Challenges Test Governor

In a perfect world, Gov. Mike Huckabee could spend countless hours traveling the state — fishing, eating, shaking hands, raising campaign money, doing celebrity impersonations.

He does, but we’re not in a perfect world.

The governor doesn’t have time to do so many of those things that make the job so enjoyable for him. There’s real work to be done in the governor’s office.

He’s proven himself to be a master at all those fun things. Politically, he knows how to target the “gimmes” that everyone can support, such as a better car tag renewal process and free health care for children.

Suddenly, four months before his gubernatorial election bid, Huckabee faces some serious problems that threaten his cozy environment.

Is he up to the challenge? He’ll have to answer the question for us with action and leadership — not whiny sound bites. I’ll submit there’s no better time for him to prove he deserves the state’s highest office.

Here are some issues:

n The problems at the Division of Youth Services.

These were developing long before Huckabee took office, but now he gets to deal with them. The investigative series published by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette — an impressive effort although tainted by the fact that the newspaper chose to sit on the news for an awards package and allow the key reporter to break the story via the governor — can be credited with bringing the problems to the front-burner.

Huckabee not only has to find the personnel to take control of the abusive program, but also must deal with the paper trail that indicates he should have acted sooner. His liaison’s executive briefing clearly outlines trouble, and the governor apparently wasn’t concerned enough to follow up on the action plan.

Another wild card: Word on the street is that much more information about the operation will be forthcoming from former and current employees.

n Replacing Lee Frazier as director of the Department of Human Services.

Even before the Youth Services debacle, it had become clear that Frazier was in over his head. He refused to fire anyone to the point the governor had to send in a hatchet man. While other state agencies were being overhauled by new directors, Frazier was trying to keep his head above water.

His failure has been rewarded with a cushy job at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. That’s state government for you.

This is a critical appointment for Huckabee and the department. But who wants it? The Department of Human Services must be reorganized during the 1999 session of the General Assembly.

n Replacing Dr. Sandra Nichols at the Department of Health.

This resignation came out of nowhere. Every indication was that Nichols was well-liked in the department, in the governor’s office and around the state. Her campaign for immunizations statewide has been wildly successful, and she didn’t try to fit into the Dr. Joycelyn Elders mold.

Her position was not one of those in the cabinet in which Huckabee wanted “one of his own,” as aide Rex Nelson likes to say. Politically, he would have been hard-pressed to boot the only African-American member of the cabinet at the time.

I’ve become more cynical about the family excuse to do things or not to do things when it relates to politics. Inevitably, there’s always more to the story.

Interestingly, Nichols and Frazier both have spouses who are also on the state payroll. Frazier’s wife, Deborah, became chief of staff to Nichols in the Health Department in connection with his appointment. Nichols’ husband, Ronnie Nichols, is director of the Old State House Museum, dating to the Jim Guy Tucker administration that first appointed Dr. Nichols.

In general, these are not the kinds of issues that Huckabee wants to face this close to an election. He managed to put off discussion of highway needs, and the state economy continues to simmer nicely.

I hope he’ll resist the temptation to bide his time until after November. His answers for these situations are the very ones that deserve public and gubernatorial debate, but they are also the ones he knows to be politically risky.