Hearting Huckabee, transparent Rudy!

I can't understand why the Republican establishment won't embrace the former Arkansas governor. His GOP credentials are impeccable: opposed health care reform and got paid for doing so.

When Mike Huckabee became lieutenant governor of Arkansas in 1993, he complained of being burdened by college tuition bills for his son, the expenses of two residences — one in Texarkana and the other in Little Rock — and the cost of commuting between the two.

With an annual salary of $25,452, he said he was falling short in covering the bills. “It was costing me money to be lieutenant governor,” Mr. Huckabee recalled in a 1997 newspaper interview.

To bridge the gap between his income and his expenses, Mr. Huckabee and a few close political advisers came up with a plan. They formed a nonprofit organization that raised money for Mr. Huckabee to travel the country promoting conservative politics to fellow ministers and attacking Hillary Rodham Clinton’s health care plan.

In its three-year life span, the organization, Action America, collected $119,916 from a dozen or so donors. Among them were former Senator Bob Dole’s political action committee, an Arkansas cotton gin owner who had been jailed for stock fraud, and R. J. Reynolds, the tobacco giant that had opposed the Clinton health plan. As for Mr. Huckabee, he ended up with $61,500 for his efforts before becoming governor in July 1996 and shuttering the group.

As information about the secretive group began to leak out in 1997, Democrats in Arkansas pressed for the identity of its donors, which Mr. Huckabee has refused to disclose. In addition, he failed to report his Action America income on his 1994 financial disclosure form, resulting in a “letter of caution” from the Arkansas Ethics Commission in 1997.

As Mr. Huckabee moves to the top tier of Republican candidates, his involvement in Action America and accusations of ethical lapses while he held office in Arkansas are drawing new scrutiny. In all, at least 16 ethics complaints, including the one involving Action America, were filed against Mr. Huckabee, with violations found in five of them and a $1,000 fine assessed.

As for Action America, new details have emerged, first reported by Newsweek, about the extent of tobacco money behind it and the way the industry tried to use Mr. Huckabee’s rising profile among conservatives to create grass-roots opposition to the Clinton effort, which would have raised taxes on cigarettes.

Mr. Huckabee, who was president of Action America, has denied knowing that Reynolds money was behind the group — a claim other officers of Action America dispute. But long before Mr. Huckabee began seeking the Republican presidential nomination, he resisted efforts to identify Action America’s donors.

Meanwhile, Jim Dwyer reminds us of the open government Giuliani promises.

A few years back, a man named Russell Harding held a City Hall patronage job that came with a government credit card, which he used to steal more than $250,000.

Crooks happen. What kept Mr. Harding in thievery for three years was that the city government, led by his patron, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, slammed the door on the one person who sought the Harding credit card records, a reporter with The Village Voice who filed freedom of information requests.

These requests were stalled until the next mayor took office and released the documents. Before long, Mr. Harding was packed off to prison.

In a debate among Republican candidates this week, Mr. Giuliani was asked what promises he would make about running an open White House.

“I would make sure that government was transparent,” Mr. Giuliani said. “My government in New York City was so transparent that they knew every single thing I did almost every time I did it.”

That was a daring claim, considering that prying information out of the Giuliani City Hall required teams of lawyers with the persistence of mules. To cite three of the most prominent examples, he tried to block the release of different batches of public records to the city’s Independent Budget Office, to the city’s public advocate, and to the state comptroller. He was sued on each occasion. He lost every time. He appealed each decision. He lost every appeal.

“So,” Mr. Giuliani said during the debate, looking toward his presidency, “I would be extremely open.”