Leslie Rutledge wasn't the first Republican to bow out of Arkansas' 2022 governor's race.
The state's attorney general, term limited and looking for a new job, entered the field in July 2020, then joining Tim Griffin, another state official facing essentially the same employment predicament.
Both of these people had sought and served in lesser state offices awaiting their chance to run for governor. Term limits kicked in and each will be out of their current offices come January 2022. So, they each made the move this year announcing for governor.
Both have had to rethink their plans.
Griffin, the lieutenant governor, was the first Republican to announce for the governor's office and, as it turned out, the first to abandon the 2022 race.
Griffin announced his gubernatorial bid way back in August 2019. He was out of the race by February this year.
The reason for both Griffin and Rutledge's departures has a name: Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who got into the 2022 governor's race in late January.
Sanders is the daughter of former Gov. Mike Huckabee. Long a skilled political operative for her father and other candidates, she is also a former press secretary to the former president, Donald Trump.
Trump famously touted her potential as the next governor of Arkansas even as she was leaving the White House.
She did indeed move home and set her sights on the governor's office.
Just a couple of weeks into the race, Sanders was already building up a formidable campaign chest when Griffin decided he should try instead for the attorney general's job that Rutledge must give up.
He will face another Republican, Leon Jones, former executive director of the Arkansas Fair Housing Commission, in that primary race.
Notably, Sanders' campaign chest had grown substantially larger and polling was decidedly in Sanders' favor by the time Rutledge announced she'd be running for lieutenant governor instead of governor.
At last report from the Sanders campaign, she had raised more money than any other candidate ever has for an Arkansas governor's race, something north of $11 million from 76,500 donors. That was as of the end of the third quarter. Rutledge had raised something more than $1.6 million in that time frame.
By the end of October, Sanders released polling reporting that she held a 57-point lead in the state's GOP primary against Rutledge. Poll respondents favored Sanders to Rutledge 73 percent to 16 percent with 11 percent undecided.
The poll, conducted by Remington Research Group of likely Republican primary voters, also reported Sanders is viewed favorably by 78 percent of Republicans in the state.
Less than two weeks later, Rutledge was facing reality about her gubernatorial chances and charting a different political course for herself. This time, she jumped into the lieutenant governor's race with five other Republicans.
She had proclaimed during her bid for governor that she wasn't going to switch races.
"After working a full-time job with a staff of 180 people, I'd be bored with a part-time job and a staff of two," Rutledge said, comparing her attorney general's job to the mostly ceremonial lieutenant governor's office she now seeks.
The statement has already come back to haunt her from amid the five other Republicans seeking the office: state Sen. Jason Rapert of Conway, former state Republican Party Chairman Doyle Webb of Benton, state Surgeon General Greg Bledsoe of Little Rock, Washington County Judge Joseph Wood of Fayetteville and Chris Bequette of Little Rock, a businessman.
After each switched races, both Griffin and Rutledge pledged their support to Sanders. So, too, has virtually every significant Republican in the state.
Once she was the only Republican in the race, Sanders was already the presumptive nominee. After this string of endorsements, no other Republican will dare to challenge her.
U.S. Sens. John Boozman and Tom Cotton signed on Nov. 10, then Gov. Asa Hutchinson and all four of the state's U.S. representatives on Nov. 12. Then 101 state lawmakers -- all 26 Republican senators and 75 of the GOP House members -- added their endorsements on Nov. 18.
It's a pretty good bet Sanders won't see any serious opposition from within the party, even though the filing deadline for party primaries is still months away.
Sanders is a lock for the Republican nomination for governor, come the May 24 Arkansas primaries next year. Less certain is how Griffin and Rutledge will fare in their bids to return to the statehouse, even if not in the role either had really wanted.
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Next week: A look at how the Democratic primary is shaping up.