Opinion: Mike Huckabee’s long-shot last shot

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The Marines are looking for a few good men. But former Gov. Mike Huckabee would settle for one -- a new national campaign finance chair.

The genial Arkansan, a Baptist minister, got a rush of publicity when he finished a surprising second to Mitt Romney in the high-profile Ames, Iowa, straw poll in July, albeit a straw poll without John McCain and Rudy Giuliani. Huckabee was then invited to appear on a lot of national TV shows, where he made his conservative case and enjoyed a modest rise in some polls.

But it turns out his low-budget campaign -- Huckabee flies commercial and is often delayed like the rest of us -- was simply not organized to take advantage of the publicity bonanza, a potentially fatal flaw for what was always a long-shot bid, despite the esteemed columnist David Broder being impressed with him.

In the third quarter Huckabee reported raising barely $1 million, enough, he claims, to keep going. Never mind his party’s finance leaders -- Romney with an additional $18.5 million and Giuliani with $11 million. Huckabee’s total was barely 20% of what libertarian long shot Ron Paul raised through his fervent followers and niche-market on the Internet.

‘I don’t want some fast-talking, slick guy. I want somebody who believes in me,’ Huckabee says, before joking: ‘That’s the hard part: finding somebody who believes in me.’

Huckabee had some trouble recruiting staff because not everyone believed he had a chance. And he said his original finance chair had to quit for personal reasons. Huckabee blamed campaign finance laws that he says favor the wealthy and elected officials like senators who can transfer funds between campaign accounts.

And while much can still change between now and January, Huckabee’s chances of the second spot on a GOP ticket might be better--a conservative Baptist southern former governor could be a felicitous balance for, say, an urban northeastern former governor or former mayor. Americans in recent history have overwhelmingly favored electing executives to the presidency, not legislators.

But Huckabee’s hanging in there. He maintains he’s assembled a group of 100 supporters who’ve each pledged to raise $100,000. And now he faces the hard part, finding a finance chair. ‘We’ve got to find somebody who is interested in moving to Little Rock and raising money,’ he says.

-- Andrew Malcolm