Ask the People From His Past - The Arkansas Residents.

Huckabee's sudden rise mirrors his past success
Mike Madden
Republic Washington Bureau
Dec. 18, 2007 12:00 AM

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - Until a few weeks ago, Mike Huckabee was an unknown commodity to most of the country.

Not in Arkansas, though. As governor for more than 10 years, Huckabee kept a high profile in the state, whether he was pushing for highway improvements or exhorting his fellow citizens to lose weight.

In many ways, the Republican's lingering image here reflects how he is coming off nationally as he tries to maintain leads in the GOP presidential races in Iowa and South Carolina: He is well-liked by social conservatives and detested by fiscal ones, yet appreciated by both sides for his wit and charisma.

As lieutenant governor, he moved up to governor in July 1996 when Democratic Gov. Jim Guy Tucker resigned after a fraud conviction. Huckabee then won two terms of his own.

He left the statehouse in January and started what looked like a long-shot presidential campaign. Now, propelled by support from evangelical Christians in Iowa, Huckabee leads polls there and is second to former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani in most national surveys.

For those here who know Huckabee, his sudden rise in the GOP presidential campaign mirrors his career in Arkansas politics, where he blended social conservatism with economic populism and used his quick wit and roots as a Southern Baptist preacher to win over voters.

In the complicated logic of a wide-open GOP primary contest, Huckabee could help Arizona Sen. John McCain's attempt to revive his own presidential campaign.

If Huckabee beats former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in Iowa, McCain's aides believe, it would slow Romney's momentum enough to help McCain win the next primary in New Hampshire.

"Anything but a comfortable victory for Mitt Romney in Iowa throws big question marks," said Dave Roederer, McCain's campaign chairman in Iowa.

After months leading the polls in Iowa, Romney now is calling himself the underdog, trailing Huckabee even though he has poured millions of dollars into building an organization in Iowa.

Huckabee's views resonate in his home state, as well.

"The fact is that he placed himself squarely where most Arkansans are," said Janine Parry, a political-science professor at the University of Arkansas who runs the school's Arkansas Poll.

Parry noted that 55 percent of Arkansas voters last year said they still liked Huckabee, 10 years after he took office.

"(That's) pretty respectable, especially for anyone who's served more than six to eight years in public life," Parry said. "It's ample time for everyone to be disappointed in you at least once."

On the campaign trail, Huckabee, 52, talks frequently and proudly about his accomplishments here:

How he pushed for badly needed improvements to the state's highway and road infrastructure; how he expanded ArKids First, the state's health-insurance program for children in poor and working-class families; how he championed school reforms that consolidated several rural districts, although he disagreed with the Democratic Legislature about the final shape of that plan.

He occasionally was more liberal than his current campaign positions. On immigration, he pushed to allow in-state tuition for some illegal-immigrant kids who graduated from Arkansas high schools, although he lost that fight. He recruited the Mexican government to open a consulate in the state, and he opposed a Republican bill in the Legislature that would have denied health care for undocumented immigrants.

Still, throughout his tenure, Huckabee was a Republican governor in a Democratic state, with a constitution that limited the power he could wield on his own. That left him with a narrow margin in which to operate.

"He was a pragmatic conservative, not an ideologue, and I saw that as his strong point," said Rex Nelson, a former Arkansas political journalist and Huckabee's spokesman for most of his gubernatorial term. "He didn't just run for office; he was able to govern once he got into office."

Some of Huckabee's pragmatic politicking infuriated the Republican base in Arkansas, especially his support for various tax increases that helped fund some of the improvements he advocated.

Huckabee campaigned aggressively to raise taxes on diesel fuel and gasoline to pay for road projects, a sales-tax increase to improve state parks and a tax on nursing homes to cover Medicaid shortfalls. Although his campaign touts the 90 taxes he cut overall, the state's tax revenues increased during his tenure by almost $500 million.

"He thinks about government as running a business, and he needs more revenue to run his programs, and he doesn't think twice about increasing those taxes," said Patrick Briney, head of the Arkansas Republican Assembly, a conservative group that has been loudly critical of Huckabee's tax record.

The Club for Growth, a national anti-tax organization, also has blasted his policy, buying hundreds of thousands of dollars of anti-Huckabee advertising in New Hampshire and other key primary states.

In debates and in stump speeches, Huckabee's jokes and one-liners have helped him attract attention on the presidential trail. He also employed wit during his days as governor.

Critics say, though, that he frequently took disagreements personally and that he could flash a temper that so far hasn't appeared much in his national campaign.

He once ordered his press office to take the Arkansas Times, a Little Rock alternative weekly paper, off the list for press releases. He called conservative Republicans who differed with him about financial issues "Shiites," implying they were radicals.

"If you did not agree with him on a policy issue, he took it personally," said Randy Minton of Ward, Ark., a former GOP lawmaker who was one of Huckabee's critics. Minton campaigned for Huckabee during elections in the 1990s but split with him about taxes.

Huckabee mostly shrugs off such attacks, saying the taxes were necessary to pay for popular programs. His allies point out that Minton and other critics are so conservative that they are marginalized in Arkansas politics, something on which analysts agree.

"This is the scrutiny that I've been going through since I first put my name on the ballot in 1992. And for me, it's sort of like, 'Gosh, do they not have anything new?' " Huckabee said last week while campaigning in Iowa.

Among Arkansans, the affable nature Huckabee displays on the campaign trail mostly helped keep him popular.

"He's like a common guy," said Ron Platzer, 65, a salesman from Hot Springs, Ark.



Reach the reporter at mike .madden@arizonarepublic.com.