Profile Mike Huckabee:He was seen until recently as an amusing sideshow to the main contest for the Republican nomination, but charismatic Baptist Mike Huckabee is gaining support among Christian conservatives, writes Denis Staunton.
After months of Democratic presidential rivals Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama dominating campaign coverage, the Republican race caught fire this week when Mike Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor and ordained Baptist minister, shot into the lead in two early-voting states.
In Iowa, which holds the first presidential caucus on January 3rd, Huckabee rose 17 points in a month to drive former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney out of first place. In the first southern state to vote next year, South Carolina, where Huckabee was in fifth place a month ago, he is now ahead in two polls.
Huckabee's rise has stunned Washington, in part because he has run one of the most poorly-funded campaigns in either party, spending just $300,000 (€205,000) in Iowa, compared with Romney's $7 million (€4.8 million). Asked by a student at the conservative Liberty University to explain his unlikely success, the former pastor had no doubt about whom he had to thank.
"There's only one explanation for it, and it's not a human one. It's the same power that helped a little boy with two fish and five loaves feed a crowd of 5,000 people," he said.
An uncompromising social conservative who believes life begins at conception, opposes gay partnership rights and doubts Darwin's theory of evolution, Huckabee is making an unusually direct pitch for the support of evangelical Christians, flashing the words "Christian Leader" across a TV ad aired in Iowa this week.
HORRIFIED AT THE prospect of the thrice-married, pro-abortion and gay-rights-supporting Rudy Giuliani winning the Republican nomination, Christian conservatives have searched for months for a candidate they can feel comfortable with. Until now, Romney appeared to be the most successful suitor, but many evangelicals are uneasy about his shifting positions on abortion and gay rights and, above all, the fact that he is a Mormon.
Huckabee's surge this week panicked Romney into making a speech aimed at reassuring conservatives that his church would not influence his actions as president and stressing the values he shares with evangelical Christians.
Many evangelicals are convinced, however, that Mormons are not Christians and that their faith is no more than a "cult", a position Huckabee has consistently declined to disavow.
If Huckabee were no more than a Christian firebrand, his rivals might have less cause to worry, but in a Republican field notably lacking in personal charm, the former pastor has buckets of it, along with enthusiasms and frailties that make him more recognisably human than his rivals.
A rock guitarist who has opened for country singer Willie Nelson, Huckabee loves The Rolling Stones so much that as governor he pardoned Keith Richards for a 20-year-old driving offence. He's also the only presidential candidate to have written a self-help book, Quit Digging Your Grave with a Knife and Fork, inspired by his own loss of 110lb within a year.
"I'm a conservative, but I'm not mad at anybody," he likes to say.
Born, like Bill Clinton, in Hope, Arkansas, Huckabee shares the former president's easy manner, allied with a disarming line in jokes, often at his own expense.
"He's a genuine social conservative and an economic populist and he gives the best talk. He's really funny," Clinton said of Huckabee recently. "You can tell we were raised in an oral culture down there. Most of us didn't have television until we were nine or 10 years old so we had to listen to people tell stories first."
Born on August 24th, 1955, Huckabee also shares Clinton's modest background, becoming the first male member of his family to finish high school. At the age of 10, he joined the Garrett Memorial Baptist Church, and preached his first sermon when he was 15.
As a teenager, he also worked as a DJ and news announcer at Hope's only radio station - KXAR - learning skills that would serve him well in both his religious and political careers.
In his senior year at high school, Huckabee met Janet McCain and they married after their first year at Ouachita Baptist University, when they were both 18.
"She is a delightful lady," he said this week.
"She has put up with me for going on 34 years which in itself tells you she is an extraordinarily patient and forgiving woman, to give me almost 34 years of marriage and three grown children." Huckabee went on to Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, and after his ordination he was hired by television evangelist James Robison to be his director of communications before becoming pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Pine Bluff, Arkansas.
Huckabee turned the failing church around, attracting young families and hosting a local TV show. He preached a message of compassion, ministering to the poor and reminding his better-off congregants of their obligation to help those less fortunate.
"I'm the first candidate coming from the faith perspective who says stewardship of the Earth is a matter we have to touch, along with poverty and hunger. Now, quite frankly, that makes some of the - maybe I would call them traditionalist and establishment - Republicans nervous, because they've never talked about these issues before. But we can't just have two issues: marriage and sanctity of life. It has to be broader," he told GQ magazine this month.
HUCKABEE SURPRISED MANY in his flock when he sought public office in 1992, running unsuccessfully as a Republican against Arkansas's incumbent Democratic senator, Dale Bumpers. The same year, Clinton was elected president and he handed the governorship of Arkansas to his lieutenant governor Jim Guy Tucker.
Huckabee won a special election and became lieutenant governor, winning re-election in 1994.
He became governor two years later when Tucker was convicted of fraud charges and was elected on his own in 1998, then re-elected in 2002, serving until earlier this year.
As governor, Huckabee showed little enthusiasm for hardcore, conservative ideology, increasing taxes to fund state projects and requiring public schools to include art and music in the curriculum.
In 2003, after he was diagnosed with type-two diabetes, he took up running and changed his diet, becoming an inspiration to overweight, middle-aged men throughout the US.
"To be able to see my whole attitude change so radically gives me hope that other people can make adjustments and change, too," he said. "I am just one beggar telling other beggars where to find bread."
For much of this year, Huckabee's presidential run was widely regarded as an amusing sideshow to the main contest between Romney and Giuliani. To the Republican establishment, Huckabee was too obscure, too folksy and too poorly resourced to be a serious contender.
This week, the candidate compared his campaign to the flight of the bumblebee.
"It's said that, according to the law of aeronautics and the wingspan and circumference of the bumblebee, it is aeronautically impossible for the bumblebee to fly," he said. "However, the bumblebee, being unaware of these scientific facts, goes ahead and flies anyway."
HUCKABEE'S SUCCESS HAS attracted fresh scrutiny to his record in Arkansas, with rivals accusing him of being soft on immigration because he supported a plan to make the children of illegal immigrants eligible for college scholarships.
He has angered foreign policy hawks by promising to close the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay and to start talks with Iran, and fiscal conservatives have branded him a "serial tax hiker".
The most serious problem for Huckabee, however, may be his role in the early release from prison of Wayne DuMond, a convicted rapist who raped and killed a woman in Missouri less than a year after he was freed.
In 1996, during his first term as governor, Huckabee expressed support for the parole of DuMond in a letter to him. The Arkansas parole board later approved DuMond's parole but some members of the board claim that Huckabee pressured them to do so.
It emerged this week that Huckabee received letters from several of DuMond's victims detailing past rapes that had never been prosecuted and pleading that he remain behind bars.
Huckabee has admitted that he favoured paroling DuMond but insists that he played no role in the decision to free him.
"There are families who are truly, understandably and reasonably grief-stricken," he said.
"And for people to now politicise these deaths and to try to make a political case out of it rather than to simply understand that a system failed and that we ought to extend our grief and heartfelt sorrow to these families, I just regret politics is reduced to that."
As the Republican battle gets tougher, Huckabee's erstwhile fans in the media are tiring of his comedy act and have taken to sniping that he is light on policy and too eager to trumpet his Christian credentials.
The support of evangelical Christians could deliver Iowa to Huckabee but he may need more direct divine intervention if he is to survive February's primaries in delegate-rich states such as California and New York and go on to become the second US president from a place called Hope.
TheHuckabeeFile
Who is he?Former Arkansas governor, ordained Baptist minister and Republican presidential candidate.
Why is he in the news?Has shot into the lead in the early-voting states of Iowa and South Carolina.
Most appealing characteristicFunny and charming.
Least appealing characteristicWears his faith on his sleeve.
Most likely to sayI'm a conservative but I'm not mad at anybody.
Least likely to sayI now pronounce you man and husband.