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Politics

Arkansas loves, hates Huckabee

By BEN MONTGOMERY, Times Staff Writer
Published January 3, 2008

Being from a state that has elected just three Republican governors since 1877, Mike Huckabee has support from some Arkansans. Early polling showed Huckabee trailing former Arkansas first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, but a recent poll suggests "Ol' Mike" leads Clinton in the race for the state's six Electoral College votes.
	[AP photo]

MALVERN, Ark. - The Waffle House jukebox is pumping Redneck Woman as Fred Beckman finishes his breakfast and explains why former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee will have a hard time winning the state.

"We're Clinton country. Voters vote Democratic. Always have," he says. "When people go to the polls, I think they're going to be afraid of Hillary, but they're going to punch that button for her anyway."

Even if he's Ol' Mike or Huck to the locals.

Even if he lived in a triple-wide trailer while the governor's mansion was renovated.

Even if he came from Hope, Ark., like that other favorite son and earned his living out of offering plates.

"After Bush," says Beckman, 67, a Southern Baptist carpenter from Fort Smith, "I'm not sure people are going to want another conservative running around."

That doesn't mean folks here don't like the man who was greeted by his opponent's yard signs when he moved into the governor's mansion in 1996.

"I think he's a good man," says Sean Clark, a 40-year-old Republican who owns the Patriot convenience store and mini-storage in Emmett, a few miles from Huckabee's hometown. "I really believe that."

"Ol' Mike is all right," says Frank Faulkner, a 60-year-old retired teacher sitting across the table.

Early polling showed Huckabee trailing former Arkansas first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton here, but a Dec. 5 Rasmussen poll suggests Huckabee leads Clinton in the race for the state's six Electoral College votes, 48 to 42 percent.

That makes sense to Clark, born and raised in a heavily Democratic state that has elected just three Republican governors since 1877.

"The people in Arkansas who have run politics for so long are Roosevelt Democrats," he says. "And they're dying at a rate of about 85 a day."

Ask locals about the biggest mistake Huckabee made as governor, and they have trouble.

"He p----- me off when he raised the sales tax," says Clark, finally, referring to a hike a few years ago, one of several Huckabee was responsible for as governor. Clark's mini-storage rentals bumped from $40 a month to $43.10. He says he didn't lose any customers, but the spike might have lost him potential renters.

Huckabee's critics, like the antitax Club for Growth, have attacked his tax increases as well, saying he's not fiscally conservative enough.

Some, like Bismarck rancher Julian McKinney, think Huckabee's pardons might haunt him, especially his influence in the parole of rapist Wayne Dumond, who Missouri authorities say raped and killed a woman there shortly after his parole in Arkansas.

The case was big news in Arkansas and has recently crept up in the presidential campaign. Huckabee has said the parole board acted on its own.

That doesn't turn McKinney off.

"With Mike Huckabee, what you see is what you get," says McKinney, 65, who runs the Bar Fifty Ranch. "What you get is a very honest person, a very sincere person. I think he'd work with both parties. That's the thing I'd like to see in Washington more than anything else. Unity."

McKinney likes Huckabee's Baptist minister background, and the country charisma of a man who speaks in parables.

"Bill Clinton had it, but it was different," says McKinney, who tends to vote Republican. "His was calculated."

Don't be fooled by Huckabee's charm, says Max Brantley, editor of the Arkansas Times, Little Rock's alternative newspaper. Brantley fishes into a drawer in his office and pulls out a letter from Huckabee to his supporters.

In the "for your eyes only" letter leaked to the paper, Huckabee attacks the Arkansas Times as an "ultra liberal and trashy little tabloid edited by Max Brantley, a disgruntled and embittered wannabe editor," and bashes the Little Rock press as the "machine gun members of the media."

Brantley's paper has been critical of Huckabee. The governor's office stopped sending the paper news releases or notices of news conferences, Brantley said.

"People in his own party hate him," Brantley says. "Part of them for ideological reasons, and some of them just don't like him as a person."

Some Arkansans are expecting a Huckabee-Hillary matchup come November. Sixty-three percent expect Clinton to win the Democratic nomination while 39 percent think Huckabee will be the Republican nominee, according to the Rasmussen poll.

Brantley says that, despite his flaws, Huckabee has a good chance of riding his recent wave of popularity to the presidency "in the absence of more attractive candidates on the Republican side."

"That Arkansas charisma goes a long way," he says.

Back at the Waffle House, Fred Beckman is finishing his grits.

"He's like one of us," he says. "He has Christian values. He's a Southern Baptist. He has that charm in front of people that makes him look human."

Ben Montgomery can be reached at bmontgomery@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8650.

[Last modified January 3, 2008, 01:41:58]