Former White House press secretary Sarah Sanders won the Republican nomination for Arkansas governor on Tuesday after a campaign where she focused primarily on national issues and criticized President Joe Biden.
Sanders will face the Democratic nominee in November. In the deeply red state, she will almost certainly prevail in the general election, and a victory would mean her inauguration on January 10, 2023.
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Sanders soundly defeated former talk radio host and podcaster Doc Washburn, who mounted a long-shot bid for the GOP nomination in the primary. Nuclear engineer and ordained minister Chris Jones will face Sanders after defeating four other Democrats seeking the party’s nomination for governor Tuesday.
Sanders was endorsed by her former boss, former President Donald Trump, and shattered fundraising records since entering the race last year. Sanders, the daughter of former Gov. Mike Huckabee, blanketed the state with ads going after Biden on issues like inflation and vowing to fight the “radical left.”
“As governor, I will say no to Biden and the radical left’s agenda,” Sanders says in one of her TV ads.
Sanders, accompanied by her husband and three children, cast her ballot in Little Rock shortly after polls opened Tuesday.
“I think paying attention to the bad policies and the failures of the Biden administration and the impact that they have on our state is critically important,” she said Tuesday morning.
“If they continue to fail the way that they have and they continue to, I think, put states in a difficult position, then absolutely, we’re going to call them out and we’re going to continue to talk about that.”
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During Sanders’ nearly two-year tenure at the White House, she scaled back daily televised briefings after repeatedly sparring with liberal reporters who aggressively questioned her. But she also earned reporters’ respect by working behind the scenes to develop relationships with the media.
Jones launched his campaign for the Democratic nomination last year with a video that quickly went viral and contrasted with Sanders’ rhetoric.
“I wasn’t born into politics,” Jones said in a recent TV ad. “My parents raised me to care about people.”
Jones won over 70 percent of the Democratic vote to defeat educator Anthony Bland, former state Rep. Jay Martin, mental health clinic operator James “Rus” Russell, and small-business owner Supha Xayprasith-Mays in Tuesday’s primary.
The candidates are running to succeed Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who is barred from seeking reelection because of term limits and is considering a run for president in 2024. Hutchinson endorsed Sanders’ bid after her two chief rivals for the nomination, Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin and Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, dropped out to run for other offices.
Trump publicly encouraged Sanders to run for governor when she left the White House in 2019 to return to her home state.
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Sanders was already well known in Arkansas politics, going back to when she appeared in ads for her father’s campaigns. She managed Sen. John Boozman’s 2010 campaign and worked as an adviser to Sen. Tom Cotton’s in 2014. She’s appeared in ads endorsing Boozman’s reelection bid as he fended off challenges in Tuesday’s primary.
Sanders ran on a promise to phase out the state’s income tax, though she’s stopped short of giving a timeline for doing so or offering details on how she’d pay for the loss in revenue.
Before jumping into the governor’s race, Jones headed the Arkansas Regional Innovation Hub, a nonprofit that helps entrepreneurs. He has dubbed his platform “PB&J,” which he says stands for preschool, broadband, and jobs.
Polly Harper, a 77-year-old retiree from Little Rock, cited Sanders’ experience at the White House as a reason she backed her in the GOP primary.
“I think she was competent, she was cool-headed,” Harper said before casting her ballot. “She was conservative. She just didn’t get flustered. She was level-headed and responsible.”
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Donna Chachere, a systems developer from Little Rock, said she voted for Jones in the Democratic primary because she felt like he would have the best chance in the fall.
“Even if his numbers are a little significant, maybe next time it would encourage more to vote outside the traditional politician here in Arkansas,” she said.
The Associated Press contributed to this article