Sarah Smith’s 2018 campaign website stated the following campaign themes:

Foreign Policy

Smith was only 13 years old when the US went to war in Afghanistan and then to Iraq for the second time. At present, she sees no end in sight. She said that millennials have known more days that the country has been at war than at peace. United States’ constant military intervention has destabilized many countries and she said that the US spends more budget in the military than 8 countries combined.

She wants to enact the following solutions immediately: prioritize diplomacy over war. The intervention of the US in wars in the Middle East have cost thousands of servicemen lives and trillions of dollars, as well as the death of many civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen. Smith wants to end this US intervention. This can be done by ending the Presidential Authorization for Use of Military Force that will require all military action to be debated in Congress before enacting.

Affordable Housing

With more than seven million households lacking access to affordable housing and remain struggling with mortgage payments, wants to set policy on providing affordable housing, as she mentioned as a human right. She will then push the following policies to make housing affordable to all Americans:

* Build 10 million public homes over the next decade
* Pass tenants bill of rights
* Support measures locally that controls rent
* To address the affordable housing crisis and create millions of jobs in the process, she wants to expand the National Affordable Housing Trust Fund to at least $5 billion a year to preserve, construct, and rehabilitate 3.5 million rental units over the next 10 years
* Raise the minimum wage starting at $15 an hour, and tie it to inflation.
* Reinvigorate Federal Housing Programs that focus on building affordable housing for the elderly, the disabled, and families.
* Support first time home buyers by providing down payment assistance programs, loan guarantees, and direct loans.
* Prevent predatory lending by requiring all mortgage costs to be clear, risks are outlined visibly, and nothing is hidden in the fine print.

Women’s Rights

Smith believes that despite major advances in civil and political rights, the United States still has a long way to go in addressing the issue of gender inequality. She is fighting for women’s right advancement by pushing the following:

* Cosponsor Paycheck Fairness Act that gives pay equity for women
* Expand funding for Planned Parenthood that protects the reproductive rights of women. Support other initiatives that protect women’s health
* Enact a new Child Development Act that which provides quality and affordable childcare to all Americans
* Increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour that will boost the income of more than 15 million women and help close the gender wage gap
* Raise the tipped minimum wage to $15 an hour compared to the current of just $2.13 an hour set since 1991. Since more than two-thirds of tipped workers are women, increasing the minimum wage by 2023 would reduce the gender pay gap
* Provide at least 2 weeks of family vacation, 12 weeks of paid family leave, and one week of paid sick days to US workers

HIV/AIDS

With 1.2 million Americans with HIV, many are having problems with accessing affordable drugs. With this, Smith wants to set the following policies:

* Universal healthcare for all with no discrimination against those with HIV/AIDS
* Expand the mental health services for people living with HIV/AIDS
* Expand PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) to end the AIDS epidemic.

LGBTQIA+ Equality

Sadly, there are still many U.S. states that can still legally fire someone or deny housing for being gay or transgender. Smith pushes for the following policies:

* Pass Comprehensive Anti-Discrimination Protections that makes it illegal to deny housing, healthcare, and other basic services to due to their gender or sexuality
* Protect the privacy of transgender Americans by doing the following steps: (1) De-gender documentation meaning that gender markers are optional; (2) De-gender public facilities such as bathroom.
* Develop and implement educational resources, classes, and public education that are LGBTQ-inclusive. Many LGBTQ students are still bullied and discriminated in the education school sector.