Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) Assumed office, July 1996, 2d term up Jan. 2007
Born:	Aug. 24, 1955, Hope
Home:	Little Rock
Education:	Ouachita Baptist U., B.A. 1975, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1976-80
Religion:	Baptist
Marital Status:	married (Janet)
Elected  Office:	AR Lt. Gov., 1993-96.
Professional Career:	Advertising Dir., Focus, 1976-80; Baptist Minister, 1980-92; Pres., ACTS-TV, 1983-86; Pres., KBSC-TV, 1987-92; Pres., Cambridge Comm., 1992-96.
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Mike Huckabee has been governor of Arkansas since July 1996. Like Bill Clinton, Huckabee was born in Hope; unlike Clinton, he grew up there. Clinton was elected governor of Arkansas Boys State in 1963, Huckabee in 1972. Clinton went off to Georgetown and Yale Law School; Huckabee graduated from Ouachita Baptist University at 19 and attended Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth for four years. He had a profound spiritual experience at 15, while on a two-week youth fellowship program at Cape Kennedy--the first time he had been outside Arkansas. In the 1980s, Huckabee was a Baptist minister in Pine Bluff and then Texarkana; in both towns he started a 24-hour television station, where he produced documentaries and hosted a program called Positive Alternatives. In 1989, he became president of the Arkansas Baptist Convention, with a membership of 490,000.

Huckabee's first stab at politics was running against Senator Dale Bumpers in 1992; he lost 60%-40%. Then, after Jim Guy Tucker replaced Bill Clinton as governor, Huckabee ran in a special election for lieutenant governor. It was July 1993, the Clinton tax plan and gays in the military had been in the headlines, and Huckabee beat pro-Clinton Democrat Nate Coulter 51%-49%. He was re-elected 59%-41% in November 1994. In October 1995, after David Pryor said he was retiring from the Senate, Huckabee announced for the seat and was ahead in the polls. But in May 1996, Tucker was convicted on one count of arranging nearly $3 million in fraudulent loans. Tucker promised to resign July 15; on that day, claiming he had a good case on appeal, he hesitated, then finally in the early evening he resigned. Huckabee, who had already bowed out of the Senate race, had insisted Tucker resign and handled the transition gracefully but firmly.

Despite facing a heavily Democratic legislature, Huckabee has had passed some significant programs as governor. He is most proud of the ARKids First plan providing health insurance for parents of children above the Medicaid income limits. It requires a small co-payment, to avoid the stigma of being a handout; Huckabee wanted to offer parents the choice of ARKids First or Medicaid, which the Clinton administration overruled in July 2000, so he rolled the two plans into one. Huckabee boasts that the program has given insurance to 50,000 kids who didn't have it and that Arkansas ranks number one in the decrease of percentage of residents without health insurance. In his first years, he cut income taxes and passed a taxpayer's bill of rights for property owners; he supported a successful ballot measure to raise the sales tax 0.5% to fund a $300 homestead property tax credit. The gas tax was raised for a major highway construction program. Huckabee implemented the AASIS (Arkansas Administrative Statewide Information System) program that put all state departments on the same state-of-the-art computer system. He signed a law requiring women to receive information about abortion 24 hours before the procedure and mailed a letter to school superintendents reminding them of children's right to engage in "personal or group prayer." Budget cuts in 2001 cut out most of a promised $3,000 increase for teachers and cut health services programs, but Huckabee, at the time, remained opposed to tax increases.

In 1998, he faced Democrat Bill Bristow, an attorney representing state trooper Danny Ferguson in the case Paula Jones brought against Bill Clinton. Bristow charged that Huckabee spent Governor's Mansion funds on personal items and called for a bond issue for road repairs similar to one beaten 87%-13% in 1996. Huckabee outspent Bristow and won 60%-39%, carrying all but eight lightly populated counties in eastern Arkansas. Through most of his first full term his job ratings remained high, and at the end of 2001, he had raised almost $1 million for his reelection campaign and prominent Democrats declined to run--former FEMA Director Jamie Lee Witt, former Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater, Secretary of State Sharon Priest. Finally, in March 2001, Democrats came up with a candidate, state Treasurer Jimmie Lou Fisher. In 2001, she announced she would retire from this minor office after 22 years and return home to Paragould, where her mother was in bad health. A onetime staffer for freshman Governor Bill Clinton, she was regarded as an exceedingly nice person, always welcome at Democratic get-togethers; she introduced Clinton when he announced for president in 1991. But, wrote local political columnist John Brummett, she "stumbles in her articulation" and her "policy pronouncements are comically evasive or vacuous."

Fisher, however, turned out to be a strong candidate and came close to winning. And the reason was that Mike Huckabee started making astonishing mistakes; his job rating plummeted from 70% to 50%. Huckabee had a penchant for granting pardons; one felon he paroled in 1996 committed a murder in Missouri. In July 2001, he commuted the sentence of the stepson of an administrative aide in the governor's office whose criminal record went back to 1972. That same month, he also granted clemency on state charges to David Hale, who had pleaded guilty in the Whitewater scandal and then testified against Jim Guy Tucker and James and Susan McDougal (even though Hale's sentence in this case was only 21 days). In June 2002, he fired the head of the AASIS project, who promptly told reporters he and other employees had been pressured for campaign contributions and that Huckabee had tried to stifle news of cost overruns--nearly 100%--during the election year. Huckabee aides barraged Arkansas Educational TV with complaints after a business reporter was quoted as saying he could "stomach" four more years of Huckabee, and the state police investigated when a weekly newspaper reported that AASIS couldn't protect the privacy of Social Security numbers. Huckabee had been in the practice of receiving large gifts; he reported a total of $112,000 in 1999, which included $23,000 in clothes from one state appointee. He also accepted $60,000 in speaking fees from a group he helped found. Huckabee responded--in an election year!--with a lawsuit to allow him to receive more gifts and another lawsuit to stop the Ethics Commission from investigating him.

Another self-inflicted wound came in March 2002, when Huckabee's wife announced she was running for Secretary of State. This was the first time ever that a husband and wife ran simultaneously for statewide office. Janet Huckabee was known for her daredevil antics--bungee jumping, skydiving, jet skiing, kayaking--and for her oversight of the two-year renovation of the Governor's Mansion, a time when the Huckabees lived in a triple-wide on the mansion grounds. She insisted on a 24-hour state police detail while campaigning across the state; when that was challenged, she at first said she had no control over it, then promised to pay the cost, then said she would pay only up to $500. Criticism rained in; her reply was, "If it wasn't for the grace of God, I would have shot a few people already."

Meanwhile, Jimmie Lou Fisher, with teachers' union support, called for spending $133 million more for education; she said she would find the money from waste, fraud and abuse, or perhaps from a lottery (though she opposed one). She got more mileage by attacking AASIS and criticizing Huckabee's grants of clemency and acceptance of gifts. By late October, polls showed an even race. On election night there was a victory--a narrow one--for one Huckabee and a defeat for the other: Janet Huckabee lost 62%-38% while Mike Huckabee won 53%-47%, a far lower margin than four years before. Huckabee called the campaign "a kidney stone that takes six months to pass." There may be more stones: On November 14, Huckabee proposed an increase in the sales tax, from 5.125% to 5.75%. Fiscal problems were looming: Revenues were coming in lower than projected, and a Little Rock judge had ruled that Arkansas's education funding system was inequitable, a ruling that, if affirmed by the state Supreme Court, seemed likely to cost an additional $800 million.

Update: September 23, 2003
On August 27, 2003, Huckabee announced he would not run against Democratic Senator Blanche Lincoln in 2004.

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State Capitol, Rm. 250, Little Rock 72201, 501-682-2345; Fax: 501-682-3597; Web: www.state.ar.us/governor.

Election Results (More Info)
	Candidate	Total Votes	Percent
2002 general	Mike Huckabee (R)	427,082	53%
	Jimmie Lou Fisher (D)	378,250	47%
2002 primary	Mike Huckabee (R)	78,803	85%
	Doyle Cannady (R)	13,434	15%
1998 general	Mike Huckabee (R)	421,989	60%
	Bill Bristow (D)	272,923	39%
	Other	11,099	2%