Mike Huckabee backs Chuck DeVore in California's U.S. Senate race

[ccharles000]

Senate GOP candidate Chuck DeVore scored the endorsement of former Republican presidential contender Mike Huckabee on Wednesday – an announcement that his campaign hopes will help attract conservative support and help him catch up with his rivals in the race to unseat Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer.

The former Arkansas governor, in a statement, praised DeVore’s “clear pro-life record” and his 100% pro-life rating from the Capitol Resource Institute in Sacramento. “We need people like Chuck DeVore in the U.S. Senate, because he’ll work to bring some common sense back to Washington,” Huckabee said in a release from DeVore’s campaign.

“He has a substantive network of grassroots supporters and activists across California,” said DeVore’s spokesman Josh Treviño. “We think the Huckabee endorsement is a message to conservatives in this state that … Chuck DeVore is the only real conservative in the race.”

Despite his appeal to conservatives, the Orange County assemblyman has trailed former Rep. Tom Campbell and Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, in fundraising. Fiorina and Campbell raised $1.7 million and $1.6 million, respectively, in the first three months of this year, while DeVore reported raising $626,000.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/california-politics/2010/04/mike-huckabee-chuck-devore-california-gop-senate-barbara-boxer.html

[saltpoint]

1. It's hard to guess if Huckabee is going to run for the

GOP nomination or if he lacks the "fire in the belly."

Some days he behaves as if he will run. Endorsing candidates like this is sometimes a signal.

Other days he just doesn't seem much interested at all.

Huckabee is charming in that Sunday preacher in the pulpit kind of way, but politically ambivalent about his own relationship to power.

Beneath the "charm" and the ambivalence,l I'm still getting a reprehensible kook, a cultural throwback, and deep-fried authoritarian.

Never liked this guy much.

DeVore can have him.

[saltpoint]

2. DeVore is way behind in that primary. Huckabee must know that

Campbell leads in polling, and that Campbell and Fiorina, one or the other, is likely to become the nominee.

So I'm not sure how endorsing DeVore does Huckabee any good and since Devore's fundraising has been unimpressive I'm not sure it's going to do DeVore any good either.

This is kind of an odd move for Huckabee.