“There are two types of people who run for office,” Ms. Sanders said over breakfast tacos at a diner in downtown Little Rock last week. “People that are called and people that just want to be a senator or governor. I feel like I’ve been called.”

She did not make it clear who did the calling — potential voters or even a higher power. As the daughter of Mike Huckabee, who served as governor from 1996 to 2007 and twice ran for president, she is seen as political royalty in Arkansas, and Mr. Trump himself urged her to run for governor when she left the West Wing.

That job will open in 2023, when Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s term is up, and Ms. Sanders is giving every indication that she plans to run.

“It’s the role I’ve been pushed into,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to do that if I wasn’t the right person to fit what the state needed at that time.”