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Gov. Mike Huckabee A decade after the madness, Mike Huckabee reflects Sunday, Jul 16, 2006 By James Jefferson Arkansas News Bureau LITTLE ROCK - A day for the Arkansas history books is only an afterthought a decade later for the man who was at the epicenter of the madness. On July 15, 1996, the state faced near constitutional crisis when a governor convicted of federal charges reneged on a promise to resign quietly. Backed by powerful Democrats in the Legislature, the Republican lieutenant governor of 18 months countered with a threat of impeachment. Today, almost a decade to the day later, Mike Huckabee positions for a possible run for the Republican presidential nomination. Along the way, he has confounded friends and foes with a self-styled mix of Christian conservatism and social moderation. Huckabee, who is term-limited and will leave office in January after the third-longest gubernatorial tenure in state history, reflected on his 10-year adventure in a recent interview with the Arkansas News Bureau. He was settling into his announced run for the U.S. Senate in May 1996 when then-Gov. Jim Guy Tucker was convicted of fraud in the Whitewater investigation. Tucker announced he would step down as governor, effective July 15. With the Democratic governor's resignation, Huckabee would become Arkansas' second Republican chief executive in 25 years and only its third since Reconstruction. Huckabee was minutes away from taking the oath of office in the packed House chamber at the state Capitol when Tucker informed his would-be successor that he'd decided to stay put while appealing his federal court conviction on grounds of jury bias. Tucker's announcement set in motion a chain of events that brought state government to the brink of a crisis that was averted by the end of the day when Tucker relented in the face of threatened impeachment. Thus began the administration of Arkansas' 44th elected governor. Now, after two years as Arkansas' "unelected governor" and nearly two full terms of his own, Huckabee said he rarely thinks about his tumultuous rise to power unless someone brings up the subject. "It's interesting how many people can remember the details of that day, and if they were in Arkansas, it's one of those things where people remember where they were and what they were doing," he said. "I'm not sure if I thought 10 years ago I would have gone through two terms," said the Baptist preacher and former pastor who stepped out of the pulpit and into the political arena. "But it didn't take long into those early months and certainly the first year or so that I realized that this was a wonderful job and a great opportunity, and that I could serve more effectively and, frankly, with a greater level of fulfillment than had I been elected to the U.S. Senate." One longtime Democratic operative attributed Huckabee's political staying power to the goodwill he engendered among Arkansans with the handling of the change of authority, his religious background and the force of his public persona. "Arkansas is a very religious state, and a lot of voters saw him as a good man," said Ron Maxwell, a currently the state Democratic Party's chief operating officer. "As we see so often, voters don't necessarily support the party, it's the personality of the candidate involved that is a significant factor in who actually wins elections." The politics of personality played a huge role in the continued election of Democrats David Pryor, Dale Bumpers and Bill Clinton, he said. Both Pryor and Bumpers served two terms as governor and had long tenures in the U.S. Senate. Clinton won five gubernatorial elections and carried his home state in two successful presidential races. Huckabee acknowledged that the outpouring of support he received after Tucker resigned "was a great boost," even from "people who I know who had never voted for me or wanted me to be governor." "But people have short memories," he added. "They're very impatient. I think you have to earn people's respect and support every day." After a decade in office, "On many fronts, there's a great sense of satisfaction," he said. Although a self-proclaimed fiscal conservative, he counts among his major accomplishments passage of a 1996 conservation tax that has financed restoration of the state parks and the 1997 ARKids First program, an extension of Medicaid to provide basic health insurance coverage for the children of Arkansas' working poor. He also cites Arkansas' first general tax reduction and an overhaul of the state's car-tag renewal process. Near the end of his first legislative session, the heavily Democratic Legislature overrode Huckabee's veto of more than a dozen bills, including a $3 million appropriation for an obscure program to provide legal advocates for children whose parents were embroiled in custody battles. After disclosures that some legislators and their connected friends benefited from the program, Huckabee initiated a broad review of state contracts and installed a toll-free hotline to field reports of suspected government corruption. Findings were turned over to state and federal officials who had launched an investigation into the attorney ad litem program, and a wide-ranging federal indictment eventually led to convictions and prison terms for two former state senators. Others, including two former state education directors, admitted wrongdoing and cooperated with authorities to avoid jail. Most every year since, Huckabee has immersed himself in a big project: In 1999, he spearheaded a successful drive for public approval of a $1 billion reconstruction of hundreds of miles of interstate highways in the state. In 2000, he led a push for passage of a ballot initiative to earmark all proceeds from Arkansas' $1.6 billion tobacco settlement for public health programs. In 2003, a law he championed gave the state more authority to take over public schools in academic and financial distress. In 2004, after his year-long campaign for wholesale school consolidation to address a state Supreme Court edict to improve public education, the Legislature adopted the first statutory school merger law among sweeping public education reforms. During a special legislative session in April, the governor supported an increase in school funding, raising the state minimum wage, and adoption of a statewide ban on smoking in the workplace. Through the years, Huckabee said, he grew into the office. "I'm more seasoned, experienced, the obvious things. I'm more knowledgeable about state government and how things work, and more patient even, much better understanding and patient in the legislative process," he said. And far less sensitive than early on, he said, when he did not get his way with the Legislature and took the blame-politics-first approach. "I took a lot of things personally," he acknowledged. "It wasn't that I was feeling a personal attack. I was frustrated that people weren't being honest and they lacked the integrity to say 'I don't want you to get something done.' I think that's so petulant and completely unfortunate when it comes to how to govern." Through the years, Huckabee, too, has been referred to as petty, egotistical and thin-skinned, and questions have been raised about his ethics. Recently, he cut off gubernatorial communiqu?s to a weekly tabloid that has been occasionally complimentary but mostly critical of the governor after it ran articles about his unfettered use of a state airplane. The governor has been cautioned and fined by the state Ethics Commission for issues related to gifts and he has sued the commission over rules that limit officials' acceptance of gifts. "During the campaigns when it was obvious my opponents could not attack me on issues like education, healthcare or transportation, they resorted to attacking me personally by filing various ethics complaints," the governor said. "I find it interesting that the only time anyone questioned my ethics was when it was orchestrated by my opponents during campaign cycles." Recently, questions have been raised about Huckabee's relationship with a political benefactor who has gained millions of dollars in state Medicaid contracts since he became governor. Huckabee denied any quid pro quo with John Suhl, who runs the Lord's ranch, a religious-based youth home in Warm Springs. Peggy Jeffries, a former state senator from Fort Smith and board member of the Arkansas chapter of the national anti-tax, anti-big government Club for Growth, has criticized Huckabee. "The governor has had 10 years to plan and promote his agenda, and he has not only not chosen a conservative policy in most areas, but he demeans those who attempt to hold the line on the growth of government and the increase of taxes," he said. Critics also have accused the governor of having an over-the-top sense of humor. Democrats lambasted Huckabee for referring to his home state as a "banana republic in elections" on a nationally syndicated New York radio talk show, and he was recently berated for quipping - during a surge of murders in the capital city - that he would finance a potential run for president by knocking over convenience stores at gunpoint. The governor's response? People shouldn't be so uptight. "I've always said that the thing in life one needs to do is to take God seriously and not take oneself too seriously," he said. "I feel like most people do just the opposite." If he makes a presidential bid in 2008, it would be stoked in part by the national recognition he has received for his advocacy for healthy living after dropping 110 pounds to combat diabetes. He also has been in the national spotlight the past year as chairman of both the National Governors Association and the Education Commission of the States. Whatever road he takes, Huckabee's options have been enhanced by a twist of fate and a singular opportunity to govern. "It's one of those things that it was not in my plan. But I've always said that often God's plans for us are better than our plans for ourselves," he said. "If we'll just not be too resistant to the detours we take in life, they often take us down a better path to a more desirable destination than where we intended to go." |
