Background and career
Michael Dale Huckabee (, born August 24, 1955) is an American politician, diplomat, and Baptist minister serving as the 29th United States ambassador to Israel since 2025. A member of the Republican Party, he served as the 44th governor of Arkansas from 1996 to 2007, and ran for his party's presidential nomination in both 2008 and 2016. He is the father of Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the current governor of Arkansas since 2023 and a former White House press secretary. Huckabee was the host of the talk show Huckabee, which ran on Fox News from 2008 to 2015, and on TBN from October 2017 to January 2025. From April 2012 through December 2013, he also hosted a daily radio program, The Mike Huckabee Show, on weekday afternoons for Cumulus Media Networks. Huckabee is an ordained Southern Baptist pastor noted for his evangelical views, a musician, and a public speaker. He has written several books and was previously a political commentator on The Huckabee Report. In the 2008 Republican presidential primaries, Huckabee won the 2008 Iowa Republican caucuses and finished second in delegate count and third in both popular vote and number of states won, behind John McCain and Mitt Romney. Huckabee ran again for the Republican nomination in the 2016 presidential election but withdrew early in the primary following the Iowa caucus. On November 12, 2024, it was announced that then–President-elect Donald Trump would be nominating Huckabee as US ambassador to Israel. He was sworn in on April 9, 2025, and presented his credentials to Israeli president Isaac Herzog on April 21.
Huckabee was born on August 24, 1955, in Hope, Arkansas, the son of Dorsey Wiles Huckabee (1923–1996) and his wife Mae (Elder) Huckabee (1925–1999), conservative Southern Democrats. Huckabee is of English, German, and Scots-Irish ancestry, with roots in America dating to the Colonial Era. He has cited his working-class upbringing as the reason for his political views; his father worked as a fireman and mechanic, and his mother worked as a clerk at a gas company. His first job, when he was 14, was at a radio station, where he read the news and weather. He was elected governor of Arkansas by his chapter of the American Legion–sponsored Boys State program in 1972. He was student council vice president at Hope High School during the 1971–1972 school year, then was student council president during the 1972–1973 school year. He has one sister, Pat Harris, a middle school teacher. He entered the ministry in 1972 at Garrett Memorial Baptist Church in Hope. Huckabee married Janet McCain on May 25, 1974. He graduated from Ouachita Baptist University on May 8, 1978, completing his bachelor's degree in religion before attending Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. He dropped out of the seminary after one year in order to take a job in Christian broadcasting.
At age 21, Huckabee was a staffer for televangelist James Robison. Robison commented, "His convictions shape his character and his character will shape his policies. His whole life has been shaped by moral absolutes." Prior to his political career, he served as pastor at Immanuel Baptist Church in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, from 1980 to 1986, and the Beech Street First Baptist Church in Texarkana, from 1986 to 1992. Huckabee started 24-hour television stations in both Pine Bluff and Texarkana, where he produced documentaries and hosted a program called Positive Alternatives. He encouraged the all-white Immanuel Baptist Church to accept black members in the mid-1980s. Years later, he wrote about the insights he gained as a minister:
My experience dealing every day with real people who were genuinely affected by policies created by government gave me a deep understanding of the fragility of the human spirit and vulnerability of so many families who struggled from week to week. I was in the ICU at 2 a.m. with families faced with the decision to disconnect a respirator on their loved one; I counseled fifteen-year-old pregnant girls who were afraid to tell their parents about their condition; I spent hours hearing the grief of women who had been physically and emotionally clobbered by an abusive husband; I saw the anguish in the faces of an elderly couple when their declining health forced them to sell their home, give up their independence, and move into a long-term-care facility; I listened to countless young couples pour out their souls as they struggled to get their marriages into survival mode when confronted with overextended debt ... In 1989, Huckabee ran against Ronnie Floyd of Springdale for the presidency of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention. Huckabee won and served as president from 1989 to 1991. Huckabee has received two honorary doctorates: a Doctor of Humane Letters, received from John Brown University in 1991, and a Doctor of Laws from Ouachita Baptist University in 1992.
In Huckabee's first political race in 1992, he lost to incumbent Democratic senator Dale Bumpers, receiving 40 percent of the vote in the general election. In the same election, Arkansas governor Bill Clinton was elected president, making lieutenant governor Jim Guy Tucker the new governor when Clinton resigned the governorship. In 1993, Republican state chairman Asa Hutchinson urged Huckabee to run in the special election for lieutenant governor held on July 27. Realizing his loss came among key conservative Democrats, Huckabee ran a decidedly conservative campaign. In the subsequent general election, he defeated Nate Coulter, who had been Bumpers's campaign manager the previous year, 51–49 percent. Huckabee became the second Republican since Reconstruction to serve as Arkansas lieutenant governor, the first having been Maurice Britt from 1967 to 1971. In his autobiography From Hope to Higher Ground, Huckabee recalled the chilly reception that he received from the Arkansas Democratic establishment on his election as lieutenant governor: "The doors to my office were spitefully nailed shut from the inside, office furniture and equipment were removed, and the budget spent down to almost nothing prior to our arriving. After fifty-nine days of public outcry, the doors were finally opened for me to occupy the actual office I had been elected to hold two months earlier." Dick Morris, who had previously worked for Bill Clinton, advised Huckabee on his races in 1993, 1994, and 1998. Huckabee commented that Morris was a "personal friend". A newspaper article reported on Huckabee's 1993 win: "Morris said the mistake Republicans always make is that they are too much of a country club set. What we wanted to do was run a progressive campaign that would appeal to all Arkansans.'" Morris elaborated, "So we opened the campaign with ads that characterized Mike as more of a moderate whose values were the same as those of other Arkansans." Consequently, he abandoned his earlier support for the Council of Conservative Citizens (CofCC) when in April 1994 following an adverse media campaign against the CofCC, Huckabee withdrew from a speaking engagement before their national convention. He repeated the accusations made by various media and civil rights organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center recalling his past association with the CofCC saying, "I will not participate in any program that has racist overtones. I've spent a lifetime fighting [against] racism and anti-Semitism." In 1994, Huckabee was re-elected to a full term as lieutenant governor, beating Democratic candidate Charlie Cole Chaffin with nearly 59 percent of the vote. While lieutenant governor, Huckabee accepted $71,500 in speaking fees and traveling expenses from a nonprofit group, Action America. R. J. Reynolds was the group's largest contributor. In October 1995, David Pryor announced that he was retiring from the United States Senate. Huckabee then announced he was running for the open seat and moved ahead in the polls, but ultimately dropped out of the race to lead the state after incumbent governor Jim Guy Tucker resigned following his fraud and conspiracy convictions. During his campaign, Huckabee opposed in December then-governor Tucker's plan for a constitutional convention. The plan was defeated by voters, 80–20 percent, in a special election. In January 1996, Huckabee campaigned in televised ads paid for by the Republican National Committee and the Arkansas Republican Party against a highway referendum. Tucker supported the referendum, which included tax increases and a bond program, to improve 1,300 miles (2,100 km) of highway. On the referendum, the bond question, which included a sales tax increase and a gas tax increase, lost 87–13 percent. A second question, a five-cent increase on diesel tax, lost 86–14 percent. Huckabee also opposed Tucker's plan for school consolidation.
In May 1996, Tucker was convicted "on one count of arranging nearly $3 million in fraudulent loans" as part of the Whitewater controversy. The Arkansas Constitution, like nearly all state constitutions in the United States, does not allow convicted felons to hold office. Tucker thus promised to resign by July 15. Huckabee then announced he would quit the Senate race and instead fill the unexpired term of Tucker. However, Tucker, insisting he had a strong case for appeal, rescinded his resignation as Huckabee was preparing to be sworn in on July 15. Within a few hours, Tucker reinstated his resignation after Huckabee and the legislature threatened to initiate impeachment proceedings against Tucker. Huckabee was then duly sworn in as governor. In November 1998, Huckabee was elected to a full four-year term by defeating retired colonel Gene McVay in the primary and Jonesboro attorney and Democratic candidate Bill Bristow in the general election, becoming the state's third elected Republican governor since Reconstruction. According to a CNN exit poll, Huckabee received 48% of the African American vote in his 1998 election; but some experts have questioned whether those numbers are a representative sample on how he did on the whole in the election. In 2001, Huckabee was named "Friend of a Taxpayer" by Americans for Tax Reform for his cut in statewide spending. In November 2002, Huckabee was reelected to his second four-year term by defeating State Treasurer Jimmie Lou Fisher, garnering 53 percent of the vote. His reelection came despite the defeat in the general election of fellow Republican U.S. Senator Tim Hutchinson. Huckabee received widespread praise for his state's rapid response to Hurricane Katrina. In 2005, Time named him one of the five best governors in the U.S., writing "Huckabee has approached his state's troubles with energy and innovation" and referred to him as "a mature, consensus-building conservative who earns praise from fellow Evangelicals and, occasionally, liberal Democrats." Governing magazine likewise honored Huckabee as one of its 2005 Public Officials of the Year. Additionally, he was among those legislators given the APHA Distinguished Public Health Legislator of the Year Award by the American Public Health Association for that same year.
