Sarah Huckabee Sanders announces gubernatorial campaign

Former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders formally announced on Monday that she will run for governor of Arkansas. 

In a video message posted to her campaign website, Sanders invoked threats made against her life during her time in the Trump administration in an appeal to voters in the deeply red state. 

“To remain free, we must have law and order and resolve our differences peacefully,” Sanders said. “The radical left’s solution is to impose government control and censorship from the top down.” 

Sanders, a Republican whose father was governor of the state, told Arkansans their governor is a “last line of defense” with Democrats taking control of the White House and Senate in recent elections. 

“As governor, I will defend your right to be free of socialism and tyranny, your Second Amendment right, your freedom of speech and religious liberty,” she said. 

The Hill first reported Sanders’s plans to run for governor on Sunday evening. 

Sanders served as former President Trump’s press secretary for more than two years, often sparring with journalists during sometimes combative briefings. 

“I took on the media, the radical left and their cancel culture, and I won,” Sanders said in her campaign launch announcement. “As governor, I will be your voice and never let them silence you.” 

She will join a Republican primary field in a race to replace Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who is ineligible to run again after eight years in office. Both the state’s Republican attorney general and lieutenant governor have announced they will also run.

Sanders touted Trump’s achievements and pledged to mirror his agenda if elected to the state’s top executive office. 

“My opponents will do everything in their power to destroy me,” Sanders said. “But I will not apologize for who I am or who I am fighting for … I will not bow down to the radical left. Not now. Not ever.”