WASHINGTON — Mike Huckabee, who as governor for more than a decade was the Republican standard bearer in Arkansas, is now a registered voter in Florida.
The landslide winner of Arkansas’ 2008 presidential primary will now cast votes in the Sunshine State, famous for its warm weather, low taxes and hanging chads.
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported Tuesday that Huckabee’s wife, Janet, had signed a “Declaration of Domicile” in Walton County, Fla., in March. The couple, who own a home in North Little Rock, also rent a house in Miramar Beach on the Florida panhandle and spend time in New York City, where Huckabee tapes his weekly Fox News show.
The Huckabees completed their registrations as Florida Republicans on Feb. 22, promising under oath to “protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Florida.”
Like all new Florida voters, the Huckabees affirmed that they aren’t convicted felons and that they “have not been adjudicated mentally incapacitated.”
They are still on the voter rolls in Arkansas, where Mike Huckabee is a Republican and Janet is registered as “optional,” meaning she had not selected a political party.
Huckabee’s daughter, Sarah Huckabee, said in an e-mail that her parents plan to keep the house in Arkansas, which they purchased in 2006.
“Some of his personal business activities dictated the Florida residency,” she wrote, declining to elaborate.
Miramar Beach doesn’t just offer surf and sun. Florida doesn’t have a state income tax, making it an attractive place for many people to establish residency.
So has Huckabee severed his Arkansas ties?
According to Tim Leathers, the state revenue commissioner, determining for tax purposes whether a person is a resident of the state depends on the “totality” of that person’s connection to Arkansas.
Commenting in an e-mail, Leathers said renting a house in another state does not “substantiate an abandonment of residency.”
Leathers, who provided the analysis in a general way - not responding to any particular taxpayer’s situation - said renting and living in a house in another state could be one fact taken into consideration when determining residency.
He continued: “One of the clearest indicators of residency is registering to vote and voting.”
By registering to vote in Florida, Huckabee has made a sworn statement that he is a resident of that state, said Tim Humphries, general counsel for the Arkansas secretary of state’s office. As such, he is not eligible to vote in any Arkansas election.
The state does not require people who leave Arkansas to notify their county clerk that they have registered to vote elsewhere. Humphries said that if a voter has not participated in two elections his name will be scrubbed from the rolls.
A native of Hope, Huckabee graduated from Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia and served as president of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention before serving asgovernor for 10 years. He was one of only three Republican governors of the state during the 1900s.
Officials at the Republican Party of Arkansas declined to comment.
The Huckabees are now represented in Congress by Democratic Rep. Allen Boyd, who belongs to the Blue Dog Coalition, a group of House Democrats who consider themselves fiscal conservatives. In 2008, Boyd won reelection to a seventh term with 62 percent of the vote.
Katie Gordon, spokesman for the Florida Republican Party, said that over the past several years, Huckabee has appeared at the party’s Lincoln-Reagan fundraising dinners, held in each county, and at other smaller party mixers.
“Anytime you have a well known national Republican official attending those local events, it really energizes the grass-roots supporters of the party,” she said. “He’s been beneficial to our cause in the past, and I would anticipate we’d benefit going forward.”
She said Huckabee also was a keynote speaker at an event held by the Florida delegates in Minneapolis at the Republican National Convention, held in September 2008.
In his failed 2008 bid for the Republican presidential nomination, Huckabee finished fourth in the Florida primary, with 13.5 percent of the vote. He scored higher among his new neighbors in the state’s 2nd District, with 20 percent.
One early supporter of Huckabee’s candidacy was Marco Rubio, who is facing Florida Gov. Charlie Crist in a heated U.S. Senate primary.
Through March 30, Huck PAC, Huckabee’s political action committee, had contributed $4,500 to Rubio’s candidacy, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington group that tracks money in politics.
The committee had not donated to any of the nine Republicans in the hunt to unseat Boyd, but the Huckabees will be able to vote in the Aug. 24 Republican primary.
Huckabee has not said whether he will run for president again in 2012.
One poll, conducted by Public Policy Polling, a Raleigh, N.C., company, shows Huckabee second, trailing leader Mitt Romney by a wide margin.
The poll, taken in March of 492 Republican primary voters, showed Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, scoring 52 percent, compared with Huckabee’s 21 percent. The poll had a margin of error of 4 percentage points.
Tom Jensen, the polling firm’s director, said the fact that Huckabee is now a Florida resident doesn’t necessarily help him with Florida voters. In a presidential election, Jensen said, home state support only comes for candidates who have spent significant time in the state establishing ties with voters.
“If it’s just his home base, while he’s gallivanting around the country, I don’t think Florida voters would feel much connection to him.”
Ed Rollins, a Republican media strategist who served as Huckabee’s national campaign chairman in the 2008 race, said that having Florida as a base could serve Huckabee if he runs because it is a large state with 27 electoral votes.
“It doesn’t hurt him,” Rollins said.
However, he didn’t think politics was behind the decision.
“I think this is more about having a vacation home and saving money on taxes,” Rollins said.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 04/14/2010