Full Platform
Government Transparency
Where Colt Stands: Arkansans deserve a governor's office that works for them in the open — not behind closed doors.
Too many decisions that affect Arkansas families are made without public input, public notice, or public accountability. From no-bid economic development deals to last-minute rule changes at state agencies, Arkansans are increasingly finding out about major decisions after they're already made — not before.
Colt believes government works best when the people can see it working. As governor, he will:
Push for real-time public disclosure of major state contracts, incentive packages, and economic development agreements before they're finalized — not after.
Require public comment periods for significant agency rule changes, especially those affecting utility rates, land use, and natural resources.
End the practice of routing major policy decisions through emergency rulemaking or closed-door negotiations when there's no genuine emergency.
Hold regular, unscripted town halls in every region of the state — not just the population centers.
Colt has spent two decades managing hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts in an industry where safety and accountability aren't optional. He knows that transparency isn't just a talking point — it's a discipline. He'll bring that same discipline to the Governor's office.
Fiscal responsibility
Where Colt Stands: Your tax dollars should be spent like they're your own — because they are.
Colt has spent his career managing large, complex budgets in the oil and gas industry, where waste isn't just bad business — it's dangerous. He's overseen hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts with a simple standard: every dollar has to be accounted for, and every decision has to hold up to scrutiny.
Arkansas state government should be held to the same standard. Colt believes that means:
Full public accounting of state incentive packages — including data center and industrial recruitment deals — with clear before-and-after cost/benefit numbers available to taxpayers.
Independent audits of large state contracts and economic development agreements, not just internal agency sign-off.
Prioritizing spending that pays for itself in better roads, better schools, and safer communities — not vanity projects or corporate giveaways.
A hard look at proposed capital projects, like the Franklin County prison, where cost estimates have already climbed far beyond original projections, before another dollar is committed.
Colt's message is simple: if a project can't survive an honest look at the numbers, it doesn't deserve Arkansas taxpayer money.
Prison & Justice Reform
Where Colt Stands: The proposed 3,000-bed Franklin County prison is a costly, poorly-planned project that will hurt a rural community without making Arkansas safer.
This issue is personal for Colt. In 2024, Governor Sanders' administration announced plans to build a massive new prison just four miles from Colt's home and farm — with little advance notice to the community and even less public input. As Colt traveled the region listening to neighbors, he heard the same concerns again and again: nobody had been asked, the cost estimates kept climbing, and the process itself raised serious constitutional questions about who actually has the authority to site a project of this scale.
Colt's concerns include:
Cost overruns. Early estimates for the facility have already grown substantially, with no clear ceiling — and Arkansas taxpayers are on the hook for the difference.
Process and authority. The dispute over whether the Board of Corrections or the Governor's office has final say in siting decisions of this size raises real constitutional questions that shouldn't be steamrolled through.
Rural impact. A facility of this size changes the character of a small community forever — its water use, its roads, its local economy — and Franklin County residents were never given a genuine seat at the table.
Public safety math that doesn't add up. Simply building more beds doesn't address the underlying drivers of crime, and there's little evidence this project makes Arkansas safer rather than just bigger.
As governor, Colt will require genuine local input and transparent, defensible cost accounting before any project of this scale moves forward anywhere in Arkansas — not just Franklin County.
Energy & Utilies
Where Colt Stands: Arkansas ratepayers — not out-of-state corporations — should come first when it comes to who pays for the state's energy future.
Arkansas is in the middle of a rapid, largely unregulated expansion of large-scale data centers and crypto-mining facilities, drawn here in part by cheap power and light-touch state rules. These facilities use enormous amounts of electricity and water. When the grid has to expand to serve them, the costs of new generation and infrastructure often get spread across everyday ratepayers — homeowners, farmers, and small businesses — rather than the companies driving the demand.
Colt has looked closely at how Arkansas got here, and where the gaps are:
Current state rules haven't kept pace with the scale of these projects, leaving ordinary ratepayers exposed to cost increases tied to industrial demand they didn't create and don't benefit from.
Other states — including Texas, Minnesota, Oregon, and Florida — have already passed ratepayer protection laws that require large new industrial energy users to cover the true cost of the infrastructure built to serve them.
Arkansas should do the same: require large data center and crypto-mining operations to pay their fair share of grid upgrades, guarantee water use doesn't come at the expense of local agriculture and communities, and give the Public Service Commission real authority to review these deals before they're signed — not after.
Colt supports smart economic development. What he opposes is a system where taxpayers and ratepayers absorb the risk while out-of-state companies get the benefit. As governor, he will push for an Arkansas Ratepayer and Water Protection framework that puts Arkansas families and farms first.
Education
Where Colt Stands: Every Arkansas child deserves a quality public education — and that means fully funding the schools we already have before diverting money away from them.
Colt opposes school voucher schemes that redirect public education dollars to private and often unaccountable alternatives. In rural Arkansas, where a single public school may be the only option for miles, voucher programs don't create more choice — they drain resources from the schools that rural families actually depend on.
Colt's approach to education includes:
Opposing voucher expansion that pulls funding out of public schools, especially in rural districts that don't have private alternatives to "choose" in the first place.
Prioritizing state investment in teacher pay, school facilities, and rural district funding formulas so that a child's zip code doesn't determine the quality of their education.
Supporting career and technical education pathways that connect directly to Arkansas's agriculture, energy, and skilled trades economy — giving students real options whether or not they go to a four-year college.
Holding the line against policies that treat public education as an experiment rather than a promise to Arkansas's kids.
Colt believes strengthening public schools — not defunding them — is how Arkansas builds a stronger future.
Farm economy
Where Colt Stands: Arkansas agriculture built this state, and it deserves a governor who understands what it takes to keep a farm running.
Colt and his family bought their farm in 2016 and have worked it themselves — tending cattle, working the fields, and living with the same pressures every farm family in Arkansas faces: unpredictable input costs, tightening margins, and a rural economy that often gets overlooked in state policy decisions made in Little Rock.
As governor, Colt will focus on:
Protecting farmland and water resources from being crowded out by large industrial development — including data centers — that can drive up utility costs and strain shared water resources in farm country.
Supporting policies that keep family farms economically viable across generations, not just large agribusiness operations.
Ensuring rural infrastructure — roads, broadband, and grid reliability — gets the same attention as infrastructure in urban centers.
Bringing a working farmer's perspective to state agricultural policy, rather than leaving those decisions entirely to lobbyists and agency staff with no boots-on-the-ground experience.
Colt isn't a politician who visits a farm for a photo op. He lives the farm economy every day — and he'll fight for the people who feed Arkansas.