GOP Sarah Huckabee Sanders Wins 2nd Term as Arkansas Governor

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) secured a second term in office Tuesday, defeating Democrat Fredrick Love.

The Associated Press (AP) declared Sanders the winner at 9:40 p.m. Tuesday. With an estimated 84 percent of votes counted, Sanders had received 54.0 percent of the vote, or 391,750 votes, compared with Love’s 38.5 percent, or 279,742 votes. Libertarian Colt Shelby received 7.5 percent, or 54,429 votes.

Sanders, who was first elected governor in 2022, previously served as White House press secretary under President Donald Trump. She joined the administration in 2017 as deputy press secretary under Sean Spicer before succeeding him that July. During her tenure, Sanders frequently defended Trump in exchanges with reporters, including CNN’s Jim Acosta, and criticized media coverage of his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. At a November 2018 Trump rally in Indiana, Sanders emphasized her role as a mother, saying, “The greatest job that I’ll ever have, the greatest title I’ll ever have, is that of a mom. That’s why I work for this President.”

In October 2023, Sanders signed an executive order prohibiting gender-neutral terms such as “pregnant people,” “laboring person,” and “birth giver” from appearing in state government documents. “We’ve had enough,” Sanders said, citing efforts to “erase women and girls” and deny biological differences between men and women. “Today, we’re taking a stand against woke nonsense,” she added, arguing that the terminology had spread into corporations, health care, and government. The order came after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Rep. James McGovern (D-MA) proposed House rules in 2021 eliminating gendered terms such as “father,” “mother,” “son,” and “daughter.”

In 2023, Sanders moved to establish a conservative majority on the Arkansas Supreme Court for the first time in its history by nominating former U.S. Attorney J. Cody Hiland to fill a vacancy following the death of Justice Robin Wynne.

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