How Popular Is Sarah Sanders? Former WH Spokeswoman Makes Bid For Governor

Riling against the “radical left,” former White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders announced she’s running for governor of Arkansas next year. Her popularity among supporters of her old boss, former President Donald Trump, could determine her fate.

Sanders, the daughter of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, told her estimated 700,000 followers on Twitter on Monday that she is running for the highest seat in her home state.

“With the radical left now in control of Washington, your governor is your last line of defense,” she said. “As governor, I will defend our right to be free of socialism and tyranny, your Second Amendment right to keep your family safe and your freedom of speech and religious liberty.”

Her father, also a Republican and a former presidential candidate and talk show host for FOX News, has an estimated 1.6 million followers on Twitter.

Sanders has never run for public office, but she served alongside her father as an advisor for his failed Senate bid in 1992, in his role as governor (1996-2007), and in his failed bid for the presidency in 2016. She served as a press spokesperson for Trump from 2017 to 2019 before stepping down.

It was widely rumored that she’d run for governor when she left the podium. From his now-deleted account on Twitter, Trump previously said he hoped Sanders would run for governor. She boasts “extraordinary talents” and would be a “fantastic” governor, he said in June 2019.

As the tone in her announcement makes clear, she’s remains an ardent supporter of the former president, serving as a mouth piece of sorts on cable news outlets after she left the White House. Her harsh rhetoric as Trump’s press secretary suggests she’ll maintain a conservative theme on the campaign trail.

“The radical left is now running the show in Washington and hardworking Americans are paying the price,” she said from her Twitter account last week. She was vocal, however, in her outrage over the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, unrest that saw articles of impeachment filed against Trump.

Gallup News in 2018 found Sanders enjoyed a generally favorable view despite her frequent clashes with the press, although parsing the data shows her support draws largely from those responders identifying as Republican. In general, 41% of those surveyed held a positive view of Sanders, but only 14% of those identifying as Democrats shared that sentiment.

Arkansas and its six votes in the Electoral College went to Trump in the last election. The last time the state voted for a Democratic presidential candidate was in 1996, when it went to former Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton. But for nearly 100 years prior to 1968, the state went consistently for a Democrat, data show.

Over the last half-century of election cycles for governor, Arkansas voters picked a Democrat more often than not. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican who currently holds the governorship, has been in office since 2015. He is ineligible to run again because of term limits.