From Press Room To Governor’s Chair - Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Leadership, Family & Football :: Ep 85 Try That in a Small Town Podcast

Politics gets human fast when the conversation starts with family, music, and the weight of raising kids. We sit with Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders to trace a candid arc from campaign backrooms to the White House podium and into the governor’s office, where every signature has a name attached. She unpacks how motherhood clarifies priorities, why listening hard before deciding matters, and what it felt like to step into the press secretary role during the loudest news cycles of 2017.

We dig into leadership by friction—making the case, inviting disagreement, then owning the call. Sanders shares how she sometimes reframed language for Trump and sometimes watched him trust his gut, arguing that instincts, not scripts, often move voters. Then we shift to Saturdays and stadiums. As a lifelong Arkansas Razorbacks fan, she welcomes a new coach and calls out the unintended chaos of NIL and the transfer portal. She’s wary of heavy-handed fixes yet believes the current setup rewards the richest programs and strips away loyalty, a tension any college football fan will recognize.

The heart of the episode is education. Sanders walks us through the Arkansas Learns Act: raising starting teacher pay from $36,000 to $50,000, delivering raises statewide, and adding merit-based bonuses that reward exceptional educators. She details investments in literacy coaches and a hard focus on third-grade reading benchmarks, along with universal school choice that lets families find the right fit. We also hit Chiefs football, Royals loyalty, and the family pact that swapped SEC Saturdays for Kansas City Sundays, plus a frank detour into AI’s creative creep and what it could mean for Nashville’s session players and songwriters.

If you care about how policy translates into classrooms, how college sports drifted off course, or how leaders think under pressure, this conversation delivers clarity without spin. Subscribe, share with a friend who loves SEC football or education policy, and leave a review with the one change you’d make to fix NIL—we’ll feature the best takes next week.

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The Try That In A Small Town Podcast is produced by Jim McCarthy and www.ItsYourShow.co