Jamie specializes in providing outlets and resources for underserved youth. As the Director of Pulaski County Youth Services, she has worked to provide drug prevention services, leadership development opportunities, and academic enrichment programs to children. These services partner with nonprofit organizations and faith communities to provide safe environments where youth can attain financial literacy, learn new academic & job skills, and grow in self-esteem. In the legislature, Jamie has supported laws like Arkansas’ Safeguards for Children in Foster Care Act, ensuring children in our foster care system are not defined by their circumstance and are treated with dignity and care. Jamie is committed to ensuring all children in Arkansas feel accepted, safe, and free from discrimination.

Jamie will prioritize Arkansas public schools and ensure they are adequately funded. This is a critical first step in strengthening our communities. Consolidation and the unnecessary expansion of charter schools have undermined Arkansas public school funding. Making local public schools equitable and sustainable requires investing in the communities around them. Jamie supports Universal Pre-K in Arkansas, as well as family literacy initiatives that encourage parents to play the critical role of being their child’s first teacher.

In the Arkansas State Legislature, Jamie has fought for wrap-around services for disadvantaged students, focusing on eliminating traumatic situations within their homes. Full-service community schools provide healthcare, dental, and mental healthcare that allow students to focus on their education and thrive in school—and they’re possible right here in Arkansas.

District 12 is home to two community colleges. Community colleges provide two paths to ensuring a productive, skilled workforce in Arkansas:

1. Certification that qualifies students to enter the workforce with verified skills and
2. A 2-year degree that allows students to transfer to a four-year institution.

By bringing in labor organizations and the private sector, Jamie will empower schools like Shorter College and UA-Pulaski Technical College to provide courses & learning experiences that will prepare District 12 students for 21st century jobs involving clean energy and advanced technology.

Jamie makes women’s healthcare a priority, and she knows that affordable and life-saving reproductive healthcare should never take a backseat. The Arkansas Legislature has voted time and time again to unconstitutionally restrict women’s healthcare choices. Jamie believes that reproductive healthcare decisions should be kept between a woman, her medical professional, and her faith. Jamie will promote commonsense measures to reduce teen pregnancy in Arkansas, and she will advocate for patients’ rights and access to low-cost reproductive care.

Women in Arkansas make 82 cents for every dollar that men make. Nationally, women of color are paid just 64 cents for every dollar men are paid. More than 150,000 households in Arkansas are headed by women—they, and all women, deserve equal pay for equal hard work. Jamie will fight for legislation in Arkansas that eliminates the wage gap.

Jamie recognizes that unions are responsible for most of the progress Arkansans have enjoyed in the workplace. From workplace injury protection to child labor laws to the minimum wage, it’s unions that have led the charge to strengthen Arkansas workers. Jamie believes workers should be able to organize, and she believes in workplace democracy. This will strengthen Arkansas’s economy, lift more Arkansans into the middle class, and ensure that Arkansas’s very best and brightest have access to good-paying jobs when they’re done with school. Jamie also believes in empowering our local small businesses to compete against international corporations; these small businesses make our community feel like home. We can empower our state’s small businesses to offer competitive wages and benefits by offering small business tax breaks.

Voting is a fundamental right in any healthy democracy. But members of the Arkansas State Legislature have been relentless in passing Voter ID laws, which disenfranchise elderly Arkansans and members of minority communities, while doing nothing measurable to prevent voter fraud. Jamie believes it should be easier for registered voters to vote, not harder. That means supporting expanded early voting, providing more voting locations, and easier ways to register to vote (like automatic voter registration). Jamie is fighting to make sure every eligible Arkansan has fair access to the ballot.

African-Americans only make up 17% of Arkansas’ population. However, they make up 42% of our state’s prison population. These staggering numbers highlight the racial disparities in our criminal justice system. We incarcerate too many Black & Brown Arkansans, and our state’s budget simply can’t afford it. It’s time that we face the biases in our system and work on legislation that reduces poverty, crime, and recidivism.

By lifting harsh judgments for non-violent offenses and building programs that prepare all offenders for reentry, we can keep people off the streets. Arkansans believe in giving one another second chances—with investments in education and rehabilitation, we can empower nonviolent offenders to make meaningful contributions to our state. Jamie is working on legislation that re-works the expungement process to make it more accessible for those who have served their time. Jamie believes we should focus on getting people back to work and transitioning them to become productive members of society.

Embracing diversity makes our community stronger, our economy more innovative, and our neighborhoods more inclusive. Jamie will work with community activists and other local leaders to ensure local protections for immigrant communities, like providing in-state tuition for qualified undocumented immigrants and increasing access to higher education. Empowering Arkansas’s immigrant community in this way only empowers Arkansas’s economy. Jamie will also work with our federal delegation toward comprehensive immigration reform that includes a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

Arkansas currently has some of the worst infrastructure in the nation. Many of our bridges are on the verge of collapsing; our cities lack complete sidewalks; we struggle to maintain our county roads; and our wastewater management is less than satisfactory. Good infrastructure is the foundation for accessibility, safety, small business success, and healthcare in our state. Without strong infrastructure, we lack sound public safety management. Jamie supports sustainable funding that will adequately maintain bridges and roads. She also wants to find ways to provide public transportation in more regions of our state. Quality, clean, and accessible public transportation is a necessity for our future economic growth and development.

Jamie will fight to keep the Natural State natural.

Jamie believes that we must move toward cleaner, more efficient forms of energy. She supports increased use of solar technology, which will provide dividends of growth to our economy by reducing the cost of energy and reducing pollution. Arkansas can be a national leader in the Green Economy. Arkansas is also home to Hot Springs National Park and several other nationally designated and protected lands, state treasures that bring tourists and their wallets into the state. Not only that, but our public lands are essential to protecting wildlife and many Arkansans’ way of life. Protecting our natural resources keeps us healthy and active, and it provides a space for everyone to enjoy what Arkansas has to offer.

Jamie’s life experiences inspire her dedication to the economic growth and development of District 12. A lifelong resident of District 12, she knows that Arkansas’s economy simply isn’t working for everyone—it leaves many behind, and right now some dreams simply can’t be achieved here. She wants to provide breaks to local businesses, so that they can provide their workers with living wages and benefits. And she wants every kid to be able to live their dream right here at home. Nobody should have to leave our community in order to make it.

Jamie plans to increase economic activity in ways that strengthen our neighborhoods financially and in quality of life—by eliminating the district’s food deserts and implementing wraparound services for local school districts. She will work to make our communities more business-friendly by improving local infrastructure and creating programs that offer workforce training.

Jamie is committed to protecting and expanding the Arkansas Works Medicaid Expansion. GOP work requirements were ill-conceived, immoral, and cost our state’s health providers a lot of money. Every Arkansan should be able to visit a doctor, and it shouldn’t break them financially. Jamie is also committed to bringing down the prices of life-saving prescription drugs like insulin. As a state, we should prosecute companies that price-gouge life-saving drugs. Expanding access to healthcare & life-saving prescription drugs would strengthen our state’s healthcare sector, keep our best medical experts in-state, and save dozens of rural hospitals & clinics.