Huckabee Alienates GOP in Arkansas/Washington Times

Following are excerpts from a Washington Times article entitled “Huckabee alienates GOP in Arkansas”

See this link for the entire article: http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080124/NATION/8463148/1001

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 . . ."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 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."

But when Mr. Huckabee sought surrogates to counter the opposition from Republicans in his state, fewer than half of the Republicans in the state legislature signed up.

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.

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

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.

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.