Huhtasaari graduated as Master of Education in 2004. She has worked as an elementary teacher and a special education teacher. She was elected to the City Council of Pori with 1,064 votes in 2012 and again with 2,566 votes in 2017. She stood in the 2014 European Parliament election and received 9,132 votes but was not elected. In 2015 Huhtasaari was elected to the Parliament with 9,259 votes. In the Parliament, she is currently member of the Legal Affairs Committee, the Education and Culture Committee and the Finnish Delegation to the Nordic Council. Huhtasaari endorsed Jussi Halla-aho for president of the Finns Party. She was elected first vice president of the Finns Party on 10 June 2017, the same day when Halla-aho was elected president. On 4 August 2017, Huhtasaari was chosen as the presidential candidate of the Finns Party. In the election, Huhtasaari placed third with 6.9 percent of the votes, while the incumbent president Sauli Niinistö went on to secure his second term with a majority of votes.
Views
Huhtasaari believes that the European Union is going to collapse and Finland should leave it. She also wishes for Finland to withdraw from the Ottawa Treaty and Paris Agreement. Huhtasaari opposes Finland becoming a member of NATO, but supports developing cooperation with the alliance. Huhtasaari is a supporter of United States PresidentDonald Trump. Huhtasaari is a creationist and has stated that the theory of evolution is a 'totally impossible theory'. She has also said that Finland could reject international agreements in order to prevent economic migrants from migrating to Finland.
Thesis plagiarism
During the 2018 presidential election campaign, Huhtasaari was accused of plagiarising parts of her 2003 M.Sc. thesis. The matter was investigated by her alma mater, the University of Jyväskylä, with the conclusion that only 10 per cent of the thesis was plagiariased, and that the plagiarism was not particularly serious considering the policies of the university at the time. However, in May 2018, Finland's national public broadcasting companyYLE reported that approximately 30 per cent of the thesis was plagiarised, after an YLE journalist identified a previously unknown source for the text in Huhtasaari's thesis. Huhtasaari responded by claiming to have written the dissertation in good faith, relying on any shortcomings being detected during the review process. She also claimed to have followed the university's own guidance regarding citing of earlier theses, namely that such citations were advised against, as dissertations could not be guaranteed to be of sufficiently high academic standards. To defend her integrity, Huhtasaari published a positive employment certificate for her 1-year-tenure as a second-grade teacher at an elementary school in the Marshall islands from April 2000. The University of Jyväskylä released its detailed report in August 2018, finding serious plagiarism and disregard for the scientific method throughout Huhtasaari's thesis. As the statute of limitations had passed, the university will not pursue further action.
