Hucka-Boom: Former Arkansas governor gets Tennessee help

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has used his social conservatism, quick wit and likeable personality to rocket to the top of the GOP polls nationally as well as in the important early presidential states of Iowa and South Carolina.

And the Republican has had a Nashvillian running his campaign, helping to engineer what has recently been called the “Hucka-Boom.”

Chip Saltsman, a former Tennessee Republican Party chairman and top aide to former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, is Huckabee’s national campaign manager.

At one time, Saltsman thought he would be working in the upper-echelons of the “Bill Frist for President” campaign. After Frist backed out of seeking the White House, Saltsman was without a candidate until he hopped aboard Huckabee’s long-shot bid.

‘Long shot’ because Huckabee’s campaign has been short on cash with limited name recognition from a small, southern state best known politically for producing former President Bill Clinton.

So, starting out, Saltsman said his campaign knew all of those limitations and thereby settled on an “old-fashioned” strategy of “grinding it out” in early primary states like Iowa and New Hampshire.

Through the early parts of the campaign, Huckabee mainly impressed on the debate circuit, providing one one-liner after another to use humor to help garner attention.

The big break

Saltsman said the big break the campaign had was the Iowa Straw Poll in August, in which he described their strategy as going “all in.”

That Iowa Straw Poll gave Huckabee a second place showing, but well behind the expected winner in former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who contrary to Huckabee spent millions on the event.

But Saltsman said he saw something in the number of votes Huckabee received in the straw poll versus the amount of money it spent, which signaled to him that his candidate might stand a chance in the Hawkeye State.

“We were the only top-tiered campaign that actually got more votes than we bought tickets,” Saltsman said. “Pretty much everybody else bought a big block of tickets, got less votes. We bought so many tickets, and got more votes, which was a big deal for us. Which kind of at that point told me that there was this underlying excitement for Gov. Huckabee.”

Since August, Huckabee has achieved a steady rise in the polls in Iowa and now leads Romney in some surveys of the state. That success in Iowa has begun to transfer nationally and to other important primary states such as South Carolina.

In South Carolina, Huckabee also leads two recent polls, edging out Romney and former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson by 7 and 6 percent, respectively.

Nationally, a Rasmussen Reports daily tracking poll Friday had Huckabee leading former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani 22 percent to 18 percent.

Rise hurts Thompson

Bruce Oppenheimer, a Vanderbilt University political science professor, said Huckabee’s success is partly because of his likeable demeanor in which he often uses self-deprecating humor as well as his strong standing among social conservatives.

Oppenheimer said Huckabee’s success, while cutting into Romney’s lead in Iowa, has most significantly hurt Thompson.

“For social conservatives and southerners, Thompson was going to be the first-tier candidate and clearly Huckabee was thought of as not being competitive,” Oppenheimer said. “But to the degree that Huckabee looks competitive, that really hurts Thompson.”

Huckabee’s success in polls has come from a campaign that had just $651,000 in the bank as of Sept. 30.

Saltsman said money is coming in better now, but that the Huckabee campaign has been frugal and still employs a relatively small staff of 45.

“I tell people all the time the one nice thing about not having much money is you make every single decision like it could be your last because it might,” Saltsman said. “Every financial decision is that important. I still sign off on every expenditure. There’s nothing that goes through the campaign that I don’t personally touch and make sure that it’s the exact thing that we need to do.”

Attacks increase

As Huckabee’s poll number have increased, so have the negative stories as well as attacks from Republican rivals that mainly question his economic conservative credentials.

Thompson has often been leading those attacks, criticizing Huckabee for being a “pro-life liberal.” Last week, Thompson sent out a mail piece to Iowa voters comparing Huckabee’s tax record as Arkansas governor to Bill Clinton. Both received a D tax rating from the libertarian CATO Institute.

In addition, in a Friday column in the Wall Street Journal, columnist Kimberley Strassel said if Huckabee’s surge continues, Republicans need to understand they are “signing up for a whole new brand of conservatism.”

“If Mr. Huckabee does turn out to be everything Republicans ‘want’ or ‘need’ in a conservative, it will only be because the definition of a conservative has morphed to include tax hiking, protectionism, corporate scolding and an unserious approach to foreign policy,” Strassel wrote.

In response, Saltsman said Huckabee cut taxes 94 times as governor, and during his 11 years in Little Rock, the state’s income tax rate remained the same while the sales tax went up one penny.

Huckabee is also advocating the Fair Tax, which would abolish the Internal Revenue Service and institute a national sales tax.

With 24 days left to go before the Iowa Caucuses, Saltsman hopes the “passion” that has been worked up for Huckabee in Iowa will translate to caucus-goers showing up in snowy January to vote the ordained Baptist minister No. 1.

“There’s a real excitement out there for him,” Saltsman said.