A Pastor’s True Calling

Huckabee also had a habit of calling his political detractors nasty names. In an e-mail, he likened journalist Max Brantley of the liberal Arkansas Times to serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. Huckabee complained the Times covered him unfairly. To retaliate, he stopped talking to the paper's reporters and refused to send them press releases.

Likewise, when some GOP activists branded him "Tax Hike Mike," Huckabee fired back, labeling them "Shiite Republicans." Huckabee is adamant that the party's fervent belief in the wisdom of tax cuts is not just economically misguided but morally wrong. Tax cuts for the rich, he writes in his most recent book, "From Hope to Higher Ground," "makes a false and callous assumption that the poorest people in our nation—with inadequate salaries, lack of nutritious food, substandard housing and nonexistent or underfunded health care—can somehow afford to patiently wait while someone else's wealth eventually splashes onto them."

Huckabee also finds himself struggling to explain his views on illegal immigration. He says he's in favor of a border fence and opposes driver's licenses for undocumented workers. But he has been attacked for a bill he unsuccessfully pushed that would have allowed illegal immigrants to apply for in-state tuition at Arkansas colleges. At the CNN-YouTube debate in Florida last month, Huckabee made an emotional plea for tolerance: "In all due respect, we are a better country than to punish children for what their parents did. We're a better country than that."

Another problem for Huckabee could be questions about the many pardons and clemencies he granted to Arkansas criminals. Some law-and-order Republicans have said Huckabee let his desire to be forgiving get in the way of his judgment as governor. One case—reminiscent of the Willie Horton episode that hurt Michael Dukakis's White House campaign—is especially problematic. In 1999, Wayne DuMond, a convicted rapist, was released from prison by the Arkansas parole board. DuMond was a well-known criminal in the state. In 1984, he had brutally assaulted a 17-year-old girl who was a distant cousin of Bill Clinton's. Before DuMond's trial, masked men attacked him and cut off his testicles, leaving him bleeding on the floor. His assailants were never caught, but DuMond's testicles wound up on display on an Arkansas sheriff's desk, floating in a jar of formaldehyde. (The sheriff, who wasn't charged with any wrongdoing, was later removed from office.)

DuMond was given life in prison, a sentence some believed was excessive, especially given the brutality of the attack against him. In 1992, Gov. Jim Guy Tucker commuted DuMond's sentence to 39½ years, making him eligible for parole. DuMond was still in prison when Huckabee took over as governor. In 1999, DuMond won his release. The next year he was arrested again for sexually assaulting and murdering another woman. DuMond died in prison as he awaited trial.

Arkansans were outraged that DuMond had been released and blamed Huckabee. The governor believed that DuMond had found God in prison and, soon after taking office, had announced he intended to commute DuMond's sentence to time served. Huckabee said he ultimately never took action in the case. The state parole board had voted to let DuMond go. But several members of the board said that Huckabee had pressured them to sign DuMond's release papers at a meeting in 1996. Huckabee recalls that it was just a general meet-and-greet, and the subject of DuMond happened to come up. But board member Charles Chastain tells NEWSWEEK THAT, at the meeting, Huckabee cleared all the staff from the room and made a personal plea for DuMond's release. "I think he's a guy from the wrong side of the tracks who got a raw deal," Chastain recalls Huckabee's saying. He says the meeting is still "pretty vivid in my mind." Huckabee says he doesn't remember saying that and denies he pressured the board to release DuMond. "If that's really true, if I squeezed them and they did something against their conscience, it says as much about them as it would about me," he says.