Mike Huckabee, who is expected to announce whether or not he will run for president on his FOX News program tonight, hinted at a possible run in an e-mail to his closest confidantes.
Although Huckabee did not tip his hand as to his final decision, an email obtained by Time’s Mark Halperin asked his friends: “Please be patient if I don’t respond immediately to an email because I expect that once I pull the trigger Saturday night, things will get even crazier, as if that’s possible.”
The former Arkansas governor frequently leads in national polls of Republican primary voters and, with Haley Barbour not running, would be the only candidate with a strong claim to the Southern voters that form the backbone of the party. Despite being significantly outspent in 2008, he won an upset victory in the Iowa caucuses and won large shares of the vote in a number of other states, including South Carolina.
Huckabee’s top advisor, Ed Rollins, told ABC News that he does not believe he Huckabee will enter the race. But he added that “if he announced tomorrow night, on Monday I could push the button and the campaign would start to unfold.”
In his e-mail, Huckabee said that he had only come to his final decision, whatever it may be, at the last minute.
“It was this afternoon before I could even get word to all of my own children and even now, the executive producer of my show and the staff and crew of the show don’t know and won’t until I actually do the final preparation literally minutes before I share the decision live Saturday night,” he wrote.
Benjy Sarlin
Benjy Sarlin is a reporter for Talking Points Memo and co-writes the campaign blog, TPM2012. He previously reported for The Daily Beast/Newsweek as their Washington Correspondent and covered local politics for the New York Sun.
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