Mike Huckabee

Michael Dale Huckabee (/ˈhʌkəbi/, born August 24, 1955) is an American politician, diplomat, and Baptist minister serving as the 29th United States ambassador to Israel since 2025. A member of the Republican Party, he served as the 44th governor of Arkansas from 1996 to 2007, and ran for his party's presidential nomination in both 2008 and 2016.

Huckabee was the host of the talk show Huckabee, which ran on the Fox News Channel from 2008 to 2015, and on TBN from October 2017 to January 2025. From April 2012 through December 2013, he also hosted a daily radio program, The Mike Huckabee Show, on weekday afternoons for Cumulus Media Networks. Huckabee is an ordained Southern Baptist pastor noted for his Evangelical views, a musician, and a public speaker. He has written several books, and was previously a political commentator on The Huckabee Report.

In the 2008 Republican presidential primaries, Huckabee won the 2008 Iowa Republican caucuses and finished second in delegate count and third in both popular vote and number of states won, behind John McCain and Mitt Romney. Huckabee ran again for the Republican nomination in the 2016 presidential election but withdrew early in the primary following the Iowa caucus.

On November 12, 2024, it was announced that then-President-elect Donald Trump would be nominating Huckabee as United States ambassador to Israel. Trump stated that Huckabee would "bring peace to the Middle East." He was sworn in on April 9, 2025, and presented his credentials to Israeli President Isaac Herzog on April 21.

Huckabee is the father of Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the governor of Arkansas since 2023 and a former White House press secretary.

Huckabee was born on August 24, 1955, in Hope, Arkansas, the son of Dorsey Wiles Huckabee (1923–1996) and his wife Mae (Elder) Huckabee (1925–1999), conservative Southern Democrats. Huckabee is of English, German, and Scots-Irish ancestry, with roots in America dating to the Colonial Era. He has cited his working-class upbringing as the reason for his political views; his father worked as a fireman and mechanic, and his mother worked as a clerk at a gas company.

His first job, when he was 14, was at a radio station, where he read the news and weather. He was elected governor of Arkansas by his chapter of the American Legion-sponsored Boys State program in 1972. He was student council vice president at Hope High School during the 1971–1972 school year. He was student council president at Hope High School during the 1972–1973 school year. He has one sister, Pat Harris, a middle school teacher. He entered the ministry in 1972 at Garrett Memorial Baptist Church in Hope.

Huckabee married Janet McCain on May 25, 1974. He graduated from Ouachita Baptist University on May 8, 1978, completing his bachelor's degree in religion before attending Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. He dropped out of the seminary after one year in order to take a job in Christian broadcasting.