Arkansas Republican presidential candidate Sarah Sanders speaks to reporters at the Arkansas State Capitol in Little Rock, on Feb. 22. The former White House press secretary underwent surgery Friday because of illness. Thyroid Cancer.
Andrew DeMillo / AP
hide captions
switch captions
Andrew DeMillo / AP
Arkansas Republican presidential candidate Sarah Sanders speaks to reporters at the Arkansas State Capitol in Little Rock, on Feb. 22. The former White House press secretary underwent surgery Friday because of illness. Thyroid Cancer.
Andrew DeMillo / AP
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – Former White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, who running for governor in Arkansas, underwent surgery Friday for thyroid cancer.
Sanders announced she had undergone surgery after a biopsy earlier this month revealed she had thyroid cancer.
“Today, I underwent a successful surgery to remove my thyroid gland and surrounding lymph nodes and, thank God, I am cancer-free,” Sanders said in a statement issued by her campaign. release. “I want to thank the Arkansas doctors and nurses for their world-class care, as well as my family and friends for their love, prayers, and support.”
Sanders, 40, said she looks forward to returning to the race track soon. Sanders’ last public event was at the Arkansas Razorbacks football game on Saturday.
Sanders, who was Former Spokesperson for President Donald Trump until 2019, is running against Democratic candidate Chris Jones. She is the daughter of former Governor Mike Huckabee.
Sanders, who broke fundraising records during the race, is very popular in the predominantly Republican state of Arkansas. The state’s current Republican governor, Asa Hutchinson, will leave office in January due to term limits.
A doctor for Sanders said in a statement that he expects her to recover within the next 24 hours. Dr. John R. Sims, a surgeon at CARTI Cancer Center in Little Rock, said Sanders will need adjuvant radioactive iodine treatment and continued long-term follow-up.
Sims said Sanders’ cancer was stage 1 papillary thyroid carcinoma, the most common type of thyroid cancer, and said she had an “excellent” prognosis.
“I think it’s fair to say she’s cancer-free and I didn’t anticipate this would slow her down,” Sims said.
During Sanders’s nearly two-year tenure in the White House, she scaled back her daily televised briefings after numerous exchanges with reporters and facing questions about her credibility. But she also earns the respect of reporters for working behind the scenes to develop relationships with the media.
Sanders was well known in Arkansas politics before making her governor’s bid, going back to a time when she appeared in commercials for her father’s campaigns. She managed the 2010 election of Senator John Boozman and served as an advisor to Senator Tom Cotton in 2014.
She was primarily running on national issues in the Arkansas race, promising to use the governor’s office against President Joe Biden and the “radical left”.
