← Next Up with Mark Halperin
Next Up with Mark Halperin
Inside "8 for '28” Dem Nominee Power Rankings, and Transforming Arkansas, with Gov. Huckabee Sanders
01:14:10
Mark Halperin kicks off today’s episode with the debut of his landmark new segment, “8 for ’28,” unveiling his deeply reported insider power rankings of the Democrats most likely to win their party’s 2028 presidential nomination. He walks through all of the top contenders — why Gavin Newsom sits at #1, what sets Josh Shapiro apart, and how Pete Buttigieg and Kamala Harris fit into a constantly shifting landscape. Mark breaks down the strengths, secret advantages, vulnerabilities, and political dynamics shaping this early field, using his decades of experience and fresh reporting to explain who actually has a path and why. He then shifts to the second four, examining the structural challenges and political pressures that may keep this group from breaking through in a crowded 2028 field. It’s a comprehensive, candid look at how insiders are handicapping the next Democratic nominee long before anyone officially enters the race. Mark is then joined by Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders f...
Loading summary
Transcript62 lines
- [00:00]
Indeed Advertiser
If you are a fighter, Modelo is your reward.
- [00:02]
Mark Halpern
So listen close.
- [00:03]
Indeed Advertiser
You are strong, you are fearless. You are a fighter. And every last drop of this rich gold in Modelo is yours. So raise it up high because you've earned it. Modelo the mark of a fighter. Drink responsibly Being reported by Carlin Imports, Chicago, Illinois. Hiring isn't just about finding someone willing to take the job. Count on Indeed sponsored Jobs to find the right person with the right background who can move the business forward. Stop struggling to get your job post even seen on other sites. Give your job the best chance to be seen with INDEED sponsored jobs. They boost your post for quality candidates so you can reach the exact people you want faster and it makes a big difference. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed are 90% more likely to report a hire than non sponsored jobs. Plus with Indeed sponsored jobs, you only pay for results. No monthly subscription, no long term contracts. Just a boost whenever you need to find quality talent Fast. Join the 1.6 million companies that sponsor their their jobs with Indeed. Get a 75 sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves@ Indeed.com podcast.
- [01:11]
Mark Halpern
Welcome in everybody. This is Next up with Mark Halpern. I am Mark Halpern, substituting for Mark Halperin. I'm the editor in chief of the live interactive video platform 2way and your host here and your guide to everything that's next up. Very happy to have you Nexters back in and maybe some new folks. Glad to have you here in this holiday season. Exciting show today. Our guest is the governor of Arkansas, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who is in her first elective office. She's governing Arkansas, the first daughter of a governor of the state to govern the same state. Her dad, Mike Huckabee, of course was the governor there. Excited to talk to her. I've known her for a long time, covered her for a long time and she has made big aggressive moves in her state to try to change things. She started out with education, we're going to talk a lot about that, but but also on the economy and of course her state's economy, fueled in part by the presence of the Fortune 1 company, Walmart, the biggest company in the world. And we'll talk about how that's impacted things there. Sarah's gonna join us in a minute, but first I'm excited to debut for you what will be a regular feature here. It's a segment called 8 for 28. It's about the Democrats who are thinking of running for president and might run for president. And the focus on 8 for 28 is, is not about the general election. It's about who the Democrats are most likely to nominate. And what I'm going to lay out for you today is my one through eight most likely to least likely of the top eight Democrats who I think are positioned to be the Democratic nominee. Not going to talk about the Republican nomination fight today, although we'll do plenty of that too. We're going to talk about the Democrats. And again, it's all focused on this question, who will be nominated. I've covered this stuff and this question since 1988 and I would say I feel pretty good about the reporting I've done. It is the thing I say I know it absolutely best, but it's one of the things I know best from my long career doing this is what do you look at to say who's got the best chance. Lots of people have opinions about this, but I believe the reporting I've done, which I'll lay out for you today, pretty, pretty rigorous in trying to determine where we are now doesn't mean things won't change. But where we are now and this thing's underway, make no mistake about it, when people say, well, it's early and people aren't going to formally announce until the midterms, that's true. I don't think anybody will announce until probably December of next year. So one year from now. But if you look at the activities of Gavin Newsom, Governor Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Rahm Emanuel, whose contract with CNN puts him on TV nearly every day, Ro Khanna, who's had a really strong year moving up in the process, people are doing stuff. They recognize that there's an opportunity here. And to some extent Gavin Newsom has propelled people, I think, to be more active. Kamala Harris, too, get into this process to show the flag to the Democratic constituencies that will decide this, the activists, the donors, the voters, the media, et cetera. So how do I do this? What I do is I'm constantly reporting on this question. Like you, I'm interested in this. It's a non stop process. So I think about pretty much every day who's up, who's down, who's doing well, who's making advances. And then I talk to a lot of people in the party, grassroots activists, party officials, elected officials, the people around those potential candidates. And then I put together the list. So about two weeks ago, roughly two weeks ago, I put my list together one through eight and then I send it to people or call them up and talk them through it. And I say, you know, who's, what do you think of my list? Who's not on the list, do you think should be on the list? Who's on the list you think should come off? Who's too high on the pecking order, who's too low? And I'm just constantly churning through that. People will send me their annotations, their edits. And it's crazy because there's some people, and again, I'm dealing with very smart people, right? I'm dealing with people in labor unions, people in different parts of the Democratic Party, people in elective office. They're very savvy, very sophisticated. I trust their judgment because they've got a long record. Almost all of them have worked in presidential campaigns. And I'm asking them the question to say, tell me where I'm wrong. And, and there's people who will put a perspective candidate in the top three. And that name won't even appear on some other people's list. And that shows you that this is not a science. It shows you that people can have different views. Even smart people, well intentioned people, can have different views. And so I have to take all these different views, educated views, and I got to try to mash them together. And then I've got to apply in the end, my own. Not just my reporting, but my experience and my judgment about who's got what it takes. To use the phrase of Richard Ben Cramer, great book about presidential politics, who can actually do this? Okay, so that's what we're going to do. We're going to run through one through eight in a minute and then I'm going to do something that's, that's essential to, to this process, essential to 8 for 28, which is what are their biggest strengths that everybody sort of knows about. And then what's the secret strength they have? Something that I got in my reporting that's kind of a secret thing that maybe people aren't thinking about that tells you why they're strong. And then I'm going to do the same for weaknesses. What's their big known weakness? And then what's kind of a secret weakness that my sources say, you know, watch that. This is why this person may be tripped up. Okay? Now before I unveil the list, I got to do some caveats, seven of them, because I don't want to be misunderstood. People, people are going to be interested in this, I think, I hope and want you to understand exactly how I think about this how I approach the reporting, how I approach this process. First of all, again, I'll emphasize this about winning the Democratic nomination. I'm not saying anything about who would be the strongest general election candidate who might win the White House. This is just about who can win the Democratic presidential nomination. Totally different things. Okay. Number two, there's a big variable that's missing from this. It would typically be a big part of any analysis of winning a party nomination, which is what's the nominating calendar? We're past the time when it was Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, every four years, and the candidates knew that and they would make lots of visits there and court endorsements and support. We don't know, and we don't know even know exactly when the calendar is going to be set, which states are going to go early. There's about a half dozen states, I'd say, making a serious play to be in the first two or three contests. Who will that calendar favor? Right. Who you could imagine states that would obviously favor somebody and that will move up their prospects of being the nominee. And then second, is the calendar in the early states going to matter as much as it did in the past? Okay. Everybody kind of assumes it will, but I'm not so sure. We've seen a dilution of the influence, most most notably with Joe Biden. Joe Biden lost the first three states in, in 2024 and still became the nominee. And if you look historically, no one could lose the first three states and be the nominee, and he lost them pretty badly. That's never happened before in either party. And so it was that a fluke about the special circumstances at 24. My instinct, and I'm a big supporter of the early states and the early role they play because the voters in those states historically take it so seriously. But my instinct is the early states may not be as important as they are in the past. So we'll see. Third caveat, okay, is what are the skills and traits that matter these days in winning the nomination? If you look at previous and in the olden days, from, from Reagan forward, which is kind of where the modern era of the nomination process began. You knew what it took. You did. Somebody had to raise a lot of money. Someone had to get endorsements. Right. Someone had to be good on tv. The different skills now matter. Right. They're different things. Social media matters obviously, more than it did before social media existed. So we can appraise these candidates prospects based on our sense of what matters, but we don't really know. Okay. Number Four, is the mood of the party such that we should really only be looking at anti establishment, progressive, outsider candidates? Why do I say that? Because in 2016 and 2020, if the establishment hadn't fixed the system to stop Bernie Sanders, I think he would have been the nominee both in 2016 and then. And then in 2020. Okay, so in 2024, we had an incumbent Joe Biden, and so we didn't have a test case. But is it possible, and I think it is possible, that the party's only going to nominate a progressive, anti establishment, outsider candidate? That might be true. I don't think it's true, but it might be true. Somebody like aoc, somebody like Ro Khanna may be, I won't say inevitable, but maybe really in the poll position, that's different than history, because before 2016, the party tended to nominate establishment figures. I've told you this before. When there's been a front runner, with the exception of 2016 or 2008 rather, Hillary Clinton, the front runners always won. They've gone through some scares, and that's been an establishment front runner. The conventional wisdom has been the party will nominate the most progressive candidate who can win a general election. And if you look at the nominees since, since Mondale, that's basically been true. We may be in a different period now. And if you look at 2016 and 2020, you'd have reason to believe, hey, the party's moved really far to the left. The progressives control the party. And if Bernie Sanders had been in a fair fight, he would have beaten Hillary Clinton, would have beaten Joe Biden. So we got to watch for that, too. Fifth, caveat, okay, you got to take into account when you're saying, how likely is that person to be the nominee? Are they actually going to run? Okay, because if they don't run, as we say in the New York Lottery, you got to play to win. So some people aren't on my list, like Governor Whitmer of Michigan, because in the end, I don't. My reporting suggests they're not going to run. Now, she might run, and if she, if she makes it clear she's going to run, I'm sure I'll put her on the list. But that's got to be factored in. I'll give you that sort of extreme example. If he told me Michelle Obama, you know, if I were praising her chances, if she ran, she'd have a really good chance to be the nominee, but she's not going to run. You'll see her on some lists but she's never going to run for anything. So you got to factor in when you're saying, what are their chances? Are they going to run? Okay, number six, this is a really weak field. And I'm not, I'm not trying to be denigrating of them, but if you look at the qualifications, the skills, etcetera, this is. There's people on my list who I don't think would make it in a normal list. I think about the 1988 Democratic nomination fight. Okay, Michael Dukakis one. Okay. Kind of surprising to a lot of people because if you looked at the, at the early handicapping, people weren't saying Michael Dukakis, governor of Massachusetts, who. People hadn't heard of.
- [11:43]
Dukakis 1. Jesse Jackson, Al Gore, Dick Gephardt, Paul Simon, Bruce Babbitt, Gary Hart, Joe Biden. That was the field. Okay, so there's a weak field that provides some uncertainty. Finally, they're no perfect candidates. You're going to hear me run through everybody and you're going to say, well, that guy can't be denominator. That woman can't. Because look at all their problems. Everybody's got problems. There's nobody perfect. And so in every case, you're just going to have to say someone who's flawed because they're all flawed. Someone's going to win. Okay, those are my caveats. Let's get to it. Gavin Newsom is number one. He's, I believe, the most likely nominee today, and that's no longer a controversial position. I think most everybody in politics would tell you now that Gavin Newsom's the most likely. What's his greatest known strength? The momentum he's built this year. Okay, 2025 saw Gavin Newsom raising money, adding people to his fundraising lists, vitally important to raise money, and then winning the redistricting fight, being treated like a lot of people in the media and the Democratic Party, like a shadow president. Huge advantage for him is the momentum he has secret strength he has not really focused on yet. He's got a great staff. Now. Candidates matter most to win the nomination, to win a presidency, but you need a team who's experienced, who. Where there's mutual trust in both directions. Newsom has a great team and it's deep. It's a deep team. In other words, he's got not one or two people with national experience, but lots of people. And when you have momentum, you're able to recruit. So if he has any holes in his team, he'll be able to recruit better. Than most. Okay, biggest known weakness about Gavin Newsom. I would say the image that he's got is being too slick and too political. You hear it all the time. I hear it on two way with the two way community. You hear it in focus groups. People think he's slick. Secret weakness I think he has, and you've heard me talk about this before, is fire in the belly. You know, fire in the belly for him, often runs cool. His family is ambivalent about his running. I believe he's ambivalent about running despite people thinking he's all in. And we'll see, we'll see how he does in and if he does run, but that's to me, the secret weakness. Okay, number two in our rankings, eight for 28. Josh Shapiro, governor of Pennsylvania. I've said before he's an undervalued stock in this thing. I think if he executes, he is going to be a real force here. And if Newsom ends up not running, I think Shapiro is going to be the front runner in a big way if he executes. And I almost put them in the tier by themselves right now. Greatest known strength, he's a great political athlete. He governs really aggressively. He talks to people in a great way. He, he's, he's thinking a lot about, we've talked about this here before, Trump voters, how to appeal to Trump voters. So he's just, he's a great performer on TV, in different venues, giving a speech, etc. Secret strength is high level support from the Democratic Party. Nancy Pelosi likes him. That still matters. The Obamas like him. Clinton's like him. Lots of the best strategists in the party, even if they're not working for him, they really like him. That's a big advantage. It's a big advantage to have that kind of support. Known weaknesses, A lot of progressives don't trust him. People focus a lot on, on the position he has on Israel. He's not uncritical of Israel and of Benjamin Netanyahu, but he's pretty supportive of Israel. And that's one piece of it. But there are other people in the progressive wing of the party who say no, he's too establishment, he's too centrist, he's too moderate. And if, if I'm right, that the anti establishment progressive wing of the party is going to have a lot of strength, that's going to be, it's going to be a big challenge for him. Secret weakness, something that I reported on quite a bit when Kamala Harris was considering him to be her running mate. He got a lot of incoming. He was the only one of the people Harris considered who had these negative news stories come out. Some in the Pennsylvania press, some in the national press. And his team and the governor himself did almost nothing to knock them down. No indication that they recognized the threat. And I don't think the Harris people did this as a test, at least as far as I know. But if it was a test to say, how's this guy going to be handling criticism, controversy, there were scandals involving his team. There's issue, position, issue problems, that he had spotty record in handling those attacks. And I think that is a secret weakness which could be decisive because to run the gauntlet of winning a nomination, if you do well, the attacks are going to come. Opposition research, press scrutiny, questions from voters. Let's see if he's upped his game when and if he gets in this race.
- [16:24]
Sarah Huckabee Sanders
All right.
- [16:24]
Mark Halpern
After that, I think there's a pretty big drop off. So my determination of 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 was more difficult. Number three, I put Pete Buttigieg. That's going to be a controversial pick for some of you because I know people, very smart sources who said, don't even put them on the list. I put him at number three. His known strength is he's a great talker, as Bill Clinton would say. He can talk the owls down from the trees, and that matters a lot. And he'll talk really well if he goes on conservative media like on Fox News, but he'll also talk really well to a progressive interviewer, really handles himself well in town meetings. And he's run before. And that gives him a capacity to really understand how to communicate at the presidential level. I think his secret strength is something that I don't know how he'll feel about it, whether he'll feel that this is.
- [17:15]
A nice thing or a favorable thing to say. But he and his political team, I call them tactically ruthless and sophisticated.
- [17:24]
He's run before, and even though he's a very genial guy, they're very tough, they're very ruthless about opposition. And I think you're going to see in this nomination fight, no matter how many people end up running, I think you're going to see people who are tough and ruthless and sophisticated about the process, I think will be well served. That's his secret strength, his known weakness. He's had not been able to develop support from black voters. Literally, in some polls, he gets zero support from black voters. And no matter what states Vote early. There's no way in the way the politics works in the Democratic Party. There's no way to win the nomination without significant support from black voters. And he's tried various things to address that. I don't think he solved it. It's. It's talked about a lot. Secret weakness. You know, he's a very smart guy. He's a very analytical guy, and a lot of voters like that. People find that appealing. Some people. I heard this repeatedly in my reporting. Is he a passionate enough, Is he emotional enough? Or is he a little bit too. Antiseptic? Antiseptic. So we'll see if he displays more heart. He's got kids now. He's. He's been through the process. He's living in Michigan. A lot of opportunities to talk about his own life with Hart. But again, a lot of people I talked to, a lot of my sources said they think that's the missing piece. People are going to want a president and a Democratic nominee with Hart. All right, number. What am I up to? Number four. Kamala Harris wasn't on my list a week ago when I was putting it together. I got to be honest, this is a huge change. I've moved her from off the list to number four. Why have I done that? She did an interview with the New York Times that was. Leaned really much more firmly into the prospect of running than she has in terms of the tone of it and the body language. And so I made some calls and determined, yes, in fact, she is really thinking about this. She sees the field not necessarily as particularly strong. She sees the experience she has. And so I've moved her to number four, Fourth most likely nominee, Kamala Harris, known strength. She's got a national profile, Former vice president, Democratic nominee. And she's got. I think this is an undervalued asset. Even though people know about. She's got strong ties to the core constituencies of the party. Two black voters, two female voters, two labor. She's. She's. She's got that. And that. That is a huge. A huge opportunity for her to consolidate support, particularly if Governor Newsom doesn't run. I think her secret strength is she's unshackled. You know, same thing is said about Kamala Harris. And it's true, as was said about Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney and some others. In private, she's a much different person. Rachel Maddow said this week she regretted not pushing Kamala Harris in their interview during her book tour. To be more forthcoming, to be more open about what she's really like, because Rachel Maddow's experienced it as I have, she's a different person. And so the secret strength is being unshackled. She may show more of that naturally. She may put that out there in a more natural way. And I think that Kamala Harris, the private Kamala Harris, brought public, just as was said with that Mitt Romney after the election when that documentary came out about him and showed the private Mitt Romney that unshackled Kamala Harris I think is a big potential strength. All right. Known weakness, questions about her political execution. You saw that when she ran for President in 2020 cycle. You saw it as vice president. You saw it when she became the nominee in 2024. She just is not that good under pressure. I've said it before, her biggest weakness is she does not like to make difficult choices under pressure. Tough decisions when the focus is on her. That's, that's a known weakness. The secret weakness. And I picked this up throughout my reporting, which is why she didn't make the list. Elites in the party, the kind of people I talked to, the donors, the strategists, the other elected officials, they really, they, the doubts about her run very deep. They just don't think she's up to trusting to be the nominee again. Now some people in the party and progressives who would love there to be a female president, they say no, we just can't nominate another woman. It's not worth the risk after what happened with Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris. But the doubts about her run more than just in terms of biology, the doubts about her run to her competence. And it's very difficult even in this anti establishment period where the elites don't control things as much as they did. It's very difficult to win under those circumstances. Okay, number five, governor of Kentucky, Andy Beshear. Interesting. In terms of his place on this list. I had people who had him off the list or much lower. I'm a doubter. I'll be honest. I think that he looks better in concept than he has in execution. But I really, really was urged by my best sources to not only include him, but to put him relatively high. His greatest strength is as in Kentucky, cross partisan appeal. And even though this is about the nomination process, electability matters. A lot of people in the party just happened in 1992 with Bill Clinton said I can accept a nominee who I don't agree with, who's to my right if they can win a general election. And a guy, a Democrat who's been Governor in a very red state. It's the kind of guy that people are going to say, cross partisan appeal, big deal, secret strength, executive calm that reassures jittery Democrats. There's a big belief amongst the elites in the party that not only should the Democratic nominee should be a governor or former governor, but it will be. And he's been pretty unflappable. He's been tested in Kentucky, for instance, during natural disasters. And a lot of people I talked to said this guy just seems calm, he seems centered, he seems a man of faith who's not going to be rattled in the process. And we'll see. We'll see if that's true. But so far, even though not every, not everybody's cup of tea in terms of style, people like that executive calm, known weakness, not a scintillating guy. And you hear this over and over, I recommend people listen to his podcast if you want to get a sense of how scintillating he is, which is not very. And that's a problem. If you're competing against people like Gavin Newsom and others who are a little bit flashier, like aoc, that potentially a problem. His secret weakness is the thing that gives me the biggest doubt about him, which is with all due respect to Kentucky politics, which is a hard knuckled state.
- [23:51]
Hard brass knuckle state, he's playing in the minor leagues. I mean, I'll just be straight about it. Kentucky politics is not national politics. He's a savvy guy, but some of my sources said, you know, when this gets really serious, when you got to be raising tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars, when you have to be dealing with really tough questions from voters and reporters, when the opposition research comes your way, they just don't think he's going to have had enough national experience to get it done. All right, number six, Wes Moore, governor of Maryland, who a lot of people are very high on, he's George Clooney's candidate. I probably hear Wes Moore and Shapiro. For people who are not enamored to Gavin Newsom, I probably hear Governor Moore and Governor Shapiro more than any two. Where people say, let's get real, let's find an aircraft carrier. Let's find someone with national experience, media savvy, likable. And, and so a lot of them say Wes Moore, I have him a little lower down than some people suggested. First of all, he said he won't run. People tell me ignore that he's going to run. I still question we'll get to it. In terms of his weaknesses, I still question whether this is going to be his year, even if he does run, whether he's ready. He's a younger guy, known strength. He's. He's charismatic. I used to be on Morning Joe with him, and he was there for a lot of reasons. He had extraordinary resume, written a great book. And, and yet what people often took away from his appearances there, what they do now in the political context. Very charismatic guy. All right, That's a known strength. And, and, and he's as charismatic as anybody on this list. And AOC is coming up on the list, too. So I say that with, with important secret strength is people see that public charisma, right? When he's given a speech or he's on tv. What you're not seeing is he's got the kind of charisma that works not just for the grassroots, talking to, Talking to voters, but with donors and other elected officials. What we say is he's good in the room, right? He come here to New York City, go to Chicago, go to la. He's a great guy. Even his political opponents would tell you he's a charismatic, great guy in public and in private. He can charm people, and that's going to help him build. Build endorsements. If he runs, it's going to help him win over voters, the power brokers in the early states. You know, you got to, you want to get a union official in Iowa or you want to get some elected official in New Hampshire, Wesmore's team can send them into those rooms. You want to convince somebody to raise a million bucks for you here in New York, they can send him into that room and he can charm them. It's a big strength of his known weakness. I referenced it before. He didn't have the longest resume at the national level. He's been involved in, in charitable work. He's been on TV as governor of Maryland. He's, you know, Joe Biden liked him quite a bit and gave him opportunities to be on the national stage, but he's not been doing it for that long a period of time. This is his Governor of Maryland, relatively new in the job. And so it's just a question, kind of like with Governor Beshear, is he ready to hit major league pitching? Secret weakness, I say vulnerable to overexposure if the hype gets ahead of the record. I think that a lot of the people like Clooney who say, oh, I love Westmore, Westmore would be great. They don't really know what he's Done. They don't really haven't spent all that much time with him. He looks great on paper. He's such an impressive guy, a military veteran, charitable work, very thoughtful guy. And so the question is, if he does run and the scrutiny comes, I think it's a secret weakness that he may be vulnerable. There may be a mismatch between the myth of Westmore and the reality that people experience of Westmore. And I think he's smart enough to handle that. But it's a challenge and it is definitely a secret weakness. All right, number seven, J.B. pritzker, governor of Illinois. I had him off the list again. I feel about Pritzker the way I do about, about Bashir. I got nothing against him. I wouldn't be surprised given how weak the field is and how unsettled. I wouldn't be surprised if he ended up being the nominee. I should say I wouldn't be shocked if he ended up being the nominee, but I would be surprised. His for one thing, if I'm right about the mood of the party, you got a billionaire candidate. Is the party really going to want a billionaire now? People say, well, of course they don't. Michael Bloomberg did so poorly. Not all billionaires are created equally. I don't think the billionaire thing is a, is a deal breaker. But I put him on the list because so many people urged me to. A lot of Democratic officials, a lot of Democratic strategists, a lot of donors said, got to put him on the list. Now to put him on the list, I took off. Rahm Emanuel, his fellow Illinois resident, former mayor of Chicago. Some people told me Rahm should be on the list. Some people said, absolutely not. I felt in the numbers game because everybody else on the list, I kept on, I fell numbers game. I had to drop one of them. So Rom came off, maybe I'll be on the next round. Pritzker came on. Known strength, of course, is he can self fund. Right.
- [28:49]
People underestimate when they're amateur appraising potential nominees, potential candidates, they underestimate the need to raise a lot of money. You don't need to raise as much as you did once upon a time, but you need to raise a lot. You need to raise tens, hundreds of millions in this process. And Pritzker's a billionaire now. You run a risk if you're a billionaire writing a big check because when you do, it's harder to raise money. And the reason it's important to raise money, including grassroots. When people give you money in a presidential campaign, they Got skin in the game. And once they have skin in the game, they're going to do stuff, they're going to volunteer, they're going to give you more money, they're going to talk you up to their friends and family, their colleagues. So it's a mixed. It's a mixed blessing. But the fact that Pritzker can write checks, as he did to win the governorship is a big deal. And we don't know how much he'd put in, but he could put in a lot. And certainly it allows you to get the campaign going. It also allows you to pay staff more. He's got a pretty good team already. But if he does run for president, he needs more people. He doesn't need to say to his fundraisers, hey, do we have enough to offer this person $500,000 a year salary? He can just do it. I think his secret strength is he's pretty popular with a lot of the Democratic constituencies, labor unions, some of the other interest groups that make up the Democratic Party. He's tended to them in Illinois, he's spoken at their national events. And he's kind of a Democrat's Democrat. He's kind of a guy who views the party as not entirely made up of the constituency groups, but that they're a big part of it. And he's acted that way. Not everybody on this list can say that. And that's a secret strength. For Pritzker, known weakness is the same as a known strength. As I said before, a billionaire spending his own money to win the White House. Trump did it. And Trump always said that means nobody can buy me. I think Pritzker will take some heat in the Democratic Party, more than Trump did in the Republican Party, to say, do we really want a guy who's just. Well, they'll say, buying the thing, the secret weakness. And I'm a big student of his, of his media appearances, and he does a lot of them, is he's got, for a guy who's the governor of a big state with intense media, particularly in Chicago, he's displayed to my eyes, but also to a lot of the people I talk to, a surprising lack of sure footedness in dealing with media interviews. Most media interviews by most political reporters, they're not that hard. They ask the same five questions over and over again. And the candidate or the politician knows how to answer. When I've seen him get tougher questions, he doesn't handle them that well. It's a little bit of the ham and a hana. And so I think his secret weakness is a question of, in this particular context, is he ready? Said it also about West, Moore, said it about Bashir. These governors of states don't always have prime time readiness. And I wonder, particularly in Pritzker's case, about his primetime readiness when it comes to this specific question of handling tough questions from the media and eventually from voters. All right, number eight. Some people think I should have her at number one, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. She's on my list. And again, if it turns out that the mood of the Democratic Party is we want a fiery populist outsider who's very progressive, she might storm to the nomination. We'll see. I still think that there's going to be trouble for her if she does decide to run because.
- [32:06]
She'S younger, she's inexperienced. And I'll tell you a second, I think she's going to make some mistakes, but I wouldn't be surprised if she stays on the list. We'll do this regularly the whole time, and I wouldn't be surprised if she moved up. But I want to see her in the context of the rigors. Her known strength, digital juggernaut with unmatched activist energy. There's no one on this list who is capturing what Bernie Sanders captured in 2016 and 2020, a feeling that she's leading a movement. She's got Sanders support, not necessarily for the presidency, but he, of course, has elevated her and appeared with her throughout the country. She can do live events that raise a lot of money online, that build grassroots support. I'm on her email list from her political operation, and she sends out emails that are, that are very much like Sanders did, very much like Trump did in 2016, which is to build this movement. That's her known strength. Her secret strength is behind the scenes. She's actually built more bridges than some people realize. And I heard this again and again, particularly from folks on Capitol Hill. There's two kinds of members of Congress. There's a show horse and there's a workhorse. And the show horses get a lot of attention, do a lot of tv, get a lot of buzz. The workhorses do the hard work of legislating. Now, don't get me wrong, she's not done a ton of legislating. And, and that's still a criticism, but. But she's been more of a workhorse in building coalitions and talking to members who don't necessarily agree with her than people realize. And that can pay off. I can pay off in terms of alliances and endorsements. It can pay off in terms of fundraising, and it can pay off in terms of her image for that electability issue. Right. A lot of Republicans would tell you she can't win a general election. They'll say, please nominate aoc. We'd love to have her. This is an opportunity, these alliances she has to build out, to show that she's broader than just the Sanders wing of the party. Her known weakness is a lot of skepticism from centrists in the party, from the establishment wing, and if they matter the way they have in the past, they just don't think she's the right person to nominate. Too young. Some people concerned about nominating a woman again and again, her progressive policies. I think her secret weakness, and this is one that again came up in a lot of my conversations, and you can see it once I tell it to you. You think about it, you'll probably agree she's got limited patience for this stuff. You know, she's young, she's a real person. And running for president, you gotta wake up every morning and say, what are the 10 things I need to do today to get the nomination? And then you got to do them. And if you don't check all 10 off, you got to wake up the next morning and you got to say, okay, what are the ones I didn't get done yesterday and what are the ones I need to add today? And you got to do them all. And if one of the things on the list is I have to chew through a pair of handcuffs to free myself to get to Iowa, you got to do it again. I'm not saying she's not a competitive person, but it's a lot. It's a lot to run for president. And I just don't know that at this point in her life that she has the patience, the focus, the determination to drop everything else, which is what you need to do, and run for president every morning, get up and get on a plane, and then in the middle of the day, get on another plane. We'll see. But she's had a pretty charmed time in national politics. Now she's attacked all the time and faces all this personal and professional scrutiny. I'm not saying it's all. It's all wine and roses, but in terms of allowing her to continue to live a relatively normal life, relatively normal life, she's been able to do that. And I think. I think this could be a weakness in determining whether to run. But then if she does run, I wonder whether. When. When the scrutiny starts to come, when the 4am wake up call comes. I do wonder whether she, she'd be determined to see it through. Okay, that's the first edition of 8 for 28. I'm sure there's going to be a lot of opinions about it. I'm sure some of you are going to say, you know, this is a ridiculous list. Hopefully some of you will like it. I'd love to know what you think about it. So you can send me an email@nextup halpernet gmail.com and tell me what you think. And again, we'll publish this on a regular basis. If you want to see it all, you can go to my social media. You'll be able to watch, look at, look at, look at the full list for everybody. Known strength, secret strength, known weakness, secret weakness. And love to have the discussion with you. And we'll continue to discuss it. And we'll be back in a for too long with another version updated based on the latest reporting. All right, quick break now. When we come back, Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Republican from Arkansas. We're going to talk about how she's trying to change the paradigm on education in her state. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is next up.
- [36:46]
All right, so if you're using a normal phone, you're going to see those creepy ads that pop up all the time. They tell the people out there exactly where you've been, what you bought, even who you've been talking to. And you probably when you see that happening because you see signs of it on the phone, you probably ask yourself, is my phone monitoring me out? The truth is your smartphone is constantly collecting and leaking data, all without your knowledge and without your consent. Every day it's building over and over a more detailed profile of your whole life. Your location, your habits, your interests, even the people you're communicating with. And all that information gets funneled into what it is, an invisible marketplace where it's tracked and analyzed and sold to the highest bidder. It's annoying, of course, but it's also very invasive and it's non stop. You're on your phone non stop. The data is being collected non stop. But now there's a solution. The UPPhone by Unplugged is totally different. It's designed from the ground up to protect your privacy. There are no hidden trackers, there's no data mining. Just a secure and streamlined smartphone experience that puts you back in control. I love it. When I use it, I feel empowered. I feel like I'm actually getting to do stuff without the trade off of losing everything in my privacy. That's if you're texting, if you're browsing, whatever apps you're using. The up phone ensures that your personal information stays personal. It's the phone for people who are done being watched all the time. If you're ready to take back your digital privacy, this is what you need. Visit unplug.com mark you'll get 25% off a phone case with the purchase of a phone. Learn more and order your upphone today. That's unplug.com mark because your life, it should be yours, not theirs. The holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online, and more personal info in more places that could expose you more to identity theft. But LifeLock monitors millions of data points per second. If your identity is stolen, our US based restoration specialists will fix it and guaranteed your money back. Don't face drained accounts, fraudulent loans or financial losses alone. Get more holiday fun and less holiday worry with LifeLock. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit LifeLock.com SpecialOffer Terms Apply hiring isn't.
- [38:58]
Indeed Advertiser
Just about finding someone willing to take the job. Count on Indeed sponsored jobs to find the right person with the right background who can move the business forward. Stop struggling to get your job post even seen on other sites. Give your job the best chance to be seen with INDEED sponsored jobs. They boost your post for quality candidates so you can reach the exact people you want faster and it makes a big difference. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed are 90% more likely to report a hire than non sponsored jobs. Plus, with Indeed sponsored jobs, you only pay for results. No monthly subscription, no long term contracts. Just a boost whenever you need to find quality talent Fast. Join the 1.6 million companies that sponsor their jobs with Indeed. Get a $75 sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves@ Indeed.com podcast.
- [39:53]
Mark Halpern
All right, next up, the Governor of Arkansas, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, is someone who's been around national politics for a long time. Her dad, Mike Huckabee, was governor of Arkansas and I met her originally when she was working on her dad's campaign. She was an extremely talented political operative and then she became an extremely talented White House press secretary working with Donald Trump. Her dad now, of course, is Ambassador to Israel for President Trump and Sarah has become a big part of the Trump orbit. She campaigned for the president's election in 2024 and she has been an extremely active governor in this job in elective office. Her first elective office, not counting student government, in Arkansas, a state that has a lot of challenges and which she is trying to meet, starting out with education, her first big initiative. Governor, happy holidays. Welcome in.
- [40:44]
Sarah Huckabee Sanders
Thank you. It's great to be with you.
- [40:46]
Mark Halpern
Does the governor of Arkansas get Christmas off?
- [40:49]
Sarah Huckabee Sanders
You know, because of the cell phone? I feel like you're never actually off duty. But I will not be in the office and will be with my family taking a few days outside. But certainly your team can always find you no matter where you go. A blessing and a curse, I guess.
- [41:09]
Mark Halpern
You obviously knew more about what the job was like than most people who get it because you were so close to it. Is there anything about the job so far that surprised you?
- [41:17]
Sarah Huckabee Sanders
You know, there's always, like, little things that you never anticipate. I mean, there's all the stuff that you know is coming, the legislative session and big things on the economy and education and public safety and taxes. But there are all these little issues that pop up and land on your desk that, frankly, nobody knows you deal with on a daily basis that you kind of just navigate through. I think the big moments, though, are some of the kind of like, disaster times. Our state has been hit with several really bad tornadoes since I became governor that have ravaged through our state. We've had significant snow and ice storms. And so I think those are the moments that really test you as a leader, are the ones that you can't plan for. You can certainly prepare and have resources in place and have checklists, but you don't get to dictate the path of a tornado and how it's going to impact a community and what it's going to hit and what that community is really going to need in the aftermath. And so those are the moments you don't get to plan for, but certainly one of the things that you deal with more often, I think, than any of us would like.
- [42:34]
Mark Halpern
Yeah. I watched when you campaigned and you talked about education as one of your priorities. And I thought, well, that's nice. That's what people do when they run for governor. And then you basically did what every conservative talks about.
- [42:47]
Right. When you got in just a few months after taking office, you passed this large education package that has some innovations in it, but a lot of it is just the basic stuff that conservatives have been talking about. So before we talk about what you put in place and how you think it's going, first, I think you went to maybe the most famous high school in the United States. Right.
- [43:05]
Sarah Huckabee Sanders
It's certainly one of them. If not the most. And graduated from Little Rock Central High in 1957, home of the Little Rock Nine. Nine black students who were some of the very first to integrate in the South. But when I was in high school was probably also one of the most impactful moments for me growing up. My dad was Governor Bill Clinton, who's obviously also from Arkansas, was the president. And all nine of the Little Rock Nine were still living. And my dad, Bill Clinton, and Mayor Jim Daley for Little Rock, opened the doors to the Little Rock Nine on the 40th anniversary. And I was a sophomore in high school. Standing on the steps, watching that take place and getting to see how far we had come as a state, how far we had come as a country, and having thousands of people on the front line of our school cheering for those nine students going in instead of protesting, their presence was a pretty remarkable thing to witness, even as a sophomore in high school. And so something that plays in my mind and something I'm really proud to have witnessed in person.
- [44:19]
Mark Halpern
So even though it's a famous school and even though you talked about a historic moment, it's still a public school, right? I went to public high school as well, and I went to a great public high school, as you did, one of the best in the country, but it's still a public high school. What did you experience as a high school student that informs your view of education reform?
- [44:38]
Sarah Huckabee Sanders
You know, I absolutely loved my high school experience at the time. We had 10th, 11th, and 12th grade, so I was there for three years. And it's a very large public high school with a really diverse student population. And so I would say one of the things that probably informed my time then and certainly now is interacting with people from every walk of life, from some of the wealthiest kids in our city to some of the poorest kids that were going to do extremely well on tests, to those who were really going to struggle with some of the really more basic and regular classes that they were participating in. And so just the diverse student population gave me a really good glimpse and a good perspective on the ups and downs and the fact that no matter whether you're in a big school or a small school, every kid learns differently. And I got to see that a lot as a student. And certainly it impacts how I govern at this point, because. And you know, I'm a mom, too. I have three kids, and even in my own house, I can see, see that our three kids learn differently, which helps me to understand that we can't expect that a one size fits all system is going to work for every student in our state. I saw that as a high schooler. I see it now at home, and I certainly see it as a governor.
- [46:04]
Mark Halpern
What I love again about the package you passed is, and then the other reforms you've done is you're thinking not just K through 12 and higher ed, but you're thinking about what's important. High teacher quality, educational opportunity, and connecting up what kids learn with opportunities to work after that. Those are the, those are the basic. I think maybe you'll add one or two, but those are the basic principles that animate what you passed. Talk first about teacher quality. A lot of attention focused on the increase in pay. You've dramatically increased starting salaries for teachers, and every teacher got something of a raise. But with that obviously has to come teacher quality. So how have, how does increasing teacher pay make sure you get better teachers, better teaching?
- [46:48]
Sarah Huckabee Sanders
Well, I think there's a lot of factors to unpack here. Number one, we know that having good teachers in front of the classroom has a huge impact, can in many cases have a lifelong impact on the students that are in the classroom. And keeping, retaining, recruiting and keeping our best educators in the classroom is a challenge. And, and so not only paying them more to start out, so we're bringing more people into the profession. We went from being 48th in the country for starting teacher pay to top five, making us competitive with every state in the country. And when you adjust for cost of living, we're number one in the country for starting teacher pay. But it can't just be about our new teachers. It also had to be about rewarding educators that were already there. So we made sure every single teacher got at least a $2,000 pay raise. But we didn't want to stop there. There are a lot factors at play, and one of the big ones was recognizing teachers who were doing it really, really well. And so we instituted a merit based pay system that gives them the opportunity to make up to $10,000 a year in bonuses. And last year we rewarded over 4,000 educators in the state of Arkansas with up to $10,000 in bonuses in multiple different categories. Some of it's for going into hard to recruit areas of teaching, some of it's for growth and achievement in the classroom going into harder to recruit areas. So there's a lot of things that allow teachers to get those pay raises. One thing I think that was really important too is we wanted to show where teachers were being really successful. In Arkansas, we had all this amazing data showing student performance in the classroom under specific teachers. And I'll give you an example. We had a teacher that had been in the classroom for more than a decade. She was in a D rated school, meaning her school was not performing at a high level. She had students from some of the lowest income homes. Really tough demographics. However, her classroom, her kids, year after year for over 10 years, were continuing to perform really well. They were some of the highest performing students in the state. The problem was no one ever told her. Not only did she not know that she was doing a great job other than just, you know, anecdotally seeing that her kids were doing well, but her principal didn't know, her superintendent didn't know, which meant we weren't recognizing her, we weren't rewarding her, and we certainly weren't replicating the great work she was doing in other classrooms. And now we're doing that. We're paying her better and rewarding her for the success that she has. And we're asking her to come and help us teach other teachers and how to do what she's doing, even in a really difficult environment, even in a really tough school to teach. And that's going to, I think, really help not only recognize our teachers and keep them in the classroom, but it also helps us just do a better job at teaching students and giving them what they need.
- [49:56]
Mark Halpern
So much of what you're doing, and you just named one, giving some teachers these big bonuses, $10,000 for a teacher is an enormous amount of money. Homeschooling. So much of that requires there to be some people making judgments. Who's worthy? Is the homeschooling working out well enough for the student? Is this teacher worthy of getting the $10,000 bonus? How do you build that without making a huge bureaucracy and having personal favoritism and, and, and, and improper judgments.
- [50:26]
Destroy what you're trying to build?
- [50:28]
Sarah Huckabee Sanders
I mean, some of it's purely data driven. Are they performing at a high level? Are we seeing a level of growth, not just achievement? Because I think those two things are really different. They often get conflated. But are students that are starting here making forward progress? Do they have growth from the beginning of the year to the end of the year? And we're tracking, we've been tracking that for decades. We just didn't do anything with it, and now we're actually doing something with it. I think most every state in the country is tracking that growth. And it's whether or not they're rewarding the teachers who have it and are seeing it on a regular basis. And so I think that is how you keep from making it a major bureaucracy. You're taking information you're already using, you're already tracking. Some of it is, are they going into a rural district that's in a really hard to recruit area? Are they willing to go teach in that location? That doesn't take a lot of effort to say yes. They went and taught, you know, in one of our tough, failing schools. That's an easy, quick check of the box. And we're able to reward them for their willingness to take on that task. And so at this point, it has not become.
- [51:44]
We haven't had to add additional staff in order to track or do anything differently. We're just doing it better.
- [51:51]
Mark Halpern
Have high quality teaching prospects or teachers from elsewhere in the country now come to Arkansas to apply for jobs because of the increased salaries.
- [52:00]
Sarah Huckabee Sanders
Absolutely. And you know, we have a lot of states that border Arkansas, and it's not just the direct salary. We've also done things that I think add to the quality of life. For instance, we're one of the only states in the country that offers up to 12 weeks of paid maternity leave. And where the state picks up the bill. And when 70% of the teaching workforce in our state is female, that makes a big difference. It not only helps encourage those young women coming into the workforce to want to be teachers because they know that they can do it and still have a family, but for so many, it brings them back into the classroom after they've started that family. And so things like that that help us add to the quality of life have also been part of the process for us, recruiting and retaining top educators in the state. And we're seeing more and more people come from other states. On top of that, you know, lowering our state income tax, we've cut taxes three times in the last two and a half years, knocking 20% off of our income tax, putting more than a billion dollars back into the pockets of our Kansas. You layer things like that. Arkansas is a really attractive state for a lot of people to have a great career, have a great quality of life. We want it to be, and we think we're making a great case for it to be the best place to live, to work, and to raise a family. And just yesterday, new data came out showing that for the second year in a row, Arkansas is the number one state in the country that people are moving into. And I think that's a big part of it. It's one piece is education, not just for teachers, but providing a higher quality of education for our students, more opportunity for parents. It's making this a place that people want to move into, not move away from like you're seeing in a lot of states around the country.
- [53:52]
Mark Halpern
One more in teacher pay, which is my, my pet issue. What if you could find the money?
- [53:57]
Sarah Huckabee Sanders
I sense that you've got a thing for this, so I'm pretty passionate about it myself. So I'm happy to talk about it all day.
- [54:05]
Mark Halpern
I recommend this to every governor I talk to, regardless of party. What if you could find the money to raise teacher salaries to $100,000 a year, top in the nation? Wouldn't you attract even better teachers? And then other states would feel pressure to do the same thing and we could elevate teacher salaries. What would happen if you could find the money to do that?
- [54:24]
Sarah Huckabee Sanders
You know, we want to continue to look for ways, whether that's increasing salaries. We're now in the top five, which I think is a big deal. And again makes us competitive with every state in the country. And we'll keep looking for ways. And maybe it's increasing the starting pay, maybe it's rewarding more of our veteran teachers. But one of the things too that I think is really important that we did that's very into the weeds, but makes a real difference for teachers. On average, the state was giving already to districts about $77,000 per teacher, but a lot of that goes into administrative cost. We give this money from the state to the district and then they get to decide and disseminate that money. Well, part of the education package that we put together required that at least 80% of the money we give for teacher pay get this shockingly has to be used for teacher pay. It can't go strictly for administrative cost overhead in the districts. A lot of things that were typically being taken off the top before it ever made it to teachers. So now a lot more of that money is going directly to teachers pockets and I think that's going to make a big difference, especially long term for educators in the state of Arkansas.
- [55:42]
Mark Halpern
Despite your efforts to raise their pay, the teachers union have not always supported your efforts. How would you like to see the role of the teachers unions in Arkansas change, if at all?
- [55:53]
Sarah Huckabee Sanders
You know, I don't think that they've played frankly a significant role since I became governor. They've had some pushback, but I think that their power and influence has been so watered down over the course of the last decade or so that it really hasn't impacted our ability to do things at the end of the day they want to protect a system and we want to promote students and we want to promote student success. And if they want to be against that, you know, that's a question you have to ask them. I simply point at. Look at where Arkansas has ranked in education. If you want to protect the status quo and you think that being 47th and being 48th is okay, then you can do that, but I don't. I think our students deserve better. I think our parents deserve better. I think our communities, our businesses deserve better than for Arkansas to be at the bottom, which is why we instituted transformational change. I will not apologize for that. I will not back down from it, because we are actually ticking up instead of staying at the bottom. And I don't know why anybody would want to protect that broken system and try to continue down that path when we know there's a better way forward and we're actually seeing that implementing it, and I think going to really change our state because of it.
- [57:13]
Mark Halpern
Would you like to see a lot more Arkansas kids in charter schools in using vouchers to go to parochial schools? Do you aspire to have those numbers grow by a lot?
- [57:23]
Sarah Huckabee Sanders
You know, it's not that I'm looking to hit any basic threshold of we want this many kids in this type of school. We made the single largest investment in public education in our state's history through this legislative package. At the same time, we opened up a lot of opportunity and empowered parents to make the best decisions possible. Kind of back where I started. I'm a mom of three kids. I know that all three of my kids need something differently. And so it's not that we want to check a box to have this many kids in this type of school. We want every kid to be in the place where they have the best opportunity to learn. I'm a big believer that every kid can learn when given the right tools, when given the right environment, when given the right resources, and frankly, given a chance. And that's exactly what we're doing in Arkansas, is we're opening up opportunities and pathways for parents to decide this is the place where my kid can learn best. Let me give you an example, because I think so often, and certainly I know I do this, you can get lost in the spreadsheets and the data and the numbers, but when you put a face and a story and you get to see the difference that the policies are making in the lives of people, then you really appreciate the change that's taking place. So there was a student, a young boy, his name was Jack. He was in an elementary school here in the capital city of Little Rock. And Jack had some learning disabilities. He was really struggling in the school that he was in. It was a great school as a high performing school. It just wasn't a good fit for him. He was getting relentlessly bullied day after day so much that he took everything literally. And one day Jack was told to run off into a ditch and die. And so he did that. He left his school. They couldn't find him for hours. He went missing. Thankfully, after they finally located him and found him, he was okay. They were able to get him back to his parents, but he was several miles from his campus. Fast forward Jack gets to take advantage of what we call education freedom accounts in our state. His parents were able to move him from that school into a smaller environment in a place where he was getting the type of one on one attention that he needed. Not too long ago, I got to go to Jack's new school and Jack was not struggling anymore. In fact, he was thriving. He was the one who gave me the tour, walked me up and down the hallways. He's now a leader in his classroom instead of a kid who's running off and leaving his campus and going missing for hours. That's what the power of, I think creating additional opportunity, putting kids in a place where they can thrive can make. And now we have more than 50,000 students in our state taking advantage of Education freedom accounts. That's not just 50,000 kids. That's 50,000 families that will forever be impacted by their kids being in a place where they can thrive and grow.
- [60:18]
Mark Halpern
All right, we're out of time for this segment. We didn't get a chance to talk about either nutrition or matching higher ed courses with the jobs, the future. So I hope you'll come back to do those. We're going to take a break. We're going to take a break when we come back. Up next with Sarah Huckabee Sanders, governor of Arkansas. We're going to talk about energy and the economy and Walmart. That's next up.
- [60:41]
All right, if you love chips, you want to just eat them and enjoy them and have them taste great and be nutritious. What you don't want is a chemical cocktail inside your chips. Seed oils, msg, artificial dyes, things that are called, quote, natural flavors, ingredients that sound more like they're a science experiment than a tasty and healthy snack. Now Masa is redefining snacking with real food. Their chips have just three ingredients. Organic corn, sea salt, and 100% grass fed beef tallow. It's clean, simple and tasty food. Master Chips will leave you feeling satisfied and energized without that crash, bloat or sluggishness you'll get from those artificial things. No binging, no lingering hunger, just a snack that feels and tastes very good. I love the original, but the white, blue blue, the lime, the cabin air, the churros. They're all delicious. I eat them all. If you love Masa, you'll also love their sister product, the Vandy Crisps. Vandy's sister company makes the most delicious three ingredient Again, just three ingredient potato chips I've ever had. I like the original there too, but there are lots of great flavors to please all palates. If you're ready to give Masa or Vandy or both a try, use the promo code mark for a full 25% off your first order. You can do it at massachips.com or vandycrisps.com or simply link. Click in the link in the video description or scan the QR code to claim this delicious offer. If you don't want to order online, you can buy them now in stores. Go to your local Sprouts supermarket where you'll see both Masa and Vandy available to you there. Stop by, pick up a couple of bags before someone beats you to it.
- [62:20]
Before the trophy and bragging rights are rightfully yours. Before your sleeper turns Turns. In a season no one saw coming, before stats and projections turn into points on the board and your lineup falls perfectly into place, you've flipped the lid on a can of on nicotine pouches. And as you make your first pick, you know this is the season where fantasy's going to surpass reality. It's on products for tobacco consumers 21 years of age or older. Warning. This product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.
- [62:49]
Indeed Advertiser
Hiring isn't just about finding someone willing to take the job. Count on Indeed sponsored Jobs to find the right person with the right background who can move the business forward. Stop struggling to get your job post even seen on other sites. Give your job the best chance to be seen with Indeed sponsored Jobs. They boost your post for quality candidates so you can reach the exact people you want faster. And it makes a big difference. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed are 90% more likely to report a hire than non sponsored jobs. Plus, with Indeed Sponsored Jobs, you only pay for results. No monthly subscription, no long term contracts. Just a boost whenever you need to find quality talent Fast. Join the 1.6 million companies that sponsor their jobs with Indeed. Get a $75 sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves@ Indeed.com podcast.
- [63:45]
Mark Halpern
All right, we're back with the governor of Arkansas, Sarah Huckabee Sanders. You've got, you've got a lot of millionaires and billionaires in your state and a lot of successful companies, but obviously Walmart is just a crown jewel, not just the Arkansas economy, but the American economy. What, what just sort of. If you were teaching a course on business school, what are the things that show illustrate why Walmart has been so successful?
- [64:08]
Sarah Huckabee Sanders
You know, we're very proud that Walmart calls Arkansas home. It's a pretty unbelievable American homegrown success story when you get to have Fortune 1 of 1 in your state. And it's a great thing to point to, to say that a little company, a small five and dime, can grow into the largest company on the face of the planet. And it happened right here in our backyard. It's a great thing to talk to other businesses about, point to that anybody can be successful and you can do it in our state. I think that it has been a great thing, not just for our economy, but also they're really good community partners when things happen in our state. They're one of the first calls we make to help aid in providing relief and providing support and assistance. Walmart's been a great partner across the board and they help in ways both big and small. And so that's a great thing to have in our state. But their presence in northwest Arkansas has provided a major economic boom in that region of our state because they exist. The amount of talent and resources that attract and build around that has really helped us develop the entire Northwest community. And I have to commend the Walton family directly. They could live anywhere on the planet and they choose to live in Arkansas. And they don't just live there, they invest there. They've built hundreds of miles of biking trails across our state. World class art museum that has the largest collection of American art anywhere in the United States. And it's in Bentonville, Arkansas. Invested heavily in healthcare, in education, things that really matter to a community, to a state. And so they don't just live here, they invest here. And it makes a big difference for Arkansas.
- [66:04]
Mark Halpern
Just an extraordinary company. And what I found, it's true of the Waltons, but it's true of the folks they hire. Big brains, really smart people, but also really big hearts. Not just in terms of your state and the Community and that part of the state. But they're just, they're, they're just moral business people. They really do business the right way. And of course, they're not just successful here, but around the country. There's three kinds of people in America. People who are the luckiest live near both a Walmart and a Whole Foods. Some people live near one. The other, I'm nowhere near a Walmart. So whenever I'm on vacation, I always make sure I go. Because we can't get them in New York City. My neighbors don't want them. You did an energy conference on, on Monday, and that's another big area of focus for you. What kind of energy production is done in Arkansas and what are your goals in this term? To make Arkansas make more money from energy, be more energy efficient, use energy in more creative ways.
- [66:57]
Sarah Huckabee Sanders
You know, it's interesting, when I first became governor just over, right around three years ago, the first question that every business asked that was either looking to expand in our state or that we were trying to bring into Arkansas was the same. Everybody wanted to know about workforce. Do you have the skilled, high quality workers that we need to either grow our company or relocate to your state? Over the course of the last year, you've seen that conversation shift significantly. And now a big question that everybody asks is, if we come, if we grow, do you have energy capacity to help us do that? Arkansas, we're lucky to say yes to both of those questions. We've leaned in heavily on growing a skilled, qualified workforce, but also, also investing in energy infrastructure, something that's been ignored for a really long time. Supporting our utility and power companies to make sure that we have capacity to grow. We have a very diversified grid, everything from water and nuclear. Our largest utility company here in the state is about 70% nuclear, which gives us, I think, a lot of reliability, a lot of affordability, but also a lot of capacity, natural gas, a lot of the standard ways of having energy. We also have here in the state. One of the new places, and I think one of the innovative areas where you're seeing Arkansas put its name on the map and the energy conversation is around lithium. We sit on a massive amount of lithium deposits called the Smackover formation. It's in southern Arkansas right now. The biggest supplier and our number one competitor in this space is China. And I don't think there's anybody that wants to see China lead really on anything. And so I think this gives us a really good position to go out and be competitive. But what also makes it different It's a newer technology. In the past, most lithium extraction is through mining and it's pretty environmentally disruptive and cumbersome and takes a significant amount of time and energy. That's not what we do here. We have direct lithium extraction. It's new technology. The really simplified way to explain it is we remove water from the ground, separate the lithium and put the water back in. It's a process we've used to extract other minerals for decades, but never done for lithium. And we have now royalty structures in place that allow us to utilize this new technology and really tap into a resource that's never been done before in our state. And a lot of people predict that we have enough lithium in the state of bar, Arkansas.
- [69:44]
About 15% of the world demand a new industry to really help lift Arkansas's economy and help us engage in the energy space in a way that we haven't been able to as much in the past.
- [69:58]
Mark Halpern
I said I wanted to talk to you more about education. I'd love to talk to you more about energy, particularly nuclear. But we've just got a couple of minutes left and we'll cover a few other topics. I know you know this, but you and I have known each other since you were a young political operative working with your dad. And we know a lot of people who you grew up with in politics. And I know you know, they're all so proud of you. To go from a political operative, a political consultant, political strategist, not just for your dad, but for a lot of other Republicans to work with another Republican president to, to now being the governor of Arkansas. And I'm just wondering when, when your friends look you do, do they ever say, sarah, I can't believe you're governor of Arkansas. I know they do, but I'm just wondering how often they do do.
- [70:38]
Sarah Huckabee Sanders
All the time. Yeah. Yeah.
- [70:40]
Mark Halpern
It's, it's the same with, same with President Bush. Bush 43 was the same thing because I knew people who knew him when he was, you know, a 25 year old kid and same thing. So I'm sorry I interrupted, but it just, it just, I just, I just, it's so, it's so wonderful to see somebody to go. No offense to other former White House press secretaries, but none of them have became governor of anything.
- [71:01]
Sarah Huckabee Sanders
Yeah, but you never know. I think the one we've got now has a pretty big rising star. And I know she's run for office in the past. I would keep a close eye on Caroline. I think she's doing a fantastic job in that role and is so young that she's got a big path in front of her, and I'm excited to see what she does from here. But, you know, I'm very thankful that I had people that were willing to take a chance on me, put confidence in me to take on roles when I was in my 20s in politics that maybe I wouldn't have had in another life, but they took a chance on me, and I was able to work, improve myself and develop relationships. And President Trump did that when he put me in the role as White House press secretary. And I wouldn't be where I am now if a lot of people hadn't had confidence and trust in me, including the people of Arkansas. And I love the job that I get to do. I ask myself all the time. It's not just my friends and people around me, but sometimes I can't believe it either, that even growing up with a dad as governor, it was never really kind of the path I saw myself going down. But it's one I'm really thankful that I get to be part of. And it's been an incredible journey so far, and I'm excited to see what we're able to do over the course of the next five years.
- [72:22]
Mark Halpern
All right, really quick last question. I need your help. America doesn't understand how funny Tom Cotton is. So just explain to explain that Tom Cotton is a very, very funny man.
- [72:32]
Sarah Huckabee Sanders
He actually is really funny. It's a great, like, dry sense of humor. And so you have to appreciate that side of him. And Tom and I, our kids are about the same age, so we have a. A lot of good parent exchanges. But he's not only a very funny guy, he's a great guy, a great patriot. I'm glad that we have an amazing federal delegation, and he's a of that and a good friend and somebody we rely on heavily here in the state of Arkansas. But, yes, he does not appreciated for how funny he is. He's also one of the fastest eaters of any person I've ever seen, so. And he'll eat anything. I'm kind of a picky eater. And so if we're at a banquet together, I can just slide whatever I don't like over to Tom and he'll be sure to take care of it.
- [73:18]
Mark Halpern
All right. I appreciate the add on the food, but I just my. My mission, my quest. I want America to know how fun he is. Governor, happy holidays to you and your family. So grateful to you for making time, and I do hope we'll get more time, as we say in Arkansas, to visit to talk about energy and a little bit more about education sometime soon. But happy holidays again to you and your family. And we're grateful to you for making time.
- [73:36]
Sarah Huckabee Sanders
Absolutely. Merry Christmas to you and come see us in Arkansas. We'll be happy to take you to a Walmart too.
- [73:41]
Mark Halpern
Appreciate it. Thank you, Governor. Merry Christmas.
- [73:45]
If you're a homeowner in America, Erica, you need to listen to this. The FBI has been warning about a new type of real estate fraud. It's on the rise and it's called title theft. And your equity is the target of the criminals. Here's how it works. They forge your signature on a single document. Then they take a fake notary stamp and slap it on there. Then they file it with the county. And just like that, on record, they own your home using your ownership. They can now take out loans against your equity or even sell your property to someone else. And you're not going to know about any of this until your mailbox is filled with foreclosure notices or collection notices. That's why I'm partnering with Home Title Lock so you can protect your equity. And find out today, right now, if you're already a victim, Use my promo code mark. @hometitlelock.com you'll get a free title history report and also a free trial of their million dollar triple lock protection. That's 247 monitoring of your title records, urgent alerts to any changes that occur. And if fraud does happen, their US based restoration team will spend up to $1 million to fix the problem. Don't be a victim. Protect your Equity today. That's hometitlelock.com Again, hometitlelock.com promo code mark or you can use the link below.
- [75:02]
You know, I'm thinking about all the reporting I did for the reported monologue earlier in the program. I'm cognizant of the fact that I'm constantly doing searches, right? Constantly doing research. I'm constantly looking at different information to do my job. And it's fascinating when you do it because most of you are doing those kind of searches on devices that are not protecting your privacy. I want to show you something super fascinating. This is the upphone from unplugged.com and I've been testing it for a while now, doing a lot of my research on it. And what's crazy about it, it is how different it is from doing it on a typical smartphone, an Android or an Apple phone. The dashboard on this shows you in real time what the firewall is doing. It's a unique firewall that emphasizes protecting your privacy, protecting your data. It's blocking hundreds and hundreds of tracking attempts. You just look at it, it's mind boggling. It's fascinating how to watch what it's doing, how quickly these attempts are being made, and compared to a typical smartphone that's stealing your data, you're protected. It's fascinating to watch, but it's also very comforting and very empowering to have a phone that's protecting your privacy. So if you're in a job that involves a lot of research and in a normal phone, the apps are going to be constantly trying to harvest the data to build profiles, to track your location. So if you're in a business, say, like mine, journalism, or you work on a campaign, you work in government, you work in a business job where you don't want people tracking you and personally, you don't want that either. Every one of the attempts to do that is blocked. Someone is trying to build intelligence on you. When you're using a regular smartphone, they're doing it. They're building intelligence. They know what you're reading, they know who you're talking to, they know what kind of things you're researching. The up phone shows you exactly what the apps are trying to do, who's trying to spy on you, and it blocks all those attempts in real time and it shows you what it's doing. If you work in my business, or really in any business where you want to protect your privacy, protect your data, protect, go right now to unplugged.com get yourself one of these up phones. It'll change your life in terms of your data protection, but also will empower you to know that you can do what you need to do in terms of researching stuff, looking at apps, looking at websites, and be protected. All right, let me hear what you think about the whole show. About Sarah Huckabee, about my 8 for 28. Send me an email at nextup halpernmail.com and I'd like you to be contributing to the nexter community by being part of things. Subscribe at the YouTube channel, watch full episodes there and get exclusive bonus content on our YouTube channel. That's YouTube.com NextUp Halperin and of course, you can listen to us as a podcast. Subscribe to NextUp with Mark Alperin. Wherever you listen to podcasts, turn on your downloads to make sure that you get every episode right away. And of course, share NextUp. Help us create future additional nexters by telling telling folks that you can listen to the show or watch the show every week. Grateful to you being part of the nextup community. Nexters will be back next week with more programs. We'll see you on Tuesday. Have a great weekend. Stay with us. So you always know what's coming next. Up.
- [78:06]
Before the trophy and bragging rights are rightfully yours. Before your sleeper turns in a season no one saw great coming before stats and projections turn into points on the board and your lineup falls perfectly into place, you flip the lid on a can of on nicotine pouches. And as you make your first pick, you know this is the season where fantasy is going to surpass reality. It's on. Products for tobacco consumers 21 years of age or older. Warning. This product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.