Updated November 6, 2026, 6:53 a.m. ET
Sarah Huckabee Sanders is not one of those Republicans, many in states once known as red, who found themselves ousted from office in the midterm elections. But the freshly re-elected Arkansas governor has some thoughts on what went wrong within the GOP.
Was it President Donald Trump? It’s not her fault, she said.
“I think every race needs to be looked at independently, and the president, even though he remains the most influential voice in all of Republican politics — frankly, in all of politics — his name was not on the ballot,” she said in an exclusive interview with USA TODAY about her new book, “Unapologetic,” published Nov. 10 by St. Martin’s Press. “And so I don’t think that can be a line drawn against him.”
In fact, almost all independent analysts and a good portion of the Republican Party blame Trump for the losses that cost Republicans control of the House and Senate and the majority of governorships. Exit polls showed that dissatisfaction with the president, especially on economic issues, propelled Democratic victories in places as unlikely as Texas, Kansas and South Carolina.
But his defense puts Sanders — who served as Trump’s White House press secretary during his first term — squarely in Trump’s lane in the coming debate over the future of the Republican Party.
Even Vice President JD Vance struck a different tone in his post-mortem of the midterm elections, putting some distance between himself and his boss. “The reason we lost was the war” in Iran, Vance said in a lengthy message on the social network X the day after the election. “If you want to argue that it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do it.”
This is not an argument that Vance subsequently made. But Sanders did it.
“I’m grateful that we have a president who is willing to stand up and do sometimes what is not easy, what is not always politically practical, but is certainly in the best interest of the American people,” she said, noting Iran’s nuclear ambitions and support for terrorism. “I am grateful that we had a president willing to take on this responsibility” despite the “negative” economic consequences, including rising gas prices.
His father, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, is a key player in the administration’s Middle East policy as U.S. ambassador to Israel.
“The president continues to be the most influential voice, not only in the Republican Party but in all of politics,” she reiterated. “I don’t think that’s going to change any time soon.”
Start the debate.
Write a book, raise your hand
Just to be clear, writing a book touting your record and releasing it as a presidential campaign gets underway is generally considered a declaration of political ambition for bigger things.
Ask Jimmy Carter (“Why Not the Best?”) or Barack Obama (“The Audacity of Hope”), both of whom won their bids for the White House in 1976 and 2008, respectively. This year alone, books have sprouted from California Gov. Gavin Newsom (“Young Man in a Hurry”), Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (“Where We Keep the Light”) and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (“Go and Do the Same”).
Vance has one too. “Communion: Finding My Way to Faith,” published in June, tells the story of his spiritual journey to Catholicism.
The variety of Baptist faith is present in Sanders’ book, “Unapologetic: Clarity and Conviction in a World Gone Crazy.” She discusses the central importance of her faith in her personal and professional life.
She opens the book with an account of the shocking diagnosis of thyroid cancer in the middle of her first campaign for governor four years ago, and the successful 6 1/2-hour surgery to remove it. She defends her record in Arkansas on cutting taxes and revamping education, including improving student test scores. There are loving anecdotes about her husband, political consultant Bryan Sanders, and their three children, Scarlett, Huck and George.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders is, she notes, the first mother to serve as White House press secretary, the first woman to be elected governor of Arkansas and, at 44, the youngest governor in the country.
Would she like to add the first female president to her CV?
“I think everyone wants to rush into four years,” she responded with a laugh. “We’re not even four days after the last election. I’m going to continue to focus where it belongs, and that’s here at home, doing the job I was just elected to do.”
Which wasn’t really a denial.
Her response was also not the same when asked if she would commit to serving the four years of this new mandate.
“I certainly hope that I have no reason to do anything other than be governor for the next four years.”
Which wasn’t exactly a commitment.
Political DNA and taste for combat
She was 10 when her father, a Baptist preacher and radio host, first ran for governor of Arkansas and lost, later winning two terms.
When he ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, she worked as a national political director. Eight years later, she was successful in her second presidential bid. After a stint as a commentator on Fox News, she became Trump’s White House press secretary.
She shares her father’s uncompromising conservatism and his taste for political combat.
The midterm elections were “a tough night for Republicans,” she acknowledged, with the economy being “the main driver” of the results. “Anytime you go into a midterm and people feel that pressure, they tend to oppose the party in power.” Now, she said, Republicans should “make a very clear difference” with Democrats on economic and other issues.
“I think a lot of people in some of these states are going to have buyer’s remorse” about their new Democratic leaders, she predicted, “and we’ll see a change come back in ’28.”
Speaking about 2028, she also called Vance “definitely the frontrunner for the Republican nomination.”
There is no shortage of sons who have followed their fathers into governorships – among them the Sununus of New Hampshire, the Cuomos of New York, the Chafees of Rhode Island, the Beshears of Kentucky.
But Sanders is the first and so far only daughter to be elected governor of the same state as her father. (Kathleen Sebelius, daughter of Ohio Governor John Gilligan, was twice elected governor of her adopted state of Kansas.)
Being the nation’s youngest governor (a data point Sanders repeats nine times in his book) means she will be just 46 years old in the next presidential election, in 2028, and just 50 years old in the one after that, in 2032. That would be two years after the end of her second term, with Arkansas’ term limits preventing a third.
Just to be clear.
Gn headline
