The filing period hasn't even opened, yet this year's governor's race in Arkansas appears to be over.
At least that's the logical conclusion when you see how well, or how poorly, the various candidates for the job are doing when it comes to fundraising.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders is the fundraising queen, having increased her total haul to more than $12.8 million, including more than $1.6 million in the last quarter.
It's quite a campaign chest, particularly when compared to the Democrat whose fundraising comes closest to hers.
Chris Jones, the former head of the Arkansas Regional Innovation Hub, has raised more than $1.3 million for his bid. His campaign total is less than Sanders collected in the last quarter. No other active candidate for governor has more than $15,000 in donations.
Of course, Sanders is a former White House press secretary and a faithful
disciple to Donald Trump. Notably, her campaign reported recently that, of her 87,000 donors, nearly 11,000 are Arkansans.
She's also the daughter of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and earned her political chops working in his state and national campaigns as well as those of other Republicans around the country.
While her service as the White House press secretary left a lot to be desired, she has proven herself a skilled political operative.
She left the White House and moved back to Arkansas with her husband and three children. About this time a year ago, she'd announced her candidacy for her dad's old job.
Within a matter of weeks, Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin abandoned his own race for governor, opting instead to run for attorney general.
Attorney General Leslie Rutledge took a while longer; but she, too, eventually dropped her bid for governor. She's seeking the lieutenant governor's seat now.
With both out of this year's governor's race, it was just days before Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who is term-limited and ineligible for re-election, had endorsed Sanders. So did both of the state's U.S. senators, all four of the state's U.S. representatives and 101 state senators and representatives.
All of them are Republicans, a reflection of the grip that Republicans have on state and federal politics within Arkansas these days.
With that level of support from the state's political leadership, Sanders arguably doesn't need the kind of war chest she has amassed. But she has it and it continues to grow, thanks to those tens of thousands of out-of-state donors and the nearly 11,000 Arkansans.
What we don't know is what a Gov. Sanders would do in the office. She has no record of her own and has so far offered little detail on her plans, if elected.
Presumably, we'll get some of that in the general election campaign, even if campaign spending promises to be quite lopsided.
We'll know for sure who else might be in the race of governor when the filing period finally gets here. It opens Feb. 22 and closes March 1.
The primary election will be May 24, when Jones and three other Democrats -- Supha Xayprasith-Mays, James Russell III and Anthony Bland Sr. -- will presumably duke it out for that party's nomination. All four of the Democrats and Republican Sanders are from Little Rock.
Libertarian Ricky Dale Harrington Jr. of Pine Bluff has also announced for governor.
All those other people are likely to end up in the long list of also-ran candidates for governor, so great are the odds for Sanders not only to be the Republican nominee but also the next governor of Arkansas.
That leaves the state with actual contests developing for several other statehouse offices, some of which are surprisingly crowded.
We just won't know the lineups for sure until March 1.