ARKADELPHIA, ARK. — Five days after the tornado tore through the state, this city of 10,000 lay in ruins. The cyclone destroyed an office building, a bank, a pharmacy and 70 other businesses. The electricity was out. The National Guard patrolled the streets. Six people were dead.
In Little Rock, GOP Gov. Mike Huckabee was reviewing a disaster insurance measure that he intended to support when he became troubled: The bill, drawing on centuries-old legal terminology, referred to natural disasters as "acts of God."
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday, January 02, 2008 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 33 words Type of Material: Correction
Huckabee's faith: An article in Monday's Section A about Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee's melding of Christianity and politics said he had succeeded Bill Clinton as Arkansas governor. Huckabee succeeded Jim Guy Tucker.
In a time of emergency, Huckabee would hold up the measure for more than three weeks to press his personal objection that the Almighty could not be blamed for the region's loss. In the process, he drew damaging headlines and created new strains in his relations with the state's legislature, the General Assembly.
Today, a decade later, Huckabee's religious faith is taking new prominence as voters in Iowa prepare to cast the first ballots of the 2008 presidential contest in Thursday's caucuses. Huckabee, a former Southern Baptist minister, has sprung to the front of the Republican pack with an appeal built largely around his claim that his Christian faith "defines" him.
If voters want to know how his faith would influence his presidency, "the best way to look at it is how I served as a governor," Huckabee said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press." "I didn't ever propose a bill that we would remove the Capitol dome of Arkansas and replace it with a steeple. You know, we didn't do tent revivals on the grounds of the Capitol. But my faith is important to me."
Huckabee's tenure as governor, 1996 to 2007, shows that his faith sometimes created political burdens for him, turning minor issues into public controversies and exacerbating tensions with other state leaders.
Huckabee at times seemed too biblical even for fellow believer-politicians in the Bible Belt. In the "acts of God" dispute, there is no indication that anyone was harmed by the delay, but some felt that the governor's religiosity, as politically expressed, came close to pettiness.
" 'Petty' is the best word to describe him," said Dennis R. Young, a state representative at the time who sponsored the relief measure and had been an early Huckabee supporter. "In these kinds of things, he'd make mountains out of molehills."
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'My standard is Christ'
