Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who served as White House press secretary during the Trump presidency, will announce Monday (Jan. 25) that she will run for governor of Arkansas in a race that is one of the first tests in the battle for the future of the Republican Party.
The Washington Post first reported on Sanders’ plans. A senior Republican source who will attend her launch on Monday confirmed her plans to “The Hill.
Sanders is the daughter of former Arkansas Republican Gov. Mike Huckabee, who served as former President Trump’s White House press secretary for nearly two years.
Sanders plans to release a video at 8 a.m. Monday to officially announce her candidacy, according to sources familiar with her plans.
On June 13, 2019, then-President Trump tweeted to announce that White House press secretary Sarah Sanders would be leaving at the end of the month and encouraged her to run for governor of Arkansas.
Trump said at the Time, “She is a very special person with extraordinary talent and has done an incredible job! I hope she decides to run for governor of Arkansas, she’ll be great. Sara, thank you, well done!”
Sanders is running in a competitive Republican primary to replace incumbent Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson, who is facing term limits after eight years in office and is stepping down. Sanders will challenge Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin (R) and Attorney General Leslie Rutledge (R), both of whom have said they will run.
Arkansas is becoming more conservative by the day, and Sanders may plan to consolidate Trump’s base. Griffin has served as a congressman and is a more typical Republican. Before running for office, he worked in President George W. Bush’s White House, where he was a protégé of Bush strategist Karl Rove.
Although Arkansas has a long history of electing Democratic governors, Hutchinson and Mike Huckabee are the only two Republican governors in the state’s history to have served eight years as governor. But the state has become increasingly Republican-leaning in recent years.
Trump won 62 percent of the vote in Arkansas in the 2020 presidential election, while Hutchinson won a second term with 65 percent of the vote in 2018.
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