Posted on 01/12/2008 5:22:11 PM PST by nwrep
Edited on 01/12/2008 5:54:38 PM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
Gov. Mike Huckabee was supposed to glide to re-election over Jimmie Lou Fisher, a Democratic Party functionary whose job in her 22 years as state treasurer has involved little besides signing government checks.
But suddenly he is in a dogfight: a poll for the Arkansas News Bureau gives Mr. Huckabee a lead of only 46 percent to 44 percent. The poll was released last Thursday, the same day a fund-raising letter turned up in which the governor warned that his campaign was in ''crisis.''
What is more surprising is that even loyal Republican legislators are openly saying now that the ball and chain around Mr. Huckabee's campaign is, to be blunt, his wife: Janet Huckabee is running for secretary of state, and she is getting clobbered. She consistently trails Charlie Daniels, the state land commissioner, by more than 20 points in the polls.
''Her candidacy is clearly struggling,'' said State Senator John Brown, a retiring elder statesman, ''and that has crossed over into the governor's race.''
State Representative Randy Minton said Mrs. Huckabee's campaign was probably costing her husband four or five percentage points. ''I've heard a lot of people say things,'' said Mr. Minton, who is running for a State Senate seat. ''They just don't feel there needs to be two from one family on the ticket.''
Other Republicans, who say her drag on the governor's re-election campaign could be as much as 10 points, are less charitable, if also less publicly. ''Janet Huckabee running for secretary of state was a brilliant idea for about four and a half minutes,'' one party official said.
The Huckabees' joint venture is the first in Arkansas, possibly in the nation, in which a husband and wife are nominees for statewide office in the same election. Mrs. Huckabee says she and her husband anticipated that some people might object to a couple's holding two of the state's seven statewide elective offices.
''We talked about it, how it might hurt his election,'' she said.
But neither expected the avalanche of criticism and ill will that their dual candidacies have set off.
Many accuse the governor and his wife, both 47, of arrogance, power-hogging and losing touch with the common folk -- charges reminiscent of those that were aimed at Little Rock's last power couple, the Clintons -- and Mrs. Huckabee has been a lightning rod on all three counts.
That she wants the office is enough for some critics. The secretary of state is Arkansas's chief elections officer, keeping and purging voter registration rolls. Along with the governor, that official wields great influence over disputes in local elections, where Democrats still dominate in most of the state's 75 counties.
The position also comes with a staff of 120 employees, more people than the governor directly appoints, and control over the Capitol building itself, from parking spaces to office assignments. That means Governor Huckabee, through his wife, could have even more power to reward or punish lawmakers and other officials. ''That's just a lot of power in one family's hands,'' said another Republican legislator, State Representative Jake Files.
To be sure, Mr. Huckabee -- a former Baptist preacher who succeeded the indicted Jim Guy Tucker in 1996 and won a full term with 60 percent of the vote in 1998 -- has his own problems. His opponent, Ms. Fisher, after sleepwalking through the summer, came on strong after Labor Day, issuing a $133 million education plan sure to energize schoolteachers and attacking Mr. Huckabee for glitches and a cost overrun of nearly 100 percent in what became a $57 million computer system linking all state agencies. Ms. Fisher is running particularly aggressive television advertisements assailing Mr. Huckabee for granting clemency to violent criminals; one rapist who was paroled now faces murder charges in Missouri.
Mr. Huckabee was already being accused of having pretensions to royalty. For example, he accepted $23,000 in clothing and gift certificates from Jennings Osborne, a wealthy supporter and appointee, in 2000 alone, then sued to block the state ethics commission from investigating such gifts. But his wife's campaign difficulties have added to the governor's burden. Her insistence on her own 24-hour state police detail, her crisscrossing the state to campaign events in a giant trooper-driven Ford Excursion provided by the state and her travel in and out of Arkansas on the state airplane, both with and without her husband, for reasons the governor's office refuses to disclose all produced a month's worth of bad press for both Huckabees at the start of the fall campaign. ..................."
Ping the Fredheads!!
Looks sure can deceive.
OMG, it’s the Clintons all over again. Just less clever.
2 for the price of 1?
Some of the other attacks against Huckabee have been specious - especially the people that attack him for having been a Baptist minister. The allegations in this article however are concerning. I hope more investigation is done into any improprieties that may or were committed. I would like to see Huckabee have to answer some questions about this stuff begins I really can’t trust the guy that much with all this in his background.
Clintons Lite= The Huckabees.
Let’s hope the train from Hope gets derailed in SC and Michigan.
That both of them even thought for a second that her running for SoS while he was running for Governor shows how out of touch these people are.
Makes me wonder what kind of Jesus juice they were drinking.
Nothing “lite” about the Huckabees.
This is the first time I’ve heard about the wife’s political ambitions. I guess it’s the 100% support issue Huckabee announced in the last debate.
BTW, where are their children on the campaign trail....eating Big Macs or lynching the dogs back in Hope.
The whole family gives me the creeps.
I mean, seriously! What are the odds?
Did you know that Mike Huckabee’s parents never graduated from High School? And that Mike is the first to graduate High school in his family
So? High school education is over-rated.
No need for a ping here. I smelled this one from my house.
Dang. Good find nwrep. I had no idea. Who’d a thunk it, two families of Royals from one State!
And what is really funny: Her maiden name is McCain!
http://www.oldstatehouse.com/collections/first-ladies-gowns/gowns/huckabee/bio.asp
~ do do do do do do do do ~
Do you know if she ever got her degree? Reading the story, she droped out after a year of college and said, during her run for SOS, that she was going to finish via the internet.
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