Colt Shelby

Colt Shelby, the Libertarian candidate for governor, won a court victory over Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders last week. Will he get another “win” in November? It depends on how one defines the word.

The victory came in an Arkansas Supreme Court case. Shelby originally had sued Sanders over the length of time she allowed between the death of Sen. Gary Stubblefield and her calling a special election to replace him. She would have delayed the election until after this year’s fiscal session, leaving Senate District 26 unrepresented. 

Shelby sued as a district resident. A court ruled in his favor, and Sanders set an earlier date of March 3 while the state appealed. Because the election had occurred, the Supreme Court May 14 ruled the case was moot, meaning there was no point. 

Shelby and Sanders will meet again in November, but this time the “judges” will be Arkansas voters. Shelby is running as the candidate of the Libertarian Party, which supports small government. State Sen. Fred Love of Little Rock is the Democratic nominee. 

Sanders will get the most votes. Many voters believe she has done a good job. She is a well-funded incumbent Republican governor in a Republican state that routinely re-elects incumbents. 

But incumbents displease people over time. Shelby can “win” if he gets 3% of the vote. That amount would allow Libertarians to appear on the ballot in 2028 without the trouble and expense of collecting 10,000 voter signatures. He can make more of a splash if he gets even more.

Shelby, 42, sounded confident when I interviewed him Saturday based on his campaign experiences.

“You hear the same thing you always hear,” he said. “I’m not voting for Sarah again, and I can’t vote for a Democrat.”

That day he was in Kermit, Texas, working his day job as an oil well drilling manager. He spends two weeks on the road at sites between North Dakota and south Texas, and then he’s home for two weeks. He’s been in the drilling business since he graduated high school after growing up in Cecil, Arkansas, where he owns a 240-acre cattle ranch.

The married father of three children ages 10 to 22 was not involved in politics until Sanders announced that she was building an 3,000-bed prison in Franklin County four miles from his house. He didn’t like the prison or the way the site was selected without local input, so he became one of many activists lobbying against it – successfully, at least so far.

Then came the lawsuit and, earlier this year, his nomination by the Libertarians. 

The prison remains an animating part of his campaign. He acknowledges that county jails are overflowing, so money that’s already been appropriated should be used to expand an existing facility at Calico Rock. 

As for other issues, he said Sanders’ educational freedom accounts, which provide state funding for private schools and homeschooling, should be more income based. Also, homeschooling families are receiving too much money – up to $7,208 per child next year. He said the most important thing a governor does is make appointments, and that he would appoint professionals, not friends. He’s for tax cuts in principle but says “we’ve got a lot of issues fixing to come our way” with federal government cuts to Medicaid, upon which many people depend. Instead of the corporate tax cuts legislators recently passed, he said lawmakers should focus more on lower middle class Arkansans.

“The problem is, is we’re not planning for the future,” he said. “We’re planning for the now. When I look at the state, I want to look 20, 30, 40 years down the road of what we’re going to be, but it seems like we’re working year by year by year.”

As for the campaigning itself, he’s doing it when he’s home, and he’s doing it long distance when he has down time on the job. He’s been making appearances and “losing all my pride and asking people for money like a hobo.” 

As a result, he had raised more than $12,000 as of his first campaign finance report in April from 10 donors, seven of them out of state. That’s a good start for a third party candidate. He said he had raised $20,000 by the time we talked May 16. 

As noted earlier, Sanders will win, but Shelby can also “win” by getting people’s attention and eclipsing 3%. 

He might do better than that. As in any election, it depends on how many want to vote for him, and how many won’t vote for his opponents.

© 2026 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Steve Brawner’s column is syndicated to 24 news outlets in Arkansas. Email him at brawnersteve@mac.com.