Huckabee alienates GOP in Arkansas

 

 

Those who support Huckabee will not like this…but the
truth should always be on the table.

 

http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080124/NATION/8463148/1001

Article published Jan 24, 2008
Huckabee
alienates GOP in Arkansas


January 24, 2008


By Stephen Dinan – LITTLE ROCK,
Ark. — Jake Files was a newly elected representative when all two dozen
Arkansas House Republicans met for their first caucus in 1999. They had doubled
their numbers in elections two months earlier, and were ready to join
Republican Gov. Mike Huckabee in pushing for conservative government.

That was when Brenda Turner, the governor’s chief
of staff, entered.

“Just walked in, shut the door and said, ‘There’s two kinds of people in
the world: those who are for Mike Huckabee and those who are against Mike
Huckabee. I’ll do everything I can to help the first group. I’ll do everything
I can to hurt the second,’ ” said Mr. Files, who left the legislature
after two terms.

And that’s the way it was.

“Not only would he not help you, he would go out of his way to do things
in opposition to you,” Mr. Files said.

For the 10 years he was governor of Arkansas, Mr. Huckabee was at war with much
of his party.

Now that Mr. Huckabee is seeking the presidential nomination, many Arkansas
Republicans warn that he could wage a bruising battle with the national party,
too.

“One can hardly argue that the Republican Party has thrived,” said
former Rep. Jim Hendren, who was House minority leader and ran for state party
chairman in a bitter 2001 race won by a Huckabee surrogate. “We thrived as
we were an opposition party and standing on principles as the Republican Party.
But unfortunately, when we got some power, particularly at the state level, we
began to fight among ourselves.”

The former Southern Baptist pastor-turned-politician took control of the
governor’s mansion in 1996 with expectations that he would lead the kind of
Republican ascension in other states of the Deep South. But he left office last
year by turning over the governorship to a Democrat and with Republicans
bitterly divided over his legacy for his party.

“He destroyed it,” said Randy Minton, a former state representative
whom Mr. Huckabee worked to help get elected but who later clashed repeatedly
with the governor. “We had one U.S. senator, we had two congressmen, at
the tops we had 37 out of 135 legislators in the House and Senate. Now I think
there’s 32 in the legislature, we have no U.S. senators and we have one
congressman.”

In both on-the-record and private conversations with Republicans in Arkansas,
the picture that emerges is a governor who succeeded at advancing his causes
and was willing to fight anyone who didn’t agree.

That matters because the next Republican presidential nominee will be tasked
with trying to rebuild a congressional majority and stoke a Republican Party
after eight volatile years under President Bush.

Like Mr. Bush, Mr. Huckabee achieved some early successes. By the beginning of
1999, when he was sworn in for his first full term, his party had gained nearly
a quarter of the state’s House, added state Senate seats and held the
lieutenant governorship, one of the two U.S. Senate seats and half of the four
congressional seats.

But also like Mr. Bush, who battled congressional Republicans on immigration
reform and prescription drug coverage, Mr. Huckabee found himself fighting
members of his own party.

‘Shi’ites,’ ‘socialists’

Almost immediately after taking office from Gov. Jim Guy Tucker, a Democrat who
resigned after federal fraud and corruption convictions, Mr. Huckabee
campaigned for his first tax increase — one-eighth cent on the sales tax to
dedicate to conservation projects. He followed up with both budget cuts and
increases, but the net effect was nearly $500 million in new taxes and an
accompanying rise in spending.

What followed were clashes over the growth of government and, as the issue
heated up nationally, over immigration policy. Republicans and conservative
Democrats wanted a crackdown on illegal aliens, but Mr. Huckabee resisted.

The war of words was just as harsh. In 1998, when he faced a primary challenger
who said Mr. Huckabee lacked certain conservative principles, the governor
replied that his opponents weren’t really Republicans, but rather libertarians
or independents.

By the end of his tenure, Mr. Huckabee was calling his Republican opponents the
“Shi’ites” and they called him a “Christian socialist.”

Mr. Huckabee’s defenders said the governor was simply firing back at frustrated
Republicans who were waging a battle against him.

Jim Harris, a campaign spokesman who also worked for Mr. Huckabee in the
governor’s office, said Mr. Huckabee was deeply involved in helping state
Republicans.

“He raised a lot of money regularly; he campaigned tirelessly for GOP
candidates up and down the ballot; he gave from [his political action
committee] to GOP candidates,” Mr. Harris said, adding that Mr. Huckabee
appointed years’ worth of Republicans to boards and commissions.

“This created a strong network of individuals who will run for office in
the future under the Republican banner,” he said.

Arkansas Republicans, though, said Mr. Huckabee was building an organization
for himself, not a farm team for the party. He left many appointments of former
Govs. Bill Clinton and Jim Guy Tucker in office, including some department
heads who stayed through Mr. Huckabee’s tenure.

They said no Republicans hold any of the statewide constitutional offices, and
the state party chairman told the Associated Press last week that he doesn’t
expect to field a candidate this year to run against Sen. Mark Pryor, a
Democrat.

“In the 10 years where the governor was the title head of the party, we
actually took steps backwards,” Mr. Files said, noting that Republicans
were advancing in other Southern states. “The overall morale of the party
did not take any of those same stages it did in the other states. It started
plateauing and took a dive.”

On the campaign trail

The campaign finance records for Conservative Leadership for Arkansas PAC, Mr.
Huckabee’s political action committee, also seem to bear out the charge that he
was building his own organization.

Records kept with the secretary of state in Little Rock show that CLAPAC spent
only a third of its money on candidates between 2001 and 2006, with the rest
going to consulting, accounting and, in later years, travel and fundraising for
Mr. Huckabee.

Mr. Huckabee gave contributions as well during those years to at least three
Democrats. Given that $5,000 of CLAPAC’s money came in a 2003 donation from the
state Republican Party, that means some Republican money was used indirectly to
aid the party’s own opponents.

“Go out and ask those ladies at bake sales or out raising money if they
thought that money would end up in the hands of Democratic candidates,”
Mr. Hendren said. “That’s what drove us up a wall.”

One Democrat who received CLAPAC money was Barbara Horn. Mr. Huckabee supported
her even though a Republican planned to run for the same seat in 2000. The
Associated Press reported that Mr. Huckabee’s support for the Democrat chased
the Republican from the race, delivering an open seat to the Democratic Party.

State Republicans repeatedly called that race demoralizing.

Mr. Huckabee’s campaign denied charges from a host of Republicans that he aided
Democrats over Republicans in other races.

“Governor Huckabee never gave money to a Democrat who had a Republican
opponent,” Mr. Harris said. “He did give to some conservative
Democrats money in the primaries when there were no Republicans running in the
general election.”

Records for CLAPAC’s activity in 2000 are missing from the secretary of state’s
office. The accounting firm Mr. Huckabee used said it couldn’t provide records
without the client’s approval, and Mr. Huckabee’s campaign didn’t respond to
requests to produce them.

In 2005, Mr. Huckabee registered another political action committee in
Virginia, which has less stringent limits on campaign activity.

The stated goal of that PAC, Hope for America, was to aid state and local
candidates nationwide. But records show it hasn’t donated to a single candidate
but instead has paid for Mr. Huckabee’s consultants, travel and fundraising.

 

………read full story at the link……….

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