Mike Huckabee’s presidential candidacy could mean trouble for other conservatives seeking the Republican nomination.
Huckabee, who will announce Tuesday in his hometown of Hope, Ark., that he’ll run a second time for the White House, won the Iowa caucuses seven years ago, mostly by capturing the support of religious conservatives.
The former Arkansas governor and ordained Southern Baptist minister went on to win seven other primary contests. Some political strategists say he could at least repeat his 2008 success in 2016.
“Mike Huckabee is an Iowa front-runner right out of the gate,” Sara Craig, who in 2012 served as Mitt Romney’s political director in Iowa, told the Washington Examiner. “His supporters are incredibly loyal and will remain with him. As a former caucus winner, he knows how to win in a tough-to-navigate state like Iowa.”
Other political experts are far less enthusiastic, noting his limited appeal.
“Huckabee is well-liked among Republican voters, but he has yet to prove he can build a viable campaign,” pollster Ron Faucheux, president of Clarus Research Group, told the Examiner.
But Faucheux and other political experts say Huckabee’s entry into the crowed GOP presidential primary field will at least make it harder for other conservative Republican candidates to win the important evangelical vote crucial in key early state contests, including Iowa and South Carolina.
Strategists say Huckabee poses the biggest threat in Iowa, which will hold the nation’s first contest of the 2016 presidential campaign.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, Gov. Scott Walker, R-Wis., and even Gov. Bobby Jindal, R-La., could find themselves struggling to win over Iowa evangelicals now that Huckabee is in the race.
A RealClearPolitics average shows Huckabee polling nationally in the middle of the pack of potential and declared GOP candidates. He garners about 8 percent of the vote, compared to 15 percent for former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, 12 percent for Walker and 1 percent for Carly Fiorina, who jumped into the race on Monday.
In Iowa, most polls show Huckabee among the top three contenders, although his support often lags behind Walker’s.
A Huckabee candidacy could most hurt the presidential political aspirations of Rick Santorum, who narrowly won the Iowa Republican caucuses in 2012 by capturing the Hawkeye State’s religious right. Santorum has not decided if he will run in 2016.
“Rick Santorum doesn’t have a chance with Huckabee in the race,” GOP political strategist Reed Galen, who served as the deputy campaign manager for John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, told the Examiner. “What’s his rational for entering the race that a Huckabee candidacy doesn’t already fulfill?”
Iowa Republicans tell the Examiner that Huckabee’s 2008 victory is no guarantee he’ll win the state’s GOP caucuses in 2016.
“It will be difficult for him to achieve that momentum again,” Iowa conservative activist Becky Beach told the Examiner. “He will have a strong organization, but the field has changed considerably. It is already happening that activists that supported someone in ’08 or ’12 are in different camps for ’16. I think he will see some of his support going to Cruz, Bush and Walker.”
Political strategists, however, say conservative Republican candidates should fear a Huckabee campaign. Republican campaign operatives view him as an exceedingly able politician with a charismatic stage presence honed by years of delivering sermons.
He’s tuned into the religious right more than any other candidate, they said, and he comes across as far more genuine than Cruz, and with more personal appeal than Jindal.
Huckabee had his own nationally televised show on Fox and can tout his executive experience as a nearly three-term governor of Arkansas.
But Huckabee, Galen said, is a “one-segment candidate.”
He never came close to winning in 2008, mostly because he was unable to expand his appeal beyond evangelical voters. Huckabee was also unable to raise enough money and was vastly outspent by McCain. He also suffered in the polls from a lack of foreign policy experience, which could haunt him again this time since national security and global terrorism are likely to dominate the upcoming debates.
But along the way in 2008, Huckabee did some damage to other candidates.
Shortly after winning in Iowa, Huckabee began attacking his well-financed competitor, Mitt Romney, in New Hampshire.
“I want to be a president who reminds you of the guy you work with, not the guy who laid you off,” Huckabee said, sticking voters with an image of Romney as a detached corporate executive, a perception the former Massachusetts governor was never able to shake.
Galen said Huckabee could force top candidates to campaign to the far right on gay marriage, abortion and other issues that might make them less attractive to voters in more moderate, but critical primary states.
“It would be interesting to see if Huckabee has the effect of magnetizing Scott Walker further to the right on social issues,” Galen said. “Which would then hurt Walker’s prospects in New Hampshire, Nevada and Florida.”
