Mike Huckabee And His Wife Used Wedding Registry Loophole To Accept Extravagant Gifts

Whistler posted a bit on this story yesterday, but I thought it deserved another post with a better source. It seems that Mike Huckabee and his wife, as they were leaving the Governor’s mansion, set up wedding registries at certain stores despite the fact that they’d been married for 30 years. The claim was that this was to help them transition into private life, though it seems odd that a politician like Huckabee (who had just bought a 7,000 square foot home around this same time) would need help with that.
The reality, I think, has more to do with the fact that in Arkansas the Governor isn’t allowed to accept gifts larger than $100 per state ethics laws. But there is an exception for wedding gifts, so by setting up these registries for a non-existent wedding Huckabee was able to skirt the ethics code and accept large gifts anyway.
Which is a pretty shady maneuver, but not all that surprising coming from the guy who tells the public he’s not going to run a negative ad against one of his political opponents and then runs it anyway.