After graduating from Ouachita Baptist University in 2004, I accepted a job in the Bush administration. Like most recent college grads new to Washington, DC, I moved there ready to change the world. I quickly found out the most I’d be changing in my early days at the Department of Education were coffee filters and other people’s schedules, but I loved it anyway. I lived with my brother John Mark, who worked for Arkansas’s only Republican congressman, John Boozman, and managed to scrape by on a low income in one of America’s most expensive cities, thanks in part to my dad regularly buying my dinner when he was in town as chairman of the National Governors Association.
Midway through President George W. Bush’s second term I called my dad. He was considering making a run for president and I told him he should let me run his political operation. The Republican nomination in 2008 was wide open, but the field included some well-known and well-funded potential candidates: Senator John McCain (AZ), former governor Mitt Romney (MA), former mayor Rudy Giuliani (NY), Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (TN), and Senator George Allen (VA), to name a few. In 2006, my dad had been governor for a decade, but had very little name recognition or a fund-raising base outside of Arkansas. I didn’t care. I knew my dad would make a better candidate and better president than anybody else and I believed I could help him win. After two years in Washington, I returned home to Arkansas.
It was tough going at first. We focused on Arkansas donors we had long-standing relationships with to give to my dad’s political action committee (PAC) and fund his travel—mostly to Iowa, the first-in-the-nation caucus state. In those early days in 2006, I was the only full-time staffer for the PAC. I was twenty-four years old, but I was my dad’s scheduler, driver, advance team, digital director, press secretary, political director, and of course, his daughter. I was working more hours in a day than I ever had, but having the time of my life. After several months we raised enough funds to start hiring a staff. One of our first hires was Chip Saltsman to be the campaign manager. Chip was the former chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s political consultant, until Frist unexpectedly decided not to run for president. Chip was nothing like my dad. He was a hard-charging, foul-mouthed, dip-chewing, blue-blooded southerner, but he turned out to be exactly what we needed. Chip pushed my dad when he didn’t want to be pushed, said no when others around him were afraid to, but ultimately and most importantly let my dad be himself. Chip rubbed some people the wrong way. They didn’t like his direct and often abrasive approach, but he and I worked well together, and he was a strong leader for our team.
The Iowa straw poll in the summer of 2007 was the first big test for the Republican candidates for president. My dad needed a strong finish there or our money was going to dry up. He had a few breakout moments in the early debates, but our campaign attracted a tiny fraction of the money, staff, endorsements, and media attention of other candidates. In the months leading up to the straw poll we relocated most of our small staff to Iowa. Our campaign was so strapped for cash we piled everybody into low-rent apartments off the interstate in Des Moines, where our neighbors were mostly migrant farmworkers. I lived in a two-bedroom, one-bath apartment with seven guys. Thankfully I had one of the two bedrooms to myself, while the seven guys shared the other bedroom and alternated shifts between the couch and the blow-up mattress in the living room. The blow-up mattress had a hole in it, so the guys would bring home bumper stickers every night from the office to plug the hole. It never worked. Every morning, whoever slept on the blow-up mattress woke up to find himself lying on the floor—the mattress once again deflated. But we made the most of a bad situation. We got up early and worked hard all day toward one goal: getting Iowans to the straw poll for my dad.
In the summer of 2007, we barnstormed Iowa in the personal RV of one of our friends from Texas. My dad was able to eat, sleep, do interviews, make donor calls, and prep for events in the RV, which allowed us to do a half-dozen or more events every day. We generally held events in people’s homes or the Pizza Ranch. Every town in Iowa had a Pizza Ranch, and every Pizza Ranch had cheap pizza and a free private room to do events. We’d do our best to turn ten or twenty people out, but if nobody showed up, there were always folks already there willing to listen to my dad for free pizza, which guaranteed he’d never have to speak to an empty room. The Pizza Ranch is now a hot spot on the Iowa political circuit, but we were doing it before it was cool!
Straw poll day in August 2007 finally arrived. Governor Mitt Romney was the clear front-runner in Iowa, after dumping millions of dollars into paid advertising, staff, and organization. Romney was a good husband and father, a successful businessman, had turned around the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, and was elected governor of Massachusetts, a blue state. He had a compelling story to tell and a lot of money to tell it. Senator John McCain and former mayor Rudy Giuliani conceded Iowa to Romney, focusing instead on New Hampshire and later states on the primary calendar. The real fight in the Iowa straw poll was for second place—to be the main alternative to Romney in the upcoming caucus.
The other contenders in the straw poll spent millions of dollars on big, professionally catered parties and popular bands to draw crowds to their tents in the parking lot of the Hilton Coliseum arena at Iowa State University. Our operation was more church potluck than presidential campaign, led by a ragtag army of young staffers and volunteers who believed in my dad. We found our food vendor at a street festival in Des Moines one Saturday morning—a couple of guys who made barbeque sandwiches from the back of their pickup truck. My brother David and my lifelong friend Chris Caldwell chopped Hope watermelons with machetes for dessert. David was my protective older brother and someone I loved to be around who could always make me laugh. He was a key part of my dad’s success in nearly everything he’s done since leaving the governorship. Chris Caldwell’s dad, Rick, was my dad’s roommate in college. Chris and I had worked together on many campaigns and he is one of my first calls when I need help. He has a larger-than-life personality and is someone I can always count on. Our entertainment was my dad’s band—Capitol Offense—featuring former staffers from the governor’s office. Our tent was loaned to us by a family friend and our tables were collected from garages of volunteers from the Des Moines area. My Aunt Pat, her husband, Jim, and my cousin Katie Beth, along with other family friends, drove up from Arkansas to run the check-in tables. The other campaigns spent hundreds of thousands of dollars renting buses to bring their supporters from all over the state to Ames for the event. We couldn’t afford buses, but heard that many of the Sam Brownback for President campaign buses were empty, so we told our supporters to take a free ride on them instead.
The candidates delivered their speeches in the arena and Iowans cast their votes. The moment of truth arrived and just as everyone expected, Romney won. But out of nowhere and to the surprise of the media, my dad finished second. It was the story of the night. I will never forget the media surrounding my dad in the arena after the results were announced. It was surreal to watch reporters largely ignore Romney, the winner, and focus instead on my dad, the runner-up.
We returned to Arkansas to map out the next couple of months, focus on fund-raising, and lay out our strategy for winning the Iowa caucus. We needed someone in Iowa to manage the day-to-day operations and our team, so Chip asked me to come off the road with my dad and run Iowa. I accepted on one condition—I wasn’t going to live with seven guys anymore and needed my own apartment. He agreed and off I went to Iowa full-time in September 2007 to manage my dad’s caucus campaign.
After our better-than-expected straw poll finish, my dad was still the underdog in Iowa. Romney was spending an unprecedented amount of money on paid advertising and organization and we couldn’t keep up. It was David versus Goliath, but the momentum was slowly shifting in our favor. A key turning point was the launch of our first TV ad in Iowa, featuring Chuck Norris.
The Chuck Norris ad, produced by my dad’s longtime media consultant Bob Wickers, opened with a narrator who said, “An important policy message from Governor Mike Huckabee,” and then cut to my dad and Chuck Norris together.
“My plan to secure the border? Two words: Chuck. Norris,” said my dad.
“Mike Huckabee is a lifelong hunter, who’ll protect our Second Amendment rights,” said Chuck.
“There’s no chin behind Chuck Norris’s beard, only another fist.”
“Mike Huckabee wants to put the IRS out of business.”
“When Chuck Norris does a push-up he isn’t lifting himself up, he’s pushing the earth down.”
“Mike’s a principled, authentic conservative.”
“Chuck Norris doesn’t endorse. He tells America how it’s gonna be. I’m Mike Huckabee and I approve this message. So did Chuck.…”
The ad ended with Chuck Norris punching his fist into the camera as he says, “Chuck Norris approved.”
I know I’m biased, but “Chuck Norris approved” was the best ad of the 2008 presidential campaign. The only problem was we had no real money to put behind it. Thankfully, the ad went viral, getting millions of views online, and the cable TV news networks did our job for us rebroadcasting it again and again for free. My dad’s campaign—outspent at least 10:1 by the Romney campaign in Iowa—started getting attention, raising more money online and surging in the polls.
The Romney campaign took notice, and launched an onslaught of negative ads in Iowa attacking my dad as a liberal. My dad responded with a positive ad titled “Believe.” He said, “Faith doesn’t just influence me, it really defines me. I don’t have to wake up every day wondering ‘what do I need to believe?’”
My dad didn’t mention Romney’s name in the ad and didn’t have to. Most Republicans in Iowa and across the country by that point knew that Romney—despite his impressive record in business and saving the Winter Olympics—had flip-flopped on nearly every major issue during the campaign. At one point Romney even proclaimed himself to be “a lifelong hunter,” only to later admit he’d only hunted “varmints” once or twice as a kid. When asked about it my dad said, “That would be like me claiming to be a ‘lifelong golfer’ because I played putt-putt a couple of times.” Romney was trying to be someone he wasn’t, and that hardly ever works in politics—or in life, for that matter.
The tide was turning in Iowa, and in the weeks leading up to the caucus, polls showed the race to be a dead heat. The Iowa caucus was scheduled for January 3, 2008, but with the race so close, some of our team decided not to go home for Christmas. Instead we stayed in Iowa and worked through the holidays to be prepared for when my dad and the other staff returned. As the candidate’s daughter no one expected me to stay, but I was the leader of the team and there was no way I was going to abandon my team in Iowa away from their families on Christmas. My parents told me to come home. I ignored them and instead helped organize a Christmas dinner at the guys’ apartment (they had a working TV, I didn’t). We went to a Christmas Eve service at a nearby church, drew names for gifts with a $20 limit, and all made something to bring to dinner. It was the first and only Christmas I spent away from my family, but it’s one I will always cherish. We crowded into a tiny apartment without a kitchen table, exchanged one gift each, and drank cheap champagne—laughing, telling stories, and missing our families.
That evening Chip landed in Des Moines and I picked him up at the airport. It was late on Christmas night and the only place open was IHOP. We went there and over pancakes I gave him a status report and the plan for the next few days ahead of the caucus. It wasn’t the Christmas I was used to but that didn’t matter. Christmas isn’t about the big meal, the gifts, or the family traditions, but the loving sacrifice of our Creator.
On caucus night, our staff and volunteers deployed all across Iowa. Chuck Norris attended one of the biggest caucus locations in the state to speak on my dad’s behalf before votes were cast. A woman approached Chuck with tears in her eyes and said, “I’m a Mike Huckabee supporter. For months I’ve been asking my husband to join me at the caucus to vote for Mike Huckabee, but he stayed home tonight to watch Walker, Texas Ranger instead.” We all had a good laugh at that poor man’s expense.
My parents were in Blackhawk County in the eastern part of the state. The votes were coming in fast and it was time for my dad to be back in Des Moines, but there was a massive snowstorm, and their car got stuck. They flagged down a kid in a pickup truck to take them to the airport. In the air with no cell service, the AP called Iowa for my dad—a decisive nine-point victory and a tremendous upset that shocked the media and political establishment. As soon as my parents landed we called and delivered the good news and they came straight to our victory party where I met them at the back entrance. We embraced in a huge celebratory hug, and for a brief moment we were on top of the world.
In the weeks leading up to the caucus hundreds of volunteers poured in from all over the country. Two of the volunteers joined us from Senator Sam Brownback’s office in Washington. They drove to Iowa during the Senate’s winter recess to help for a few weeks. I had not met either of them, but had heard positive things, including from my brother David. He told me if we won Iowa, we would need more staff and these two would be good to add to the team. We didn’t have any money to pay them so I didn’t think much about it until the next day when these two guys walked into my office and asked me what I needed them to do. They were both pretty good-looking and one of them caught my attention right away. My brother was right—they would DEFINITELY be a good addition to the team!
After my dad won Iowa, we hired both and nicknamed them K1 and K2 (short for Kansas 1 and Kansas 2). K1 and I became friends right away. As the campaign’s national political director, I was responsible for the travel schedule so of course that meant I assigned K1 to all the same places I’d go. One night during a freezing cold stop in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a few staffers and reporters traveling with us walked to a hole-in-the-wall neighborhood bar close to the hotel. After dinner and a few Pabst Blue Ribbons, K1—always the perfect gentleman—walked me back to the hotel and right there in the lobby looked me in the eye and said, “This is going to happen, but you first need to break up with your boyfriend.” I was taken aback, but liked his confidence, so the next day I did exactly that.
After Iowa, my dad won seven other states, but as we approached the Texas primary, Senator McCain had built a substantial lead in the delegate count. Texas, with its massive haul of delegates, became a must-win state for my dad. The polls in Texas weren’t looking good, and the team was down. In Houston during a rally, I drove to a famous pie shop and ordered thirty pies for our staff and volunteers. I picked up the pies, but needed to quickly get back to the campaign bus, or I would miss my ride to the airport to fly out with my dad to the next rally. I was driving way too fast and got pulled over. The police officer approached the car, and I said, “Officer, please forgive me. This is a rental car. I have no driver’s license or insurance on me, but I do have thirty pies that I need to get to Governor Mike Huckabee and Chuck Norris right away.” The story was so preposterous the officer let me go without a ticket and even gave me an escort back to the rally site in exchange for a picture with my dad and Chuck.
Days later Senator McCain clinched the nomination in Texas. We’d lost the race and I’d lost my job in a matter of hours. I went back to an empty and quiet house in Little Rock. My phone wasn’t ringing, I wasn’t buried in emails. I was no longer in the center of the political universe. In the blink of an eye it was all over.
K1 moved back to Kansas City, six hours from Little Rock, and I had no idea if it was going to work out. But K1 was determined. After a few months of long-distance dating, K1—also known by his real name, Bryan Sanders—realized he couldn’t spend another day apart from me. He packed all his belongings including his big, wild black Lab Slugger into his black Chevy Tahoe and moved to Little Rock. Bryan fell in love with me and the South, and adopted everything from bourbon and grits to Razorback football and duck hunting. As the next summer approached, Bryan and I planned a big party to bring together our friends and family from across the country for the first time at his family’s ranch in Kansas.
The Pottawattamie Ranch has been in the Sanders family for more than half a century. An hour’s drive south of Kansas City, the ranch is where four generations of the Sanders family enjoyed weekends and holidays and celebrated birthdays, graduations, and weddings. It’s where Bryan learned to hunt and fish and drive a truck, and he loves talking about the history of the place.
The entrance to the ranch is just outside of Lane, Kansas (population 227). As you pull into the long gravel driveway, there’s a beautiful old rock farmhouse that was built by the abolitionist Judge James Hanway during “Bleeding Kansas”—a violent struggle between free state and pro-slavery forces that preceded the Civil War. Across from the farmhouse is a red-roofed barn, and beyond it, rolling hills of tall prairie grass rising up to woods and down a ravine to the Pottawattamie River. There on the banks of the Pottawattamie River early in the morning of May 25, 1856, is where militant abolitionist John Brown—given safe haven on the property by Judge Hanway—brutally murdered five pro-slavery men in retaliation for the pro-slavery forces’ attack on Lawrence, Kansas, a few nights before. John Brown’s “Pottawattamie Massacre” deeply divided the nation—he was a hero to many in the North, but a wanted villain in the South. Brown, a Christian who had memorized the Bible, said, “I have only a short time to live, only one death to die, and I will die fighting for this cause. There will be no peace in this land until slavery is done for.” On October 18, 1859, John Brown was captured at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, trying to ignite an armed slave revolt. Lieutenant colonel and future general Robert E. Lee led the counterassault. In his final words before his execution—attended by John Wilkes Booth—Brown wrote: “I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.” His words were prophetic. Less than two years later the Civil War—America’s bloodiest—began.
In the summer of 2009, I had to remind Bryan to focus less on John Brown and more on getting ready for our guests flying in for our “Party on the Pottawattamie.” Bryan and I know how to throw a party and this weekend was no exception. We made “Party on the Pottawattamie” shirts and cups, opened the pool, smoked barbeque, and had enough guns and four-wheelers and music and cold beverages to keep everyone entertained. On Saturday, Bryan said a few of his friends had forgotten some fishing gear at one of the ponds, and asked me to drive with him to go clean up. When he passed by the pond and kept going into one of the fields, I knew something was going on. The first thing that crossed my mind—having not yet taken a shower and wearing a dirty T-shirt and no makeup—was Oh dear God, please don’t let this be the moment he proposes to me!
As Bryan drove us through the field toward a big oak tree on a hill overlooking the old rock farmhouse, he told me about the importance of this ranch to his family. He stopped the truck and there under the big oak tree was a blanket and bottle of champagne. We got out of the truck and he got down on one knee and said, “Sarah, I love you with all my heart and always will—unconditionally. Will you marry me?” I said yes, we kissed, and Bryan fired off the champagne cork into the tall prairie grass next to the tree. I explained to him that I actually wanted to keep that cork, so Bryan spent the first ten minutes of our engagement hunting through the tall grass for it. Little did I know our forty or so friends and family down at the farmhouse—who had known all along about Bryan’s plan to propose that weekend—had been watching from a distance with binoculars. Their initial reaction to seeing Bryan stomp around in the grass was that I must have said no. For the next hour as we laughed, talked about our future, and drank champagne under the big oak tree, our friends and family were in a state of panic, questioning whether they would need to change their flights and go home early. We returned to the farmhouse and shared the good news, to their great relief, and had a beautiful night celebrating under the stars in the clear Kansas sky.
A few years later, a thunderstorm blew through Lane, Kansas, and lightning struck the field Bryan proposed to me in, setting it ablaze. After the fire burned out, in the midst of the devastation, our big oak tree was still standing.
Bryan and I got married on May 25, 2010—my parents’ anniversary—on Saint John, US Virgin Islands, in the funky little town of Cruz Bay that Kenny Chesney sings about. My dad performed the wedding at a tiny old church, which had no air-conditioning, on what turned out to be a scorching hot day. In front of our fifty or so family and close friends, I walked down the aisle with my dad toward Bryan. He had on a full tux I’d made him wear and my first thought was, Is he going to die of heat exhaustion at the altar? I had never seen a man sweat like that before! I probably should have been concerned about his safety, but at the time I was mostly just annoyed that he was going to ruin all of our wedding pictures! The only break from the unbearable heat and humidity that day was a big rainstorm that forced us to abandon our plans to have a seated candlelight dinner in the gorgeous open-air sugar mill ruins at Caneel Bay (one reason I chose to do my wedding in Saint John in the first place) and instead move the dinner and party inside the resort. I wasn’t happy, but everyone else was thrilled to be indoors with air-conditioning. After the party, Bryan and I said good-bye to our family and friends and escaped to our bungalow on the beach and decided to go for a swim. Once we were in the clear Caribbean water under the moonlit sky I remembered why we chose this beautiful destination for the biggest day of our lives. But this moment of romantic bliss was abruptly interrupted when Bryan said, “Um … Sarah … I may have just lost my ring.” He turned and ran back to our bungalow and came back with two flashlights. As we stood there in our bathing suits on our wedding night with flashlights in hand desperately searching for Bryan’s lost ring, our guests descended on the beach for the after-party. Knowing he’d never hear the end of it from his friends, Bryan said, “Sarah, don’t you dare say a word about the ring,” to which I replied, “And what exactly would you like me to say? That we’re just out for a crab hunt on our wedding night?” Within minutes dozens of our wedding guests had joined us in the water with flashlights. The after-party was now a search party. We didn’t find the ring, and the next morning Bryan had to explain to my dad—who had talked at length at our wedding ceremony the night before about the significance of the rings—that he’d already lost his! My mom spent the entire next day in snorkel gear trying to find it but she didn’t have any luck either. So off we went on our honeymoon in Saint Lucia, a ring on my hand and nothing on his, where I had to explain to everyone we met that “Yes, this is my husband. We’re on our honeymoon. Don’t be alarmed he’s not wearing a ring—he lost it on our wedding night.”
After the honeymoon, Bryan and I returned to the States, but to different ones. No, I didn’t divorce him! Bryan went to Alabama where he was the campaign manager, pollster, and media consultant for Robert Bentley, and led Bentley’s campaign to a shocking come-from-behind upset victory to win the governorship. I went back home to Arkansas where I was campaign manager for John Boozman in his race against incumbent Democratic US senator Blanche Lincoln, the chair of the Agriculture Committee. John Boozman was a late entry to the 2010 Senate race—seven other Republican candidates had already announced and been running their campaigns for months. But Boozman was a popular and well-respected congressman from the most Republican part of the state. His family and mine had been close for years and there was no question that we’d be supporting him. Earlier in the year John had asked me to run his campaign and I told him I couldn’t because I was getting married in a few months. In fact if he didn’t get a majority of the vote in the eight-candidate Republican primary, he’d be forced into a runoff and I would have to be gone for nearly two weeks in the middle of it for our wedding and honeymoon. He assured me it would be fine and I agreed, joking that I would only do it if he would work hard enough to avoid a runoff.
We went to work and assembled a great team. One of my best hires was a kid from Texas referred to me by Jim Terry, a seasoned Washington political operative who volunteered on my dad’s presidential campaign and became a friend. We loved Jim. He became such good friends with our crew that he relocated permanently from Washington to Little Rock and ended up being our next-door neighbor. I’ll never forget the first call I had with the kid Jim recommended I hire. He had a big voice and even over the phone you could tell he had a strong presence. He was out working on his family’s farm when he took the call. I could hear goats and cows in the background during our interview. He seemed like a political novice but I liked him and offered him the job right then on the phone without ever meeting him in person. I had a feeling and I was right. From the day Colton Burran showed up he fit right in. He was notoriously cheap and loved taking dares for money—he once let another one of the staffers punch him in the stomach as hard as he could after he drank an entire bottle of Pepto-Bismol. Our office was more Animal House than campaign headquarters, but the team worked as hard as they played so I was okay with it.
John came through on his end of the deal and won his primary outright—no runoff. Bryan and I got married, and I returned to Arkansas to focus on the general election. John Boozman went on to defeat Senator Blanche Lincoln 58 to 37 percent, the largest margin of victory against any US Senate incumbent in decades. A lot of the campaign staff moved to Washington, but Colton stayed in Arkansas. He was far from home and those of us who stayed in Arkansas adopted him into our families like he was a younger brother. One night sitting at home I got the call no one ever wants to receive. Colton had been out four-wheeling in the Ouachita mountains, taken a turn too fast, and hit a tree. Colton was killed instantly. He had been at our house the night before, and was the last to leave. Now he was gone. Colton’s parents asked me to speak at his funeral. It was something I had never done before and I was anxious about it. When we arrived in the small town of Brownfield, Texas, at the Baptist church where Colton and his family were members, there wasn’t an open seat to be found. The entire town showed up, heartbroken. I was nervous that my comments wouldn’t do justice to Colton’s life. But as I sat there thinking about it, I realized I was looking at it all wrong. It wasn’t up to me to give Colton’s life purpose—God had already done that. And by the number of people present that day I knew Colton had fulfilled it. My job was simply to remember the Colton we loved and remind everyone there grieving to live life like he had.
Colton lived his life fun and fast, but he also lived it with purpose. He was an example for all of us about what it means to live out your faith. He may have seemed like a younger brother to us, but it was Colton teaching us something far more important. It was his relationship with our Creator that helped the rest of us find some peace when he died. We knew his life wasn’t over, but just beginning in a much better place.
In 2011, Bryan and I went with his parents to Turkey and Greece. I hadn’t felt great ahead of the trip, so before we left I took a pregnancy test. It was negative, so I didn’t think much more about it. We arrived in Istanbul and spent a few days getting lost in the winding streets of the ancient city, playing backgammon, and drinking tea before we boarded a ship to the Greek isles. Bryan and I love adventure and to get off the beaten path, so at each stop Bryan rented four-wheelers for us to explore little towns and remote beaches. It was beautiful and fun and romantic, but I still wasn’t feeling any better. I figured some of it was jet lag, some of it was probably motion sickness from the ship. One day after Bryan forced me to climb to the top of a mountain, I hit a wall. I was so tired and so sick I couldn’t even get off the ship at the next stop. We arrived in Athens, concluding the trip, and boarded our flight home to Little Rock. I was sure after a day or so I’d be back to full speed, but when I wasn’t I decided to take another pregnancy test just to be certain—and sure enough this one had two faint little lines on it. I was pregnant.
I couldn’t wait to tell Bryan but wanted to do it in a fun way, so I made a little bright yellow sign that said, “Big Brother … Coming Soon” and tied it around our Cavalier King Charles Winston’s collar and sent him into Bryan’s home office. I waited several minutes and nothing happened. Bryan was focused on his work and didn’t notice Winston. So I yelled for Bryan and asked him to take Winston out. He asked if I could do it. I was getting frustrated. I said, “My hands are full. Take a break and take him out!” I heard him sigh in frustration (this was not going how I wanted) and then heard his desk chair push back. I braced myself in anticipation and he came running around the corner with Winston in his arms and the biggest smile in the world on his face. “Finally!” he said.
We were thrilled. Bryan asked me a million questions, most of which I couldn’t answer. At our first appointment we found out I was already nine weeks pregnant. We also heard the beating of a little heart. We had tears of joy in our eyes as we listened to Dr. Sellers confirm we had a baby on the way. We got in the car and immediately started calling our families. Soon after, we found out we were having a girl. She would be the first granddaughter on my side of the family and the first grandchild on Bryan’s side. She would definitely be spoiled.
During the pregnancy I had trouble sleeping. For Christmas, Bryan bought me one of those gigantic body pillows that are supposed to help pregnant women sleep. I hated the pillow. It didn’t work and I still couldn’t sleep. I asked Bryan to talk to me at night in order to get my mind off all the things we needed to do, hoping it would help. He was running out of things to ramble on about (which I didn’t think was possible) and I asked if he could read to me instead. Bryan had never read the book Gone with the Wind, and I couldn’t believe I was about to have a child with someone who had never read one of the greatest American novels of all time, so it was a perfect fit. He could read the thousand-plus-page book out loud to me every night and I could get some sleep. It worked! And more importantly, we finally settled on a name for our daughter we both liked. After a week or so of reading Gone with the Wind we named our daughter Scarlett. Scarlett O’Hara was not always the best role model, but she was tough, independent, and nobody got in her way. We wanted our daughter to have some (though certainly not all!) of her qualities.
We were growing more in love with Scarlett every day. I was busy buying outfits and monogramming everything I could get my hands on while Bryan was putting together cribs, babyproofing the house, and learning to install the car seat, something that I have still refused to learn how to do. We went to a child birthing class, which to this day still seems so odd to me. We were having our baby in the hospital where we would be surrounded by doctors and nurses, who knew exactly what to do through the labor and delivery process. Yet for some reason the entire class didn’t teach us much of anything about what to do with the baby once we got her home!
Thankfully, my sister-in-law Lauren had just given birth to my nephew Chandler so she answered a lot of my questions. After our car wreck in the Ozark Mountains, Lauren and I should not have been alive, much less bringing new life into the world. Nearly losing my life and later creating and caring for a new one was something that weighed on me. I was glad I had experienced both that fear and joy with Lauren. She and my mom coached me for months, but when the big day came I still didn’t feel prepared. I was definitely ready to not be pregnant anymore, but I wasn’t so sure I was ready to care for a newborn.
Scarlett was already five days late and we went in for our final checkup. Dr. Sellers asked if we wanted to schedule a time for induction the following day. It was May 7 and the plan was to check into the hospital the evening of the eighth and we could expect Scarlett to make her appearance sometime on the ninth. Mother’s Day was on the thirteenth that year and since both of our moms would be in town for the birth of our first child, I figured I would get them Mother’s Day gifts before we checked into the hospital. I was so proud of myself for planning ahead and getting what I considered a very thoughtful gift—engraved frames that read “We love you!—May 9, 2012” for Scarlett’s newborn picture. Before going to the hospital we took our moms to dinner and gave them the engraved frames. They loved them and were so excited to meet their granddaughter.
We checked in and settled into our hospital room. I had several first outfits to choose from and laid them all out, along with my matching robe and gown for postdelivery. I’d also read that the husbands don’t have it great during delivery, so I brought Bryan some of his favorite snacks. Dr. Sellers was the doctor on call so he came by to check on me and start the induction. He told me to expect some discomfort, and instructed me not to eat anything for the next twenty-four hours. The next morning the nurses told me nothing had changed. We had made no progress. I began to question whether naming our daughter after the stubborn Scarlett O’Hara was such a great idea after all. Dr. Sellers tried again to induce and put me on Pitocin. I waited, and as I waited I came to the conclusion that any woman who tells you she enjoys pregnancy and childbirth is lying to you. I was starving, sleep deprived, and totally over it, but kept on. I had agreed to an epidural, but refused any more powerful drugs that might make me forget holding Scarlett for the first time. For a day that was supposed to be one of the greatest joys of my life, I was miserable. May 9 came and went—Scarlett still had not made her appearance and with her birthdate now wrong on the picture frames, I’d have to get the grandmothers new Mother’s Day gifts! I went to sleep for the first and only time in my life hoping Scarlett would wake me up in the middle of the night. Again, nothing.
The following day Dr. Sellers came to check in on me before heading to the clinic and asked me to be patient. I was doing the best I could. Around lunchtime the nurse stopped by and asked if anybody was hungry. I said, “Yes, ma’am. I have not eaten anything but ice chips for thirty-six hours!” She replied, “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry. You still can’t eat, but maybe your husband would like something?” Bryan ordered a cheeseburger and fries, and I lost it. When the food arrived, I said, “If you take one bite of that burger in front of me, Scarlett will be raised by a single mother because I will kill you!” Dr. Sellers came in again and I wasn’t having his typical sunny positive attitude. He asked how I was doing and I fell apart. I said, “You’re out of time. Get this baby out!” Dr. Sellers calmly told me that he wanted to try one more thing and said if it didn’t work, we would have no other choice but to do the C-section. I agreed to his one last step, but had I known what it was I would have said no. The next few hours were too awful to describe in words, a test in patience and perseverance I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. Having no other choice, I did it. About an hour later, things started happening—fast. The nurse called Dr. Sellers and three hours later, at 6:03 p.m., a seven-pound-three-ounce perfect miracle entered the world. I couldn’t believe our baby was finally here. The nurse placed Scarlett in my arms and I held her tightly and looked at Bryan. We knew our lives were forever changed.
The nurses gave Scarlett a bath and took all her measurements and brought her back over to me to feed her. They put her in a little white hospital shirt and a pink, blue, and white striped cap. Then we opened the floodgates—our parents and my brother David and Lauren were in the waiting room and Bryan went out to tell them the good news and invite them in. They were enamored with Scarlett, too. We didn’t know it that day, but this was just the beginning of a difficult journey for our little family.
A couple days later Dr. Sellers said it was time for us to take Scarlett home. It was the Saturday before Mother’s Day and there was a baby dedication at our church. Because we had expected Scarlett to show up a week or two sooner, we had signed up to participate. My nephew Chandler would also be dedicated that day and we thought it would be really special to do it all on the same day and have a little party after. We had already sent invitations so I didn’t want to miss it. Also, my dad was doing a Mother’s Day special on his Fox News television show Huckabee that aired on Saturday and Sunday evenings. He wanted to have my mom, grandmother, Lauren, Scarlett, and me on together for a segment honoring mothers. After five long days and sleepless nights at the hospital, I showered, got ready, and went straight to the church, where we used the pastor’s office to tape the segment. It was only fitting that Scarlett made her first appearance on Fox News before she even made it home from the hospital!
Our first night at home with Scarlett was a bit overwhelming. All of the nurses who had helped us and guided us through the first hours of her life were gone and we were now left to care for her on our own. Thankfully my mom stayed with us the first week and my mother-in-law, Julia, was scheduled for the following week. We put Scarlett in her crib and she fell asleep pretty fast. We thought we were doing well until about 1:00 a.m., when Scarlett woke up with a vengeance. Bryan changed her and I fed her, but she just kept screaming. I couldn’t get her to stop. My mom came in and sat with me for hours that night, telling me nothing was wrong with Scarlett, she was just adjusting.
This would be the first of many times I needed her to reassure me I was doing okay as a mom and not to worry. My mom can be a great cheerleader. As a kid when I played sports she came to every single game to cheer me on—loudly. It was embarrassing at the time, but looking back as an adult it’s one of my favorite memories of her. Janet Huckabee is a strong southern woman. She almost died of spinal cancer when she was twenty, just after she and my dad had gotten married. The doctors told her she might not live, and if she did live, she’d never walk again, and if she did walk again, she’d definitely never have kids. Not only did my mom live, and walk again, but she went on to run a marathon; serve on the international board of Habitat for Humanity, building houses all over the world; and have three kids and six grandkids.
Like many moms I struggled in the weeks following Scarlett’s birth. I loved Scarlett deeply and cherished our time together but I didn’t immediately connect with her. I was having difficulty being “happy” as a new mom. I spent much of the day, especially the evenings, crying over the smallest things. I knew I was supposed to be joyful about being a mom, but I felt so isolated. I was always alone somewhere nursing, up at night while the rest of the world slept, and then sleeping during the day when others were out and about. Bryan was great and did all he could to help. He got up every night and changed Scarlett and gave her to me to feed. He watched her during the day so I could sleep, but I felt disconnected and upset that Bryan bonded with Scarlett from the second he held her and I didn’t.
One of Bryan’s friends, a beautiful girl he’d grown up with in Kansas City, hanged herself in her bedroom while her newborn baby girl slept in the nursery down the hall. Bryan and I attended her funeral in Kansas City together not long after we first started dating. In 2019, the Cleveland Clinic estimated that “as many as 50 to 75 percent of new mothers experience the ‘baby blues’ after delivery. Up to 15 percent of these women will develop a more severe and longer-lasting depression, called postpartum depression, after delivery.” My friends with kids had warned me about postpartum depression and told me if I ever experienced it to talk to them about it. I tried to open up, but hated the idea of admitting I was failing as a new mom and instead tried to hide my sadness. I felt even more guilty knowing how hard some of my friends were struggling to get pregnant and have children but couldn’t. I knew this was supposed to be a blissful time in my life and seeing all the happy, successful moms around me made it even harder.
Women can be our own worst enemies. I’ve often said that social media, while a great tool, can also be one of the most negative forces in our society. We remove personal relationships from our lives and replace them with screens that only highlight the greatest hits of everyone else’s lives. It’s difficult enough to be a good spouse, parent, child, friend, or coworker without constantly feeling you aren’t living up to the world’s idea of success. Being a new mom is tough, and spending your time nursing—isolated and lonely—looking at image after image of “perfect” moms on social media can drive even the best mom crazy. Most moms aren’t posting pictures of their kids having a meltdown in the grocery store. So instead we post the cutest pictures we can coax out of our kids, pressure ourselves to throw them Pinterest-worthy birthday parties, and post articles about how wonderful it is to be a mom.
The good news is it actually is wonderful to be a mom, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t hard. About six weeks after Scarlett was born, I was holding her in her little nursery in the middle of the night and she looked up at me and gave me what I am sure to this day was the biggest, happiest smile I’ve seen from her. In that moment it happened. I knew I would do anything to protect her, love her, and show her the amazing world God created for her. I felt a warmth and peace cover me and I knew things were going to get better. I later had two perfect and adorable baby boys—Huck and George—and experienced postpartum depression again with Huck, but this time I was more prepared and able to talk about it with my family and friends, which made all the difference. Being a mom is not easy, but the best things in life aren’t easy, and there is nothing in my life that brings me more joy than my three wild, crazy, beautiful kids.
I kept working after having kids. After John Boozman’s successful campaign for US Senate, I was a senior advisor to Tom Cotton in 2014 when he defeated incumbent Democratic US senator Mark Pryor in Arkansas. I also consulted for companies and nonprofits, including the ONE campaign, founded by U2’s Bono to take action to end extreme poverty and preventable disease, particularly in Africa. In 2015, my dad decided to run for president again. This time around we knew what running for president looked like, which made the decision much harder. The expectations were higher and the stakes were, too. My parents for the first time in their lives were comfortable. My dad had the highest-rated weekend show on Fox News and a beautiful home on the beach in Florida with room for the grandkids. Life was good. Throwing himself into another campaign for president would put it all at risk. But my dad felt called to run and so again we dove in with everything we had. I signed on as the campaign manager and was actually pregnant with my third child due just a month after he announced. My dad kicked off his campaign in May 2015, and less than a month later we welcomed George Huggins Sanders into the world, making us a family of five. I took off only two weeks for maternity leave and sent a few epic 2:00 a.m. emails under the influence of pain medication in the hospital to the campaign staff with some of my “great ideas.” Bryan was also devoting nearly all of his time to the campaign and so George came to work with us every day. He quickly became the star of the office, especially the finance team, where the five women in charge of raising money passed him around the room between scheduling fund-raisers and making donor calls. George was loved by the staff and we even featured him in a web ad for the campaign.
But we quickly realized that 2016 wasn’t going to be anything like 2008. From the moment Donald Trump entered the race, he dominated it and established himself as the Republican front-runner. It was impossible for candidates like my dad with fewer resources to break through and get attention from the media, the lifeblood of a presidential campaign. After nine months of grueling work, my dad ended his campaign on the night of the Iowa caucus. We’d come up short—way short. I felt like I had failed my dad and the team. It was devastating. After three kids and my dad’s two presidential campaigns, I was exhausted and having trouble finding motivation, but Bryan encouraged me not to give up. He said I should go work for Donald Trump, who was still battling it out with Senator Ted Cruz (TX) and Senator Marco Rubio (FL) for the nomination. A few days after my dad exited the race, Mr. Trump’s campaign manager Corey Lewandowski reached out and invited my dad and me to meet with Mr. Trump at a campaign stop in Georgia.
We flew from Little Rock to Atlanta to meet with Mr. Trump. We waited at the private airport terminal for a while—they were running late. Finally Trump Air, a huge 757, landed, and we boarded the plane. It was as nice and elegant as any plane my dad or I had ever flown on. Corey Lewandowski, Hope Hicks, Dan Scavino, Keith Schiller, Michael Glassner, and George Gigicos—the original Team Trump—were on board. My dad and I sat down at a four-top table and Mr. Trump walked in to join us. We talked and shared stories about how crazy the campaign had been. Mr. Trump, always hospitable, offered us both Cokes but we declined. I remember being taken aback by his larger-than-life personality and charm. Trump made a hard sell to get my dad to come to his event that day in Georgia to endorse him ahead of the “SEC primary.” My dad wanted to, but Fox News, who he’d just re-signed with, had asked him to stay neutral to maintain his impartiality as an on-air commentator. So my dad told Trump he couldn’t endorse him but the next best thing he could offer him was me: “If Sarah joins your campaign, it will send a clear message,” he said. Mr. Trump turned to Corey and told him to get me on the team. On the way home to Arkansas with my dad, he said I should do it: “Only Trump can win the nomination and beat Hillary.” I’d spent the better part of a decade working to get a Republican elected president and this was my chance. It was going to be Trump or Hillary—help save the country or let it go to hell. It was one of the easiest decisions I’ve ever made. A few days later the Trump for President campaign announced me as a senior advisor.
I was hired to focus on outreach to women and Christians, but a few weeks into my new role I got a call from campaign headquarters, asking me to go on TV to represent Mr. Trump as a surrogate. My first interview for the campaign was on CNN. I had managed and consulted for a lot of campaigns, but my background wasn’t really press or communications. Still, the campaign wanted a female surrogate on TV who could speak to women and Christians and I fit the bill. My first appearance must not have been a disaster, because the next day the campaign called me back and asked me to do it again tomorrow. And so I did. And my role on the Trump campaign quickly changed. From that moment forward, Mr. Trump only wanted me to go on TV.
I did hundreds of media appearances making the case for Mr. Trump during the campaign, and was one of the first Trump surrogates to go on air after the Access Hollywood controversy. It was a low point in the campaign, and Republican leaders were abandoning Trump en masse. When asked on MSNBC at the debate if the president is a good role model for my kids, I said that as a person of faith, I believe there can only be one perfect role model—Jesus.
Like every other human being on the planet, I had no illusion that Mr. Trump was a perfect person—far from it—but in a race against Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump was clearly the better choice. Even when the polls showed him down and the media and political establishment—including many Republican leaders—counted him out, I believed Trump would win. I believed his message was resonating in states like Michigan and Pennsylvania that hadn’t gone Republican in a long time. I also believed—having grown up in the Clintons’ shadow in Arkansas—that a Hillary Clinton presidency would be a disaster America might never recover from. On November 8, 2016, Donald J. Trump was elected the 45th President of the United States of America, the biggest political upset in the history of our country. Standing in New York City on election night watching President-elect Trump give his acceptance speech was one of the proudest moments of my professional life. I had spent the better part of a decade working to elect a Republican president, and now we finally had one willing to stand up and fight for the forgotten men and women of America.
During the campaign and even right up to the moment Trump won, I never expected to leave Arkansas and go work in the administration. Arkansas was home, and Bryan and I had no interest in moving our family to Washington. But after investing so much of our lives and careers trying to get a Republican elected president, I realized it was going to be hard to say no and walk away if the right opportunity in the administration presented itself.
Two weeks before the inauguration I got a call from incoming White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer. Spicer had worked at the RNC during the campaign and he and I had worked well together. He asked me if I’d be interested in joining the White House communications office. I said no, but told Spicer he should instead hire me in the press office as his principal deputy. I either made a good case or he was desperate to fill the role because he immediately agreed and said, “F—— it. Let’s do this.” The next day President-elect Trump called me to officially offer me the job and I said yes. I accepted the job on Monday evening and within seventy-two hours we had signed a two-year lease to rent a house in Arlington, Virginia, we had never seen before, and were under contract to sell our house in Little Rock. Our amazing friends Megan Turner, Ashley Caldwell, Cathy Lanier, and Katy Faulk helped us pack everything we owned onto two moving trucks, and Megan, one of my most loyal and trusted friends since college, threw a going-away party for us at her home in our neighborhood. It was an emotional night, and it was really hard to say good-bye to family, friends, and the state and hometown I loved, even if only for a temporary move to Washington. But with the inauguration fast approaching and duty calling, it was time to hit the road.