Wasn’t Huckabee an anomoly in Arkansas? Prior to him the place was a Democrat lock. The only reason he become governor in the first place was because the guy who followed Clinton was convicted of crimes and couldn’t remain in office.
I don’t see the validity of a claim that he screwed the place up. That place had been run like a criminal enterprise long before he entered the scene.
How many bodies were dropping like flies during his term in office? I can’t remember a single person having dropped dead within his inner circle.
Was he cheating on his wife? Did he subvert the state troopers? Did he benefit financially from land flips? Was he ever accused of raping women across the state? Did he every beat one of them severely? Did he bite any women? Was he known to have been using narcotics during his tenure in office? Did he sell state commissions for cash? Did he have the state medical examiner in his pocket? Did that medical examiner rule favorably against all evidence to benefit Huckabee, his family or friends?
Even with this list, I’m probably forgetting quite a bit. Look, Huckabee may not be our political hero, but compared to Bill Clinton and company, he’s F’n JC.
An anomaly ? No. AR began electing GOP Governors as long ago as 1966 with Winthrop Rockefeller, Sr. He dragged the state kicking and screaming into the modern era, finally taking down the old racist Orval Faubus, who had been “Boss” of the state for 12 years. Of course, rodents like Dale Bumpers, who beat an ailing Rockefeller in 1970, took credit for Rockefeller’s achievements and tried to get the “new” liberal rodents associated with them. The next GOP Governor came in 1980 when Frank White beat none other than first-term Gov. Clinton. Unfortunately, back in those days, terms were only 2 years, and Clinton took the office back again in the bad GOP year of ‘82 (had it been 4 years, Frank White probably might’ve been Governor for most of the ‘80s and Clinton would’ve had to have looked for other permanent employment).
With respect to Huckabee, he won the Lt Governor’s office in a special election after the corrupt Jim Guy Tucker ascended to the top job after Clinton went to DC. Huckabee was the 2nd GOP Lt Governor in the modern era (with Rockefeller sweeping the WW2 hero Maurice “Footsie” Britt in with him in ‘66 and ‘68). His goal was not the Governorship, but was David Pryor’s Senate seat. When Tucker’s corruption finally did him in, Huckabee had to give up his ambition for the Senate, thinking that the people of AR would not want such a rapid turnover from Tucker to himself to an as-yet-unelected Lt Governor (soon to be Winthrop “Win Paul” Rockefeller, Jr.) and requiring yet another election for the Lt Governorship (the 3rd in only just as many years), so he stayed put and Tim Hutchinson won instead.
During Huckabee’s first term, the GOP was finally growing to match the trend in the other Southern states. We had half the federal delegation (and were competitive in all 4 districts and the Senate seats), but by 1998, things were starting to stall. Huckabee was failing to recruit the kind of candidates we needed to make breakthroughs in statewide offices, and we were also stalling in the legislature — hitting about 30% of the representation, but failing largely to elect anyone outside the western edge of the state and the Little Rock metro area. He was backing people like his wife and the ex-wife of one the Congressmen for statewide office, and it met with predictably poor results (and started to give him a black eye).
He most assuredly should not have run for that last term in 2002, by which time, the federal GOP presence shriveled from 3 to 1 (not a lot when you think about it, but that’s still a 2/3rds decline, and the poorest showing for the overall delegation in a dozen years and the ‘70s, back when there was hardly any GOP to speak of). We met with the added problem that Win Paul Rockefeller, who was all but expected to take over from Huckabee when he finally stepped down, contracted leukemia and died last year. Asa Hutchinson, Tim’s brother, stepped in, but he just was never able to get any traction and lost quite badly to a rodent hack. With Huckabee’s departure and causing the atrophying of the party, he left it at its weakest point since Rockefeller, Sr’s defeat in 1970. This, again, stands in stark contrast to virtually every single solitary other Southern state.
Obviously he is better “morally” than Clinton, but assessing Huckabee on his own terms, and he ranged from disappointing to a downright failure.