Moving along from the Moving along from the Huckaspawn to the Huckaspouse, check out Janet Huckabee's MySpace page. Her favorite movies are "Men of Honor," "Remember the Titans," and one I've never heard of -- "Rudy." Seriously. It's not about a controversy-baiting big city mayor, but rather, a short kid who wants to play for Notre Dame's football team. Janet and Mike met back in high school and married at 18. Two years later she was diagnosed with spinal cancer and faced paralysis, but Janet survived and learned to walk again. The couple later had three children.
Today, Janet works for the Arkansas Red Cross as the program manager for state emergency management relations. We haven't seen much of her out on the campaign trail with her husband, which is probably because of the negative attention Janet brought to her husband's 2002 gubernatorial reelection race, when she simultaneously ran for secretary of state. Newsweek remembers:
Janet's low point: her run for secretary of State in 2002, in which she was "perceived as thin-skinned, even mean-spirited," says Janine Parry, a political-science professor at the University of Arkansas. Huckabee attacked her opponent over a past DWI conviction and suggested, without verification, that he still had a drinking problem. Responding to critics who questioned her use of state vehicles and troopers to campaign, she told the New York Times, "If it wasn't for the grace of God, I'd have shot a few people already." She got trounced in her race—voters saw her run as an unseemly power play by the couple—and nearly dragged down her husband in his re-election bid that year.
As first lady, Janet's main causes were redecorating the governor's mansion and working with the state's Campaign for Healthier Babies, a public relations blitz intended to increase pregnant's women's knowledge about prenatal care. She also promoted a new sales tax to benefit state parks by jet-skiing down the Arkansas River. She refers to herself as the "Queen of Fun."
--Dana Goldstein
