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Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) Assumed office, July 1996, 2d full 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.
Office	State Capitol, Rm. 250, Little Rock 72201, 501-682-2345; Fax: 501-682-3597; Web: www.state.ar.us/ governor
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Arkansas

Gov. Mike Huckabee (R)

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. Huckabee 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. 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. 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 led 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 some significant achievements 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 70,000 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 term, 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. 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 a child's right to engage in "personal or group prayer."

In 1998, against Democrat Bill Bristow, an attorney representing state trooper Danny Ferguson in the case Paula Jones brought against Clinton, Huckabee was elected to a full term by a 60%-39% margin. 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. He was popular enough that prominent Democrats declined to run in 2002; only in March 2002 did Democrats came up with a candidate, state Treasurer Jimmie Lou Fisher, who had 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, but not a strong candidate. But she came close to winning. 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. In June 2002, he fired the head of the AASIS (Arkansas Administrative Statewide Information System) 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 also 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. Huckabee responded--in an election year!--with a lawsuit to allow him to receive more gifts and another lawsuit to stop the state 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. 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. 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. Mike Huckabee won by only 53%-47%, while Janet Huckabee lost 62%-38%. Huckabee called the campaign "a kidney stone that takes six months to pass."

Another obstacle appeared. In November 2002 the state Supreme Court ruled that Arkansas's school finance system was unconstitutional and ruled it must be changed by January 2004: one of many such rulings in which state courts take control of education policy. Huckabee tussled with the legislature, which declined to pass a budget until he called a special session; he announced in August 2003 he would not run against Senator Blanche Lincoln in 2004, but would concentrate instead on education. Huckabee's solution was consolidation of school districts with less than 1,500 pupils. Local school superintendents and rural voters vehemently opposed this; the state Senate approved consolidation for districts with less than 500 pupils, but the state House would have none of it. Huckabee protested, "I do not want to be the second Arkansas governor to step on, in this case, the Capitol steps rather than a school campus and to openly and publicly defy a court order." Huckabee called a special session in December 2003, and fought for consolidation with what legislators called "bullying tactics." In January 2004 the state Supreme Court hired two former justices as special masters to redesign school finance if the legislature failed to act; consultants had already proposed an $847 million increase to the $1.7 billion state education budget. In February 2004 the House approved a $377 million sales tax increase, with consolidation of districts with less than 350 pupils; Huckabee let it become law without his signature. Criticized for supporting the largest tax increase in Arkansas history, Huckabee said, "Pure conservatism means lean and responsible government, not mean and irresponsible government." By the end of the session, 19 of 21 bills he proposed became law including one merging the state's Health and Human Services departments together and another altering the funding formula for state colleges.

Huckabee made news in other ways. Diagnosed with Type II diabetes in 2003, he lost some 110 pounds over the next year or so. He quit eating fried foods and sweets and started exercising regularly; he showed his progress by toting a 90-pound girl around a school gym. In May 2004 he started a Healthy Arkansas initiative, to discourage bad eating habits and smoking; no smoking was allowed within 25 feet of state buildings, and the state started paying for nicotine patches. Parents were given children's health report cards. He started a Get Five fruits and vegetables a day initiative and eschewed an old favorite, fried Twinkies. Huckabee said he wanted government to "model healthy behavior," but he still opposed a ban on smoking in restaurants. His weight down from 280 pounds to 170, Huckabee was profiled in People magazine, accompanied by a photo of him holding a pair of his old pants. He wrote a best-selling book titled Quit Digging Your Grave with a Knife and Fork and went on television to promote it.

Huckabee campaigned hard for George W. Bush in 2004. But despite Bush's victory in Arkansas, Republicans lost two seats in the state House. Huckabee is term-limited and cannot run again in 2006; he has been mentioned as a possible candidate for president in 2008, though he downplayed any national aspirations. "It is not a big focus of my life right now." Republican candidates to succeed him as governor include Lieutenant Governor Win Rockefeller, whose father was elected governor in 1966 and 1968, and former Congressman Asa Hutchinson, who served as undersecretary of the Department of Homeland Security until resigning in March 2005. In June 2005 the Democratic frontrunner was Attorney General Mike Beebe.

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%