Mike Huckabee

Onetime Republican presidential contender Mike Huckabee has a new gig: He's the latest political analyst to join Fox News. The cable news network officially named the former Arkansas governor as a contributor to its election coverage on Thursday. --Matea Gold

Mike Huckabee, a conservative former governor from the largely Democratic state of Arkansas, will launch his bid today for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, opening an exploratory committee to raise money. Acknowledging that he would be a hard sell against better-known conservative candidates for the White House, Huckabee said Sunday that "America loves an underdog."

It was plain to see one recent morning why Mike Huckabee would bemoan the primacy of fame and money in presidential politics: Not a single TV crew trekked to the Pottawattamie County veterans hall where the Republican White House contender was making his pitch to a roomful of Iowans eating doughnuts and sipping coffee from foam cups.

It has not been easy for Mike Huckabee to stand out in the crowd of White House contenders, as he is quick to admit. "There are a lot of dogs at the same dish trying to eat a limited amount of food," he told CBS this week. The former Arkansas governor has long ranked as an afterthought, if that, in a contest dominated by better-known candidates. But his second-place finish in a Republican straw poll in Iowa last weekend has spawned a burst of media attention.

GOP presidential candidate and self-described "recovering foodaholic" Mike Huckabee told the Southern Governors' Assn. convention in Biloxi that an obesity epidemic could cause serious problems for the American economy and national security. "Today we hear a lot about the war on terror, how we need to fight it," said Huckabee, who lost 110 pounds several years ago when he was governor of Arkansas.

The International Assn. of Machinists and Aerospace Workers on Thursday endorsed Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton and Republican Mike Huckabee in the presidential primaries, and Democrat John Edwards picked up the backing of the carpenters union. The Machinists union has 700,000 members and estimates that a third of the membership votes Republican. It is the first time the union has made a dual endorsement. It chose to do so this year to encourage all members to vote.

The others were in pivotal places elsewhere: John McCain hammering his case with veterans in Iowa, Mitt Romney courting Republican women in Texas, and Rudolph W. Giuliani shaking hands in West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania. So what was Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee -- the near-asterisk in the polls, the former governor more famous for losing 110 pounds than anything he did in office, the second-best politician to come out of tiny Hope, Ark.

Center stage at the renowned Surf Ballroom, Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee gave the bass guitar all he had: "Born to Be Wild," followed by "R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A." Tweens, meanwhile, snapped cellphone pictures of the 52-year-old candidate and occasional rocker. Huckabee laughed, his dimples deepening in his cheeks. His campaign was hot. Life was good. "We're celebrating a lot of things," he said excitedly from the stage. "Get on your feet."

The table was noisy with the clatter of forks as Doughy Joey's pizza made the rounds. Carolyn Samuel sat quietly, hands clasped. She didn't want to eat yet, she explained. She was waiting for the next president of the United States to say grace. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a longtime Southern Baptist pastor, didn't think to pray over the pepperoni when he pitched his candidacy for the Republican nomination to a fired-up crowd at Doughy Joey's.

AN A-list celebrity endorsement can lift a presidential campaign. But Chuck Norris' seal of approval can kick-start the Airbus. Take Mike Huckabee's political efforts, for example. A month ago, few even knew that Huckabee was a former governor of Arkansas, let alone a Republican candidate for president. Then karate-movie tough guy Norris -- with a cult following big enough to populate three continents -- announced he was in Huckabee's camp. (They share evangelical Christian views.