Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Gov. Announces Future Plans

Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said he will most likely announce his political intentions sometime in March.

Huckabee, the featured speaker at the Gurdon Chamber of Commerce Banquet Monday night, spoke with the press at a reception before the banquet.

His intentions are to run for governor. This will be his first gubernatorial race as he took the helm of the state government following the resignation of former Gov. Jim Guy Tucker who was charged with several felonies in connection with the Whitewater investigation.

Huckabee also said he was glad to finally see the emergence of the two-party system in Arkansas, with candidates being able to seek office as Republicans and have a chance at winning.

"Competition is healthy for both parties," he said. "Competition breeds excellence where the lack of it breeds complacency."

He said Arkansas has been hampered by the lack of a viable two-party system for years, and is currently experiencing growing pains as the system emerges and people learn.

In talking about the recovery effort from the March 1, 1997 tornadoes, Huckabee said one of the things done was to create the Tornado Recovery And Committee Enhancement (TRACE) to help the people in the affected area.

TRACE, he said, is a one-stop shopping method for people to reach state government agencies. The multi-agency task force, headed by the administrator of the Employment Security Division (ESD), has made it possible, during the past year, for people to go to one location and deal with the ESD, the Arkansas Department of Health, the Arkansas Department of Education and the Department of Human Services.

Huckabee said the recovery effort was anticipated to be two to five years for Clark County, and this should be a fairly accurate guess. However, he added, the community will never fully recover from the devastation caused by the series of tornadoes. "People will move on," he said. "But it will always be a part of the area's heritage and collective memory."

One of the biggest issues facing state government across the nation today is welfare reform. Huckabee said since the Arkansas welfare reform law went into effect on July 1, 1997, 29.9 percent of those receiving welfare checks have been removed from the rolls and found jobs.

He said for the first time in four years there has been a decline in the number of people claiming to be homeless.

Welfare reform, the governor said, is working and the program instituted is proving to be effective.

However, Huckabee said, there will always be some 10,000 to 12,000 Arkansans who are physically or mentally unable to hold jobs and will remain on the welfare rolls.

Still, welfare reform in Arkansas is going faster than expected.

On discussing ethics, Huckabee said the issue goes back to something simple that happened when he was campaigning for the office of lieutenant governor in '94.

He said the family home in Texarkana was mortgaged to purchase the plane, which was used for the campaign. Once the race ended, the plane was sold with the Huckabee family taking a loss on the deal.

Everything, he said, was reported to the state's ethics commission, which also reviewed the incident. However, the issue was brought up again in '96 and '97.

The reason, Huckabee said, is because other potential candidates have no viable issues to discuss and are using this to attack his administration.

He also said the ethics commission has failed to obey the law and its own rules. Because of this, Huckabee was forced to file suit seeking a court ruling to force the commission to live by the rules it enacts.

Huckabee praised the legislature, saying most of the officials want to do a good job. However, there were those during the 1997 session who tried to create partisan tension by overriding vetoes on measures the governor disagreed with.

He said this has since came back to haunt those on the opposition side.

"Arkansans are fair minded," he said, "and don't think what they did was right."

When questioned about the economic situation in Arkansas, he said the Arkansas Economic Development Commission (AEDC) is on the right track and selecting Barbara Pardue as its new leader was a good decision.

This, he said, is because she was the best person he could find to do the job.

Statistics show 85 percent of all new jobs are created from the expansion of existing industry. The AEDC, he said, is shifting its attention to the industries already located in Arkansas to help them with expansion plans. Working to attract new industry to the state will, however, continue.

"When I run for governor this year," Huckabee said, "I hope I can keep the confidence of the people and serve them another four years."