Sarah Huckabee Sanders

Sarah Elizabeth Huckabee was born on August 13, 1982, in Little Rock, Arkansas. She is the youngest child and only daughter of Mike Huckabee and Janet Huckabee (née McCain), both politicians. She has two brothers, John Mark Huckabee and David Huckabee. After graduating from Little Rock Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, Huckabee attended Ouachita Baptist University (her father's alma mater) in Arkadelphia, Arkansas. She was elected student body president of the university and was active in Republican organizations. In 2004, she graduated from the university with a Bachelor of Arts degree, majoring in political science and minoring in mass communications.

Education

LEARNS Act

On March 8, 2023, Sanders signed her signature education reform bill, the "LEARNS Act", into law. The law includes a number of provisions that would expand school choice, raise teacher pay, and ban teaching critical race theory.

School choice expansion efforts included an Educational Freedom Account program that would expand access to school choice to all K-12 students after three years. The program provides up to 90% of the annual per-student public school funding rate for usage on education expenses, which includes private school tuition. It requires all participating schools to administer annual, state-approved testing, along with random annual audits of the participating schools' individual accounts. It includes provisions to remove limits on the number of charter schools, remove the 3% cap on school choice transfers unless a school district is under a desegregation order, and absorb the previously enacted Succeed Scholarship Program, which provided roughly $7,400 for disabled, foster, and military children.

The LEARNS Act also affects teacher pay and education policies. The state raised the starting teacher salary from $36,000 to $50,000 and required that teachers be paid at least $2,000 more for the 2023-24 school year, while eliminating the minimum salary increase schedule for teachers based on education level and experience. It created a fund to support minimum salary levels, but required school districts to use 80% of their funding allocated for salary increases before qualifying for state funding to support the increase; a provision was included allowing schools to apply for waivers of this policy if it would cause them to go into fiscal distress. LEARNS also repeals incentives for teacher recruitment in "high priority" districts and creates a Merit Teacher Incentive Fund that provides annual bonuses of up to $10,000 for eligible teachers based on merit performances.

The LEARNS Act repealed the Teacher Fair Dismissal Act and the Public School Employee Fair Hearing Act, instead changing policy to specify that employees have a right to notice of a recommendation for termination from the public school district and a hearing before the school board. Superintendents may no longer hire employees based on seniority or tenure, and instead must consider only performance and effectiveness. Other stipulations include requiring superintendents to consult with teachers before hiring a principal and allowing school boards to employ one or more assistant superintendents.

Provisions affecting student education and content include required literacy screenings for K-3 students and access to literacy coaches for K-3 students in D- and F-rated schools; students not meeting third-grade reading standards are to be held back from advancing to fourth grade the next year. Several prohibitions of content were implemented, including "indoctrination" or critical race theory, along with content that is sexually explicit or pertains to reproduction, gender identity, or sexual orientation before grade 5. Graduation criteria were changed, requiring students to have completed 75 hours of community service by the 2026-27 school year, allowing students to earn a diploma through a career-ready pathway rather than the traditional pathway, and allowing students in C- through F-rated schools to take courses not offered at their school elsewhere through the Course Choice Program.

Other LEARNS Act provisions include a 50/50 cost-sharing policy between the state and school districts that allows teachers to take 12 weeks of maternity leave, along with changes to the student loan repayment process for teachers. It also requires eligible postsecondary institutions to create an Arkansas Teacher Academy to encourage people to enter the teaching profession. School Transformation Contracts were also created, allowing public school districts with D or F ratings to be exempt from a state takeover if they instead partner with an open enrollment charter school or other State Board of Education-approved entity. Early childhood education is also addressed, with requirements for the relocation and creation of Early Childhood Education offices and systems into the Arkansas Department of Education.

On August 22, 2019, Fox News announced that Sanders would become a contributor to the network, effective September 6. During the December 2019 Democratic presidential debate, Sanders mocked Joe Biden's stutter on Twitter. She apologized the next day. Following the January 6 United States Capitol attack, the editor of Forbes warned corporations against hiring Sanders and other Trump "propagandists", writing, "Forbes will assume that everything your company or firm talks about is a lie."

2022 Arkansas gubernatorial election

On January 25, 2021, Sanders announced her candidacy for governor of Arkansas, an office her father, Mike Huckabee, held from 1996 to 2007. A day later, Trump endorsed Sanders, calling her "a warrior". On July 16, 2021, Sanders broke the Arkansas gubernatorial fundraising record by raising over $9 million. Running during the COVID-19 pandemic, she pledged not to implement any mask mandates or vaccine mandates. She also supported restrictions on abortion, saying that she would not support exceptions for rape and incest in anti-abortion legislation.

In October 2021, the Arkansas Law Notes published an article that called into question whether Sanders was even eligible to run for governor. The article centers on whether Sanders meets the State Constitution's residency requirement of seven years. Sanders handily won the Republican primary and defeated Democratic nominee Chris Jones in the general election. On November 9, 2022, it was announced that Sanders had won the race and would become Arkansas's first female governor and the first woman to be governor of a state where her father was governor.

Huckabee met Bryan Sanders during her father's 2008 presidential campaign. She was the campaign's field director, and Sanders was hired as a media consultant. The couple married in 2010. They have three children.

On June 22, 2018, a co-owner of a 26-seat restaurant in Lexington, Virginia, 200 miles (320 km) from Washington, D.C., asked Sanders to leave the restaurant because she worked for the Trump administration, giving rise to the Red Hen restaurant controversy.

Sanders was diagnosed with papillary thyroid cancer in September 2022. She had surgery to remove her thyroid and the surrounding lymph nodes.

In April 2024, Sanders joined the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Before entering politics as a candidate, Sanders served as a political consultant and a campaign insider. She was involved in her father's first campaign for the United States Senate in 1992. Describing the unsuccessful bid in an interview for The Hill, she said: "He didn't really have much of a staff, so our family has been very engaged and very supportive of my dad. I was stuffing envelopes, I was knocking on doors, I was putting up yard signs." Her father said of her childhood, "I always say that when most kids are seven or eight years old out jumping rope, she was sitting at the kitchen table listening to political commentators analyze poll results." Huckabee said that he and his wife spoiled Sarah at times. He called her "doggone tough" and "fearless" due to having grown up with two brothers. Sanders was a field coordinator for her father's 2002 reelection campaign for governor of Arkansas. She was a regional liaison for congressional affairs at the U.S. Department of Education under President George W. Bush, and worked as a field coordinator for Bush's reelection campaign in Ohio in 2004.

Sanders was a founding partner of Second Street Strategies in Little Rock, a general consulting services provider for Republican campaigns. She worked on national political campaigns and campaigns for federal office in Arkansas. Sanders was also vice president of Tsamoutales Strategies. She was national political director for her father's 2008 presidential campaign. After her father's 2008 campaign, she worked as executive director of Huck PAC, a political action committee. She was also a senior adviser to Tim Pawlenty in his 2012 presidential run. Sanders was involved in the campaigns of both U.S. senators from Arkansas, managing John Boozman's 2010 campaign and serving as a senior adviser to Tom Cotton's 2014 campaign.

In 2010, Sanders was named one of Time magazine's "40 under 40" in politics. She served for a period as the national campaign manager for the ONE Campaign, a global nonprofit founded by Irish musician Bono aimed at ending global poverty and preventable diseases. In 2016, after managing her father's presidential campaign, Sanders signed on as a senior adviser for Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and ran its communications for coalitions.

Spending controversy and freedom of information

In June 2023, Sanders's office purchased a custom-made lectern for $19,029.25. The Arkansas Republican Party later reimbursed the governor's office for the lectern several days after a Freedom of Information Act request for the purchasing documents was filed. An executive assistant was instructed to add the note "to be reimbursed" to the original invoice and leave the note undated. After substantial media coverage of the purchase, the Arkansas State Legislature began an audit. Sanders denied any impropriety and said she welcomed the audit.

The audit showed that the lectern was purchased from Beckett Events LLC, a Virginia-based company run by political consultant and lobbyist Virginia Beckett, for $11,575. Beckett charged $2,500 for a "consulting fee" and $2,200 for the road case. The remainder of the cost represented shipping, delivery, and a credit-card processing fee. Similar lectern models are listed online for $7,500 or less, while the purchased lectern had no microphone or electronic components aside from a light. Sanders said it had additional features that contributed to its cost, including a custom height. The audit also found that a staff member had contacted an Arkansas-based equipment dealer and received a quote for portable podiums ranging in cost from $800 to $1,500. After Sanders proposed to deny public access to certain gubernatorial records, she faced public pushback. She later signed a law limiting public access to information about her security detail and her travels.