[3] In 2002, she was the Republican Party nominee for Arkansas secretary of state in the same election that her husband was seeking a second term as governor.

[4] Her husband fared better in his re-election bid, having defeated his Democratic opponent, state treasurer Jimmie Lou Fisher.

The following year, she earned an undergraduate degree in organizational management from John Brown University in Siloam Springs, Arkansas.

For a time, she worked in a management capacity with Hanke Brothers Construction Company in Hot Springs until her husband began his 2008 presidential bid.

She was employed for a time by the Texarkana public schools as a substitute teacher, for St. Michael Hospital, and as a pharmacist's assistant.