But his career has also been colored by 14 ethics complaints and a volley of questions about his integrity, ranging from his management of campaign cash to his use of a nonprofit organization to subsidize his income to his destruction of state computer files on his way out of the governor’s office.
Some of the ethics complaints deal with fairly penny ante stuff, and most were dismissed.
They did, however, yield five admonitions and $1,000 in fines from Arkansas' Ethics Commission and, perhaps more significantly, a pattern that strategists for two competing GOP campaigns privately predict could become fodder for attacks playing on the culture-of-corruption theme Democrats used to pound Republicans in the 2006 midterm elections.
In fact, when Huckabee entered the presidential race in January, the Democratic National Committee was quick to highlight a couple of the ethics issues that have dogged him and urged him to “come clean about his … history of ethical lapses."
... Huckabee’s campaign, in a statement to Politico, said it was “suspect” that the ethics issues are being raised as Huckabee surges in the polls and said Huckabee repeatedly addressed the issues during his time as governor.
The campaign said the state ethics commission, which Huckabee sued twice, “has been misused as a weapon against Republicans” and that Huckabee “has been unfairly attacked regarding his ethics history while governor of Arkansas.”
... The ethics commission fined Huckabee $1,000 for failing to report that he paid himself $14,000 from his 1992 U.S. Senate campaign and $43,000 from his 1994 lieutenant governor's campaign.
The latter payment — for the use of his eight-seat, twin-engine plane — was reported in a cryptic way that didn’t identify Huckabee and his wife as the owners of the plane.
... Huckabee unintentionally failed to disclose $23,500 he received from a nonprofit organization set up to handle his speaking engagements and supplement his income before he became governor.
... Allegations by a former governor’s mansion employee in 1998 became part of the basis for a lawsuit against Huckabee over his family’s use of a $60,000-a-year fund. The lawsuit also dealt with Huckabee’s assertion that $70,000 worth of furniture donated to the governor's mansion was his to keep.
... As the Huckabees prepared to leave the governor’s mansion last year for a private home in the Little Rock suburbs, Janet Huckabee’s friends set up registries on two stores' websites listing $7,000 worth of housewarming gifts, ranging from napkins to a $300 KitchenAid mixer.
... Before leaving office Jan. 9, Huckabee spent $13,000 in state funds to destroy the hard drives of nearly 100 computers in the governor’s office.
A lawyer is suing Huckabee, alleging that he misspent state money on the destruction
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