Staff photo / David Skolnick.... Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who served as former President Donald Trump’s press secretary, sits with Ohio Treasurer Robert Sprague during Thursday’s Mahoning County Republican Party Lincoln Day dinner at the Maronite Center. Sanders was theStaff photo / David Skolnick Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who served as former President Donald Trump’s press secretary, sits with Ohio Treasurer Robert Sprague during Thursday’s Mahoning County Republican Party Lincoln Day dinner at the Maronite Center. Sanders was the keynote speaker. keynote speaker.

YOUNGSTOWN — Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who served as press secretary to former President Donald Trump, said the “radical left” wants to destroy the “American Dream.”

“They are insistent on crushing it and taking it away from our kids, and we will not sit back and let that happen,” Sanders said Thursday during her keynote address at the Mahoning County Republican Party’s Lincoln Day dinner. “The future of our country is far too important for us not to engage at every level.”

Sanders, who is running for Arkansas governor, spoke to a crowd of about 400 at the Maronite Center in Youngstown.

“Make no mistake about it — the radical left is not simply satisfied with changing policy,” she said. “They want to fundamentally change who we are as a people. They want to change the very heart and soul of what makes America special.”

Sanders said she was proud of her time working for Trump.

“I’m proud I worked for a president who actually did exactly what he said he was going to do,” she said. “I’m proud of the fact we had a president who stood up for the American workers, who actually stood up for our country and never apologized for the greatness of it. We had a president who actually made our allies respect us and our enemies fear us.”

Without mentioning President Joe Biden, a Democrat who beat Trump in the 2020 election, Sanders said the country now has “weak and incompetent leadership.”

She added: “If good people aren’t engaged in public service, bad things happen.”

Sanders urged the crowd to vote for Republicans up and down the ticket this year.

“Every two years they say this is the most important election of our lifetime, but I really think it is right now,” she said. “The contrast has never been more clear and the stakes have ever been so high. Literally everything we love about America is on the line.”

Sanders is the latest person connected to Trump to speak at a Mahoning County Republican Party event.

Others in the past couple of years include Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s former campaign manager; Candace Owens, a conservative political commentator; U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, a close Trump ally; and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who is Sanders’ father.

Trump was only the third Republican presidential candidate since 1936 to win Mahoning County. In 2020, he defeated Democrat Joe Biden in the county by 1.9 percent. Trump lost Mahoning by 3.28 percent in 2016 to Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Trump was also the first Republican candidate to win Trumbull County in two consecutive presidential elections since Herbert Hoover in 1928 and 1932 before Trumbull and Mahoning became largely reliable Democratic counties starting in 1936.

Trump beat Biden in Trumbull County by 10.56 percent in 2020 and defeated Clinton by 6.22 percent in 2016.

The only other Republicans to win the counties in the past 86 years were Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon in their second terms, in 1956 and 1972, respectively.

dskolnick@vindy.com

dskolnick@tribtoday.com