Speaking for Myself

by Sarah Huckabee Sanders

  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.