Trey "BoDirt" Bohannan represents our political situation here in Arkansas. Yes, he was wiped out in the March GOP primary by state Sen. Ron Caldwell, a salt-of-the-earth Arkansan from Wynne with a distinguished record. But it was BoDirt who was endorsed by Gov. Sarah Sanders, Attorney General Tim Griffin, and several other Republican elected officials.

BoDirt is a business partner with a man who pleaded guilty to Internet stalking of girls in 2017. That didn't seem to bother Sanders, Griffin and others who believed Caldwell hadn't sufficiently supported their MAGA agenda. TikTok videos by Bohannan praised the stalker for his work at a company known as TreyBoDirt Media LLC.

Griffin, whose office sends out news releases each time it plays a role in the arrest of a pedophile, said of BoDirt: "His new energy and leadership would be an asset to the state Senate."

Sanders recruited BoDirt after at least one Republican House member declined to take on Caldwell, who has served in the Senate since 2013. She even convinced MAGA favorite Kid Rock to endorse BoDirt.

Kid Rock--the guy to whose house the Trump administration sends Army helicopters for salutes--said Sanders "reached out to me about helping her friend Trey 'BoDirt' Bohannan get across the finish line and win the state Senate in Arkansas. I am throwing my support and my endorsement behind Trey 'BoDirt' Bohannan for the state Senate in the great state of Arkansas."

I felt sorry for veteran state Capitol correspondent Michael Wickline when he wrote a profile of BoDirt for the Feb. 9 edition of this newspaper. I doubt that Wickline had ever dealt with such a vulgar character running for office. Quoting him in a family newspaper wasn't easy. BoDirt found it almost impossible to utter a sentence that wasn't filled with profanity.

"If he's chair of the ag committee and we're in this big-ass crisis, I haven't seen him do anything in the trenches," BoDirt said of Caldwell. "He don't do s***. Quote me on that."

BoDirt said: "I'm going to get in there and get s*** done, and I'm not going to be nice to everybody." That seems to be just the type of person Sanders wants as she transforms Arkansas into a MAGA colony. It's why I'll now refer to this as the BoDirt administration despite his loss. BoDirt is the perfect symbol of where Sanders wants to take us. She even honored one of BoDirt's companies as her Arkansas Business of the Month in May 2024.

If you travel Arkansas as much as I do, you know the type. You've heard the loudmouth who shows up at the round table where the locals gather for coffee. He bellows throughout breakfast, making inane comments and cursing so much that you feel sorry for the parents who brought their children to the restaurant.

Last October, BoDirt changed his voter registration from a Pine Bluff address to a Stuttgart address. He said he rents a home in Stuttgart from Sanders financial sugar daddy Michael Retzer Jr., an owner of McDonald's franchises.

It would be an understatement to say Sanders had a bad day on March 3. Caldwell smoked BoDirt. State Sen. Bryan King, a man Sanders detests, easily won over the governor's candidate, Bobby Ballinger. Sen. Blake Johnson, a MAGA acolyte who was heavily supported by Sanders, was blown out by state Rep. Jeremy Wooldridge.

The beatdown was so thorough that national media outlets such as The New York Times took notice. Private polls show that Sanders' disapproval ratings are now higher than her approval ratings.

"The surest way for me to lose an election was to rubber-stamp her policies," King said.

Wooldridge noted: "I don't think people want to be told who to vote for."

Arkansans are like that. In addition to not wanting others telling us what to do, we're tired after three years of this MAGA experiment. We're tired of the constant political drama. We rather be talking in the spring about crappie fishing, turkey hunting and Razorback sports.

We're tired of the chaos in state government. We're tired of the vulgarity from those like BoDirt. We're tired of the lies.

We're tired of the lack of transparency (never forget that this is a governor who during her first year in office called a special legislative session in an attempt to gut the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act). We're tired of the lies. We're tired of the outright stupidity we see at the state Capitol.

We're tired of a governor who ignores Arkansas issues and focuses instead on the Washington culture wars. We're tired of her endless efforts to get interviewed by Fox News. It's exhausting. Give us competence. Give us an agenda focused on Arkansas, not on national issues. Give us a true love of Arkansas, not the performative anger that's the trademark of Sanders and so many other MAGA politicians.

Two days after the GOP primary, I spoke at an event in Prairie County. Caldwell was in the audience, which surprised me. I figured he would be resting following a tough campaign. He told me that his opponents sent out almost 35 mass mailings against him. He estimates they spent $1.5 million, most of it dark money (Sanders likes to raise funds from out-of-state MAGA adherents). Caldwell spent less than $400,000 and still won overwhelmingly.

It got worse before it got better for Sanders. Just nine days after the March primary, the Arkansas TV Commission (formerly Arkansas PBS) voted to delay its December decision to cut ties with PBS. There had been a massive public backlash. The effort to get the commission to back off was led by two former first ladies, Barbara Pryor (widow of Democratic Gov. David Pryor) and Gay White (widow of Republican Gov. Frank White).

Sanders, of course, would have used the fact that Arkansas was the first state to disaffiliate from PBS as a way to raise more money from MAGA supporters. That talking point is gone for now.

The governor, who likes to think of herself as a future presidential candidate, was outmaneuvered by two former first ladies. How did Sanders respond to this disastrous 10-day period in March? She doubled down on the MAGA stuff. Bless her heart, as we like to say here in Arkansas; she knows no other way.

First, she brought in Erika Kirk, widow of far-right political organizer Charlie Kirk. The MAGA movement used Kirk's murder last September as an excuse to silence Trump administration critics. Erika Kirk has been traveling the country to promote Turning Point USA, an organization her husband founded. During a ceremony at the Governor's Mansion, Sanders signed a proclamation calling on every high school and college in the state to start a Turning Point chapter.

Don't expect much to come of it. Like almost everything Sanders does, this wasn't meant for Arkansans. It was meant to impress her out-of-state contributors. It's all about raising money, not about improving Arkansas. If Sanders really wanted to support an organization that builds character in Arkansas' young people, she could have supported an organization that has been active here for more than a century. It's called Scouting. Take it from this old Eagle Scout: It works.

Sanders next tried to turn an incident in which she was asked to leave a west Little Rock restaurant into a national scandal. She loves to play the martyr role, and the incident did indeed get her time on Fox News and other right-wing media outlets. While those interviews might have caught the attention of an angry old man in Iowa who watches Fox each night, the big chip on the gubernatorial shoulder and the scowl have gotten old for those of us here in Arkansas. It's frankly pitiful.

Smile, Sarah. The Hogs made the Sweet 16. The crappie are biting. The turkeys are gobbling. We live in a beautiful state. You might find that an Arkansas Comes First agenda (to borrow from the aforementioned David Pryor) is more fun than promoting the BoDirts of this world.

Rex Nelson is a senior editor at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

rnelson@adgnewsroom.com

Rex Nelson has been senior editor and columnist at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette since 2017, and he has a biweekly podcast called "Southern Fried."

After graduating from Ouachita Baptist University in 1981, he was a sportswriter for the Arkansas Democrat for a year before becoming editor of Arkadelphia's Daily Siftings Herald. He was the youngest editor of a daily in Arkansas at age 23. Rex was then news and sports director at KVRC-KDEL from 1983-1985.

He returned to the Democrat as assistant sports editor in 1985. From 1986-1989, he was its Washington correspondent. He left to be Jackson T. Stephens' consultant.

Rex became the Democrat-Gazette's first political editor in 1992, but left in 1996 to join then-Gov. Mike Huckabee's office. He also served from 2005-09 in the administration of President George W. Bush.

From 2009-2018, he worked stints at the Communications Group, Arkansas’ Independent Colleges and Universities, and Simmons First National Corp.

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