Thanks for the additional info that you’ve posted. This guy sickens me.
(no link)
HUCKABEE : MORRIS STILL ‘FRIEND’ - RAPS AFFAIR, BUT WON’T SCORN EX-ADVISER
Commercial Appeal, The (Memphis, TN) - September 4, 1996
Author: Joan I. Duffy The Commercial Appeal Little Rock Bureau
Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee expressed ‘’sorrow and sadness’’ Tuesday at the scandal that has befallen a campaign consultant the Republican governor shared for a time with President Clinton.
Dick Morris, the consultant credited with driving Clinton’s move to the right, resigned on the day of Clinton’s Democratic Convention acceptance speech after a tabloid published a story that Morris carried on a nine-month romance with a $200-a-night prostitute. The story said Morris told the woman confidential White House information and allowed her to listen in to telephone conversations with the President.
‘’I consider him a friend and I don’t turn on friends who do something I don’t approve of,’’ Huckabee said Tuesday.
Morris, who helped direct Clinton’s 1980 comeback election for governor, became Huckabee ‘s consultant in the 1993 special election for lieutenant governor. Huckabee won that race after losing a 1992 contest against U.S. Sen. Dale Bumpers (D-Ark.). Huckabee and Morris teamed up again in the 1994 lieutenant governor’s race and the consultant was with Huckabee at the start of his campaign for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by David Pryor (D-Ark.)
Huckabee announced last year that he and Morris had parted company after Morris resumed consulting with Clinton. At the time, Huckabee cited the possibility of conflicts and concern over campaign security.
Huckabee was asked Tuesday if Morris ever shared White House information with him.
‘’I would characterize the relationship as one strictly focused on the races in 1993 and 1994,’’ Huckabee said. ‘’I was always confident with the level of confidentiality.’’
Huckabee skirted questions about when he last spoke to the consultant. News reports have identified Morris as the person in the White House whom Huckabee contacted last month when he needed the administration’s help on an abortion issue.
Huckabee refused last month to allow the state to pay the Medicaid bill for an abortion performed on a 15-year-old retarded girl raped by her step-father, citing Arkansas’s constitutional ban on publicly-funded abortions.
The governor announced a plan to send Medicaid abortion bills to a private fund for payment after saying he cleared the arrangement with the White House.