Source: Huckabee To Enter '08 Race

Republican Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and a favorite of conservatives, will take the first step in a 2008 presidential bid, a source told The Associated Press on Friday.

Huckabee, 51, plans to file papers Monday establishing an exploratory committee that will allow him to raise money and hire campaign staff, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid pre-empting a formal announcement.

Huckabee faces difficult odds as he enters a crowded Republican field topped by better-known, better-funded candidates such as Sen. John McCain of Arizona, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

All three have spent the last few months building their national campaign organizations, courting fundraisers and lining up grass-roots supporters in primary and caucus states. However, they also have records or positions on social or fiscal issues that don't sit well with conservative voters — and that could give Huckabee an opening.

"My brand of conservatism is not an angry hostile brand. It's one that says 'conservative' means we want to conserve the best of our culture, society, principles and values and pass them on," he said last month.

Huckabee, born in the same town as former President Clinton, is the second Republican from the South to explore a bid for the White House, joining former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore. Former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina is running for the Democratic Party nomination, as is Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, the former first lady, whose husband, former President Bill Clinton, was once governor of Arkansas.

Huckabee is to announce his intent in a Sunday morning appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press," according to the source.

A second source had spoken to the former governor and told the AP that Huckabee intended to file paperwork Monday with the Federal Election Commission to set up an exploratory committee. Setting up the committee would allow Huckabee to raise money for a full-blown presidential bid.

Although Arkansas is a predominantly Democratic state, Huckabee won two full terms in landslides. He championed tax increases for public schools, expanded state insurance programs for the children of the working poor and opposed banning state services for illegal immigrants.

But the Southern Baptist minister, who left the pulpit to run for political office, is a darling of conservatives, too, opposing gay marriage and abortion rights.

He said in an interview with the AP last month that he won't be a Republican who will "scare the living daylights" out of independents and moderate Democrats.

Huckabee was unexpectedly thrust into the Arkansas governor's office in 1996, when Gov. Jim Guy Tucker was convicted in a Whitewater case. Tucker was reluctant to give up the office, making many Arkansans sympathetic to Huckabee.

At the time, Huckabee was a political neophyte when compared to state political figures like Sens. William Fulbright, John McClellan, Dale Bumpers and David Pryor; Rep. Wilbur Mills and former governors Clinton and Orval Faubus.

With only three years' experience as lieutenant governor, Huckabee successfully negotiated programs through a legislature dominated by Democrats. Voters loved him for eliminating annual vehicle inspections and striving to improve the life of the average Arkansan.

At staff meetings, Huckabee said, he had a simple measuring stick when assessing policies.

"I'd say if it's not improving the life of a 7-year-old in Dermott today, then it probably isn't worth it," Huckabee said in a December interview. "We never forgot that that's what we were trying to do."