HOPE, Ark.--Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee on Tuesday became the sixth Republican to formally enter the 2016 presidential contest, stressing his humble roots and traditional values.

Huckabee announced his second bid for the White House here in the resonantly named birthplace he shares with the 42nd president of the United States, Bill Clinton, whose wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, is widely believed to have all but a lock on the Democratic nomination.

“Folks, it is a long way from a little brick red house on 2nd Street in Hope, Arkansas, to the White House. But here in this small town called Hope, I was raised to believe that where a person’s starting didn’t mean that’s where he had to stop,” Huckabee told a cheering, overflow crowd of more than 2,000 at a community college.

The challenges are formidable for the man who won the 2008 Iowa caucuses. In that race, Huckabee, a former Baptist preacher, struggled to expand his reach beyond evangelical voters and ran out of money in subsequent contests.

Huckabee, 59, had announced nearly a year and a half ago that he was contemplating a second run, and said that his ability to raise money, a part of the exercise that he has never enjoyed, would be a key factor in his decision.

His biggest challenge will be trying to break through in a GOP field that is likely to include a dozen or more credible, well-financed contenders. Among them are some young, fresh faces, including Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.), Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Rand Paul (Ky.).

Huckabee’s campaign announcement, by contrast, had a sepia tone; the warm-up was a performance by singer Tony Orlando of his 1973 hit “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree.”

His strategists say that Huckabee’s path to the nomination is premised on doing well in the early states of Iowa and South Carolina, which would give him momentum in the subsequent primary contests in the South.

The former Arkansas governor acknowledged that he is likely to remain at a disadvantage among rivals who have lined up deep-pocketed donors.

“I never have been and won’t be the favorite candidate of those in the Washington-to-Wall Street corridor of power,” he said in his 29-minute speech. “I will be funded and fueled not by billionaires, but by working people across America.”

He is likely to face more competition than in the past for conservative Christian voters, who fueled his win in Iowa. Cruz in particular is making a strong play for that constituency.

But Huckabee is a gifted communicator, and on Tuesday he displayed his abilities to throw a populist elbow without losing his affable demeanor.

His speech included a number of shots at his declared and yet-to-be-declared GOP opponents, although he did not name them.

He noted, for instance, that “some propose that to save safety nets like Medicare and Social Security, we need to chop off the payouts for the people who have faithfully had their paychecks and pockets picked by the politicians promising that their money would be waiting for them when they were old and sick.” The comment was an apparent reference to a proposal by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R).

“Imagine members of Congress boasting they will fight to repeal Obamacare and then turning around and signing up for it,” he added, which describes a decision Cruz made after his wife took a leave from her investment-banking job and lost its employer-provided benefits.

Huckabee also took aim at the entire array of sitting senators and governors who may be joining him onstage at the upcoming presidential debates, saying: “If someone is elected to an office, then give the taxpayers what they’re paying for and what you said you wanted. If you live off the government payroll and want to run for an office other than the one you’re elected to, then have the integrity and decency to resign the one you don’t want and pursue the one you decided you’d rather have.”

During his decade as Arkansas governor, Huckabee racked up an impressive record getting legislation through an overwhelmingly Democratic legislature. Among his achievements were expanding health coverage for children and revamping the state’s education system.

In 2005, Time magazine named him one of the five most effective governors in the country, and Governing magazine dubbed him one of its “public officials of the year.”

The overweight Arkansas governor also gained national attention when he lost 110 pounds after diabetes was diagnosed in 2002.

Huckabee collected some formidable enemies along the way, including such conservative organizations as the anti-tax Club for Growth, which deemed his gubernatorial record too liberal.

That feud is ongoing. Moments before Huckabee stepped onstage Tuesday, Club for Growth Action announced that it will be making a $100,000 television ad buy “to remind voters in Iowa and South Carolina of the tax increases that took place in Arkansas under the governorship of Mike Huckabee.” (Source: The Washington Post)

Story Date: May 6, 2015