Huckabee's Faith-Based Views Find Critics, Fans in Both Parties

Early in Huckabee's tenure as governor, an unidentified 15-year-old girl had an abortion after being raped by her stepfather. When the clinic sought reimbursement for the procedure through Medicaid, the state declined.

The amendment to the state constitution that Huckabee had worked to get passed did not include an exception for rape or incest. Federal law allows Medicaid funds to be used for abortions in such cases, but Huckabee stood firm, saying he did not want to violate the state's antiabortion measure.

As a compromise, Huckabee set up a special private fund where donors could help fund abortions for women who could not afford them.

Huckabee's effectiveness on restricting abortions was nearly absolute. Cox said he remembers chatting with Huckabee's aides about what antiabortion measures they should pursue, and everyone reaching the same conclusion: After almost a decade with Huckabee as governor, Arkansas had done everything it could to limit abortion as long as Roe v. Wade was still in force.

But Huckabee did not solely focus on abortion and other social issues, and his positions were not always typical of a conservative. His proposal to offer in-state tuition to the children of illegal immigrants, for example, was not just opposed by Republicans, it was more liberal than the position of many Democrats in the legislature.

Likewise, expanding health insurance to low-income children was not a priority when Huckabee entered office. But after a 1997 meeting with Amy Rossi, a children's rights advocate, the governor dropped plans for a $25 tax rebate to everyone in the state, persuaded instead to back expanded health insurance to uninsured children who did not qualify for Medicaid. It was an achievement he now singles out as one of the most important of his governorship.

And to fund programs to improve roads and schools, Huckabee advocated a policy that has left him open to attacks from his GOP primary opponents: raising taxes.

"If you deem that all new revenue sources, your proposals or mine, are indeed dead on arrival, then you'll be saying that teacher pay increases are dead, scholarships are dead, medicine for the elderly is dead," he said in a 2003 speech to Arkansas lawmakers that his GOP opponents have seized on.

Huckabee has signed a pledge not to raise taxes as president, though in Arkansas he supported several increases, including in taxes on gas, nursing homes and sales.

As governor, Huckabee was unusually active in another area: reducing prison sentences. Huckabee not only pardoned or reduced 1,033 sentences, more than double the actions by his three predecessors, but he reduced the sentences of 11 convicted murderers, according to a tally by the Democrat-Gazette. A Huckabee spokeswoman said that because of changes in state law, Huckabee had many more applicants than his predecessors and denied the vast majority of requests.

Huckabee's push for the release of convicted rapist Wayne Dumond, who killed a woman after he left prison, became a campaign issue this month when victims' families criticized him.

On the stump, Huckabee has defended his record, arguing that many of the people whose sentences he reduced deserved second chances.