Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders Has a $19,000 Lectern Problem

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is embroiled in an unusual political scandal that has led an alleged whistleblower to step forward with potentially damaging claims and become the talk of the Natural State. 

It’s about a $19,000 lectern.

The scandal—dubbed “PodiumGate” on social media by those still confused about the difference between a podium and a lectern—centers on her office’s purchase of a seemingly expensive piece of furniture to stand behind while speaking.

Records show Sanders’s office bought the lectern for $19,000 from a firm owned by a known Republican operative in a no-bid purchase. Lecterns seemingly identical to the simple, wood-paneled model Sanders’s office purchased appear to sell online for a fraction of that price.

The Republican governor, who became a national political figure standing behind a lectern as President Donald Trump’s White House press secretary, has categorically dismissed claims of wrongdoing, calling the flap a politically motivated attack.

The Republican Party of Arkansas, meanwhile, has stepped up to stand behind Sanders by covering the cost of the controversial item. 

But the issue continues to generate elevated political heat in Arkansas. This week, the state’s Legislative Joint Auditing Committee could decide whether to audit Sanders’s office over the lectern purchase.
 

Sanders’s office said it welcomes an audit. “This is nothing more than a manufactured controversy by left-wing activists to distract from the bold conservative reforms the governor has signed into law and is effectively implementing in Arkansas,” said Alexa Henning, Sanders’s communications director. 

Henning said the use of the state credit card to buy the lectern was an accounting error and the state was reimbursed by the Arkansas GOP from inauguration funds the governor raised.

The lectern purchase came to light last month after Sanders called a special legislative session for lawmakers to amend Arkansas’s public-records laws to restrict retroactively the release of travel and security records for senior state officials. The changes were necessary to protect the safety of the governor and other top state officials, Sanders said. 

On the first day of the special session, Matt Campbell, a liberal blogger and lawyer who runs a site called Blue Hog Report and has often tangled with Sanders, posted photos online of previous records he obtained that he said could be kept from the public if lawmakers passed Sanders’s proposed changes. 

Among the records was a state credit-card transaction that listed a $19,029.25 charge paid to an outfit called Beckett Events. Afterward, Campbell said an anonymous follower messaged him to say the item in question was a lectern. That amount sounded “insane,” to Campbell, he said, so he followed up with more records requests. 

“At no point ever was this going to be reimbursed by the GOP until after I asked about it,” Campbell said.

Then Tom Mars, Walmart’s former general counsel and a well-known lawyer in Arkansas who served as State Police director and personal attorney for Sanders’s father, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, got involved.

Mars, who has been a critic of the Sanders administration, said he is representing a former state employee who can provide lawmakers with evidence that the governor’s office altered and withheld files Campbell requested under the state’s public records act, including some of Sanders’s purchases on Amazon.com and emails.

Mars noted that Beckett Events, the company the lectern was purchased from, is owned by Virginia Beckett, a Republican who worked as Mitt Romney’s field director in 2012 and has been involved in politics and communications in Washington, D.C., for over a decade. Beckett didn’t respond to requests for comment. 

“It appears that the Governor Office’s alteration of the $19K invoice, payable to one of the Governor’s closest friends, was simply the continuation of a scheme to mislead the public and cover up a highly suspicious, unexplainable misuse of state funds,” Mars said in a statement.

Some lectern sellers aren’t sure those claims will stand up to scrutiny.

AmpliVox Portable Sound Systems lists a Falcon lectern similar to the one the governor’s office purchased for sale between $6,962 and $7,553 for one with a mic. Don Roth, the company’s chief executive, said it was possible that a customized version could cost $19,000, if it was altered to change the height or width, or used more expensive materials.

The lectern on AmpliVox’s site is 49 inches tall, and the one Sanders paid for was 39 inches.

Write to Adolfo Flores at adolfo.flores@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications
Don Roth is the chief executive of AmpliVox Portable Sound Systems. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said his first name was Dan and that he was also the company’s founder. (Corrected on Oct. 9)

Appeared in the October 10, 2023, print edition as 'A $19,000 Lectern Puts Governor in Hot Seat'.