Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee
is expected to announce Tuesday that he's running for president in
2016.
He'll join the Republican presidential
field at an event to be held at the University of Arkansas Community
College in Hope at 10 AM.
In January, Huckabee told viewers of
Huckabee that he was leaving the Fox News show after six years
to consider a White House bid.
On Friday, Huckabee tweeted an
announcement
video promoting his record in Arkansas.
“As governor of Arkansas, I cut taxes
and Welfare, balanced the budget every year for ten years and raised
average family income by 50 percent,” he said in the two-minute
video.
PolitiFact.com
has already challenged some of those assertions, rating “mostly
false” Huckabee's claim that he “raised average family income by
50 percent”
“Once you account for inflation,
Huckabee is incorrect. Income in Arkansas increased 20 percent, not
50 percent. That increase trailed nationwide trends. The statement
contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would
give a different impression, so we rate it Mostly False,” editors
wrote.
During his 2008 campaign, Huckabee
surprised the GOP establishment, winning the Iowa caucuses and seven
other states.
Huckabee, an ordained minister, is an
outspoken opponent of gay rights.
“I do believe that God created male
and female and intended for marriage to be the relationship of the
two opposite sexes,” he told The New Yorker in 2010. “Male
and female are biologically compatible to have a relationship. We
can get into the ick factor, but the fact is two men in a
relationship, two women in a relationship, biologically, that doesn't
work the same.”
More recently, Huckabee has called on
Republican governors to defy rulings striking down state bans on gay
marriage.
“Horse apples!” Huckabee said in
October. “The Supreme Court is not the supreme being. Yes, it's
the highest court within one of the three branches of government but
it isn't superior to the other two. … Grow a spine, show a modicum
of knowledge about the way we govern ourselves, and lead, follow, or
get the heck out of the way.”