Early Life

Michael Dale "Mike" Huckabee was born in Hope, Arkansas on August 24, 1955 to his parents Mae Elder and Dorsey W. Huckabee. At age 17 was elected Governor of Arkansas Boys State, an American Legion organization teaching young men the responsibility and honor of public service and citizenship. Huckabee graduated magna cum laude from Ouachita Baptist University in two and a half years with a bachelor's degree and then moved on to the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Forth Worth, Texas. Before entering politics, Huckabee was a pastor in several Southern Baptist churches in Arkansas and from 1989 to 1991 served as the president of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention.

Ascension to the Governorship

Huckabee's first taste of politics was no doubt bitter. In a U.S. Senate race against Dale Bumpers in 1992, Huckabee received less thatn 40% of the vote. That same year Bill Clinton moved into the White House and his Lieutenant Governor Jim Guy Tucker took the Governorship; however, Tucker had to resign in 1996 due to a felony conviction stemming from the Clinton Whitewater scandal. Huckabee, who had won the special election for lieutenant governor in early 1993 and won re-election in 1994, effectively became Governor.

As governor, Huckabee first signed legislation that created ARKids First, a health insurance program designed to provide insurance to children in families that did not qualify for Medicaid and could not afford private insurance; more than 70,000 Arkansas children were affected and Huckabee acknowledge it as his most rewarding act as governor of Arkansas. In 1998, Huckabee won the general election and was elected to his first full term as governor. His goals included road reconstruction and a campaign to establish a constitutional amendment dedicating 1/8 of each cent of the state sales tax to park and natural resources.

In 2002, Huckabee was re-elected to his second and final term, narrowly beating his challenger with 53% to her 47%. That year, the Arkansas Supreme Court declared the state's school funding procedures unconstitutional and ordered them changed. Huckabee's controversial plan was to consolidate many of the state's smaller school districts and was rejected by the legislature. With Hurricane Katrina in 2005 came a wave of 70,000 evacuees from the Gulf region to Arkansas; Huckabee ordered care for all those in need and in November Time magazine named Huckabee one of the five best governors in the U.S.

Presidential Hopeful

On January 28, 2007, Huckabee announced his campaign for the 2008 White House, telling the Associated Press the next day "I think this is an opportunity to show the American dream is still alive and there's hope and optimism that can be awakened in a lot of people's lives if they think a person like me can run and actually become president." [[source="AP" link="http://newsmax.com/archives/articles/2007/1/28/163618.shtml"]Huckabee's ideology leads many to question whether the Republican party would place their bets on such a right wing conservative after the unpopularity of the current Bush Administration. Huckabee is one of the three Republican presidential hopefuls that admitted to not subscribing to the Darwinian theory of evolution. Also, while the Republican Party will most likely be looking for a more moderate voice on the Iraq War, Huckabee has said that his solution would be to increase troop numbers and gain more support from Middle East nations.

During 2003 Huckabee was diagnosed with diabetes and was told he would not live more than ten years if he didn't lose weight. Huckabee dieted and lost 110 pounds. He and his wife, Janet, live in North Little Rock, Arkansas. They have three grown children: John Mark, David, and Sarah

Criticism

During his tenure as governor, Huckabee was allegedly the center of several financial and ethical investigations. According to an article in the American Spectator, "Fourteen times, the ethics commission â€' a respected body, not a partisan witch-hunt group â€' investigated claims against Huckabee. Five of those times, it officially reprimanded him. And, as only MSNBC among the big national media has reported at any real length, there were lots of other mini-scandals and embarrassments along the way."[source="The American Spectator" link="http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=12205"]