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If former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has any 2012 presidential aspirations at all, then it was a mistake to help raise money for the Iowa Family Policy Center, a former Republican Party of Iowa chairman and adviser to Terry Branstad said Wednesday
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in Des Moines last year promoting a book.
“Maybe Mr. Huckabee shouldn’t be raising money for an organization that says it won’t support the Republican nominee in Iowa,” said David Kochel, a veteran GOP strategist who has done consulting work for Branstad’s campaign for a fifth term as governor. He previously advised former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s 2008 presidential campaign.
Romney finished second to Huckabee in the Iowa Caucuses, a defeat that effectively sunk his presidential hopes.
Huckabee was in Cedar Rapids and Des Moines Wednesday stumping for Branstad’s chief rival for the GOP gubernatorial nomination, Bob Vander Plaats. Kochel’s objections focused on Huckabee keynoting a fundraiser for the Iowa Family Policy Center, the influential Christian organization who announced last month that they would only support Vander Plaats and would sit out the fall campaign if the GOP nominates Branstad.
Kochel said Huckabee’s trip may come back to haunt him if he decides to run for president again in 2012, saying that if Branstad becomes governor “Mr. Huckabee will regret having given his time raising money for a group like that. They are more interested in attacking Gov. Branstad than they are going after [incumbent Democratic] Gov. Culver who really, sincerely opposes their agenda.”
These statements are just the latest in an ongoing war of words surrounding the Iowa Family Policy Center’s anti-endorsement of Branstad. Immediately following their announcement, one Republican leader called the group a “jihadist sleeper cell of so-called GOP leaders” who are damaging the party. The Linn County Republican Central Committee went so far as to pass a resolution demanding gubernatorial candidates pledge to support the eventual nominee in order to receive any assistance from the party.
Vander Plaats was the only candidate to refuse to sign the pledge.
Huckabee is considered to be among a handful of Republicans considering a run for president. In a Des Moines Register Iowa Poll last November, he had the highest favorability ratings with conservative voters among possible 2012 candidates.
Dennis Goldford, a political science professor at Drake University, said it remains unclear if wading into the gubernatorial primary would hurt him if he did decides to run again.
“I always say, Democrats learn nothing, Republicans never forget,” he said. “So, Branstad folks will claim they will remember this, but who really knows whether we’ll be talking about this in a year.”
The Vander Plaats-Branstad rivalry is really a battle for the direction of the party, Goldford said, a fight that has been raging since Huckabee and Romney battled for the support of Iowans back in 2007. Vander Plaats and his chief adviser, Eric Woolson, worked for Huckabee. Many of Branstad’s key lieutenants worked for Romney.
“The moderate, fiscally conservative, business wing of the party has been saying for a long time that religious conservatives have run the party into a ditch,” Goldford said, adding: “The other side thinks the party loses because it has abandoned its principles, so they have to circle the wagons and burn the heretics.”
Ultimately, whether Huckabee runs for president again or not, he had very little to lose by jumping into the campaign.
“He shores up goodwill with a constituency that is very powerful in the caucuses,” Goldford said. “And the people who don’t like it probably already didn’t like him very much anyway.”
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