Mike Huckabee biography

Synopsis

Profile

Politician and former governor of Arkansas. Michael Dale Huckabee was born on August 24, 1955, in Hope, Arkansas, the same small town where former U.S. President Bill Clinton was born nine years earlier.

Huckabee's strict father worked as a firefighter father who on in his days off worked as a mechanic. In the mid-sixties, he joined Garrett Memorial Baptist Church and became involved in church activities. Timid and awkward at times, Huckabee found salvation in words and music. He started playing guitar at age 11 (he occasionally plays bass with the Arkansas rock band, Capitol Offense) and became a champion public speaker and debater. He preached his first sermon as a teenager. The tumultuous national and international events of 1968 spurred his desire for a career in media or public service. At age 14, Huckabee got his first job at a radio station, reading the news and weather. Then in 1972, he was elected Governor of Arkansas Boys State. After high school, Huckabee enrolled at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, where he majored in religion, minored in speech. Following his 1975 graduation, Huckabee attended Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, before dropping out to work for televangelist James Robison.

Huckabee returned to Arkansas in 1979 to serve as a congregational pastor and, in 1989, became the head of the 490,000-member Baptist State Convention. From this power base, he ran for the Senate against the incumbent Dale Bumpers in 1992. During the campaign, he advocated separating people with HIV/AIDS from the general population, telling the Associated Press that ??we need to take steps that would isolate the carriers of this plague.?? Huckabee suffered a resounding defeat.

In 1993, Huckabee bounced back and won a special election (after Governor Bill Clinton was elected U.S. President) for lieutenant governor. Then, he became governor in 1996 when Governor Jim Guy Tucker was convicted on federal charges of fraud and conspiracy in events relating to the Whitewater scandal. Huckabee was elected to full terms in 1998 and 2002, then announced in 2007 that he would run for the Republican nomination for president. With his Southern roots and pastoral credentials, Huckabee is a favorite candidate of the religious right; he is an outspoken opponent of abortion rights and gay marriage. He trailed behind John McCain and Mitt Romney in delegate count and in popular vote and exited the race in March, 2008. McCain went on to became the Republican nominee. Huckabee currently