A Pastor’s True Calling

As a boy in segregated Arkansas, Huckabee says he was deeply ashamed of Jim Crow laws. Caldwell, his friend from Boys State, recalls his friend "cringing" whenever someone told a racist joke. As a pastor, Huckabee sermonized about the failure of Christians to speak out forcefully against racism. In 1997, President Clinton and Governor Huckabee both gave emotional speeches in Little Rock at an event marking the 40th anniversary of Central High School's desegregation. Clinton, slipping into a preacherly cadence, moved the audience. But Huckabee moved many to tears: "Today we come to renounce … the fact that in many parts of the South, it was the white churches that helped not only ignore the problem of racism, but in many cases actually fostered those feelings and sentiments." He called on people of all faiths "to say never, never, never, never again will we be silent when people's rights are at stake."

Life in the church was comfortable and secure. But by the early '90s, Huckabee strongly felt the pull of politics. After a high-profile turn as president of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention—where he tried to take a moderate approach in furious theological brawls over Biblical interpretation and settled personal feuds between pastors—Huckabee made his decision. In 1992, he resigned from his church and ran for the U.S. Senate. "I had been growing restless and frustrated in the ministry," he writes in his book. As a young minister, he envisioned himself as "the captain of a warship leading God's troops into battle." Instead, he found that his flock "wanted me to captain the Love Boat, making sure everyone was having a good time."

Huckabee ran on a hard-right platform. (On a candidate questionnaire, the Associated Press reported last week, he advocated isolating AIDS patients. The campaign did not respond to a request for comment.) Huckabee lost. He was crushed. "I thought, 'Why?' " he told the parishoners at New Beginnings. Months later, he got his answer. The post of Arkansas lieutenant governor opened up. Political supporters asked him to run and he won a long-shot campaign, making him the Republican No. 2 to Democratic Gov. Jim Guy Tucker. Three years later Tucker was indicted and then convicted on charges related to the Whitewater scandal. Huckabee was governor. He says he knows now why he lost his Senate race: God had other plans for him.

Democrats expected the worst of their new evangelical, Republican governor, who welcomed anti-abortion activists to the mansion and tried to pass a law outlawing gays and lesbians from adopting children. But they discovered that Huckabee's "do unto others" world view also led him to push for more money for schools and a health-care program for poor children that became a model for other states. When he took office, he found that the state's roadways were falling apart. Huckabee supported controversial legislation that would raise gas taxes to fix them. Some of his fellow Republicans were furious, but voters went along. Huckabee served out his first term and was re-elected twice by wide margins. Even as a Republican in fractious Democratic Arkansas, he maintained approval ratings in the high 50s.

Arkansas voters saw the funny, down-to-earth Huckabee. Political pros who tangled with him away from the cameras say the governor they dealt with was anything but easygoing. Republican state Rep. Jeremy Hutchinson says Huckabee has an explosive temper. He recalls one heated conversation with Huckabee about a health bill Hutchinson didn't want to support. Huckabee began screaming at him, and banged his fists on his desk so hard that "trinkets started falling off." Asked if he was thin-skinned, Huckabee conceded that "early on, when I was in my first session, I think I was far more sensitive. You are going to find a lot of state legislators, both Democrats and Republicans, who are more than willing to tell you what a lousy human being I am ... It was never my desire to be a member of the club, to be chummy and get along with everyone and have these guys love me. My job was to be governor."

Jim Hendren, the state's Senate minority whip, says he gave up trying to debate issues with Huckabee. "It was like you became the enemy," he says. "There wasn't ever a negotiation. It was, 'It's going to be my way or else'."