’re consulting on the campaign of Mark Berry, candidate for Senate District 26 where the prison will be located, and for Bobby Ballinger Jr, who’s primarying Bryan King in Senate District 28 just north of the prison site. Gary Stubblefield, a staunch opponent of the prison, held SD26 until his untimely passing earlier this year. Sen. King has also been vehemently opposed to the prison. So along with two new friendly faces on the Board of Corrections, Sanders is pulling every lever she can to get two friendly senate votes, one of which will be seated before the spring’s fiscal session.
To recap: Sanders is again handing out cushy appointments to friends so that she can get her way. One of those appointments works for a lobbying group that’s also running campaigns in Franklin County, which has opposed her pet project.
Can we say for sure that Berry and Ballinger would be in Sanders’ pocket, should they win their elections? No, but if you were to bet that way, I wouldn’t bet against you. In any event, the fact our governor is using every single lever of power to steamroll a community that’s made its wishes very clear should make every Arkansan extremely worried.
