Keep Pulaski County Open For Business

LITTLE ROCK, ARK. Michael Rushin, Republican candidate for Pulaski County Judge, today urged the Quorum Court to slow down and get the data center question right. He supports regulation. He opposes a blunt twelve-month freeze that, as written, reaches far beyond data centers and risks slamming the door on manufacturers and large employers the county has spent a generation trying to attract.

"We were promised growth. We are watching it drive past us on the interstate."

"Regulate the data centers. I am for that. Set the rules for water, for power, for noise, for traffic. But do not write the rule so wide that a manufacturer reads it and crosses us off the map. There is a difference between a guardrail and a roadblock. One keeps you on the road. The other ends the trip." Mike Rushin, candidate for Pulaski County Judge

The Number That Should Keep Us Up At Night

Two Off-Ramps. One County Standing Still.

Set a stopwatch to the year 2000 and watch our neighbors run. Since then, by U.S. Census figures, Saline County has grown by more than fifty-five percent. Faulkner County by better than fifty percent. Pulaski County, the capital county, the largest county in Arkansas, has crept ahead by roughly eleven percent. Our neighbors did not get lucky. They got chosen. Again and again, the families and the firms chose them and passed us by.

Picture the CEO in California with a company to move and a map of Central Arkansas on the table. She can plant her plant in Pulaski County. Or she can drive twenty minutes down the interstate to Saline, where the ground is open and the welcome is plain. If we answer her with a year-long freeze and a stack of fine print, we have answered her. She will take the next exit. She will take the jobs with her. And we will tell ourselves it was about principle, when the truth is it was about paperwork.

Run that tape forward ten years. Ten more years of our neighbors growing and Pulaski standing still is not a steady state. It is a slow leak. We are one quiet decade from looking out at our own main streets and seeing what decline already did to downtown Pine Bluff. No one chooses that in a single vote. People back into it, one cautious 'not yet' at a time, until the cranes are all on the other side of the county line.

Regulation, Done Like A Builder

Reasonable Provisions. Real Timetables.

Rushin is not arguing against rules. He is arguing for the right ones. A builder does not refuse to build because the ground is uneven. He measures, he sets the footing, and he builds to last. The latest revision before the county would cover high-intensity digital infrastructure: the facilities that draw five megawatts of power or a hundred thousand gallons of water a day. That is a real concern and it deserves a real answer. The answer is conditions, not a closed door.

Rushin called for the county to move on four plain principles:

1. Target the real risk

   Write rules that fit the high-intensity facilities people are actually worried about. Do not draft language so broad that a furniture plant, a food producer, or a logistics employer gets swept up in a fight that was never about them.

2. Set a timetable people can build around

   A freeze with no clear finish line is not caution. It is a vacancy sign. Give the planning department a firm, short deadline to deliver the new standards, with public hearings and progress the public can see.

3. Protect water, power, and neighbors with conditions, not bans

   Use the tools a county can stand behind: water and power impact review, noise and traffic limits, setbacks and buffers from homes, emergency-service planning, and a real complaint process. Make the project earn its place. Do not forbid the project from existing.

4. Finish the plan we already bought

   Pulaski County commissioned a land-use plan from Garver, an investment of roughly five hundred thousand dollars of public money. You do not pay half a million dollars for a blueprint and then throw it in the trash can. Pull it back out. Build the new data center standards on top of the work the taxpayers already funded.

"We spent half a million taxpayer dollars on a land-use plan. That money came from people who balance a checkbook at their kitchen table. They do not get to buy something, lose interest, and throw it away. Neither do we. We finish what they paid for." Mike Rushin, candidate for Pulaski County Judge

Service, Not Spectacle

Rushin framed the choice not as growth against safety, but as leadership against drift. "The people who want a total freeze love this county. I do not doubt that for a second," he said. "But love that only knows how to say no will watch the thing it loves grow smaller every year. I am running to say yes to the right things, and to say them with rules strong enough to keep us safe and clear enough to keep us growing."

"Keep Pulaski County open. Regulate with a steady hand. Finish what we started. That is not a slogan. That is the job." Mike Rushin, candidate for Pulaski County Judge

About Michael Rushin

Michael Rushin is a Republican candidate for Pulaski County Judge. His campaign, Rushin To Serve, is built on fiscal responsibility, clear communication, fair treatment, and practical service for every part of Pulaski County. Mike brings more than thirty years of real estate and property management experience to county government, along with a long record of civic service.

Early voting in the 2026 General Election begins October 19, 2026. Election Day is November 3, 2026. Learn more at rushintoserve.com, follow the campaign on Facebook at Rushin for Pulaski County Judge, or reach the campaign directly at (501) 410-5922 or rushintoserve@gmail.com.

Michael Rushin | Pulaski County Judge | 2026

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