First-Person: Mike Huckabee and Other GOP Candidates Swoop into Florida

This past week the major GOP candidates have swept into my state. I live in Orlando, right in the middle of the I-4 corridor which is a major political battle ground for the state of Florida as well as the nation. Liberal to the south and hick towards the north with Mickey Mouse sitting right in the middle.

This is such an exciting and important election. Four years ago it was painful watching Kerry and Bush go at it. I was bored silly all the way up through November. This year, I found myself wanting to cook up some popcorn as I watched Stephanopoulos talk on the night of the Iowa caucus.

I'm a father of four and my wife homeschools the older two. It was a week ago when I heard that Governor Huckabee was speaking that afternoon at the airport a couple of miles from my home. I jumped at this educational opportunity for my kids. My oldest daughter is nine and was already a big Huckabee fan. Leaving work early, I suddenly found myself with my family outside an airplane hanger on a cool breezy Florida afternoon.

Arriving there, we found three groups of people. One group was the polite perfectly dressed campaign people directing everyone where to go while handing out Huckabee stickers and signs. Next, there was the somewhat arrogant perfectly dressed media people standing around chit chatting among themselves about their campaign trail experiences. I heard one guy telling the others about how the secret service gave him hassle when he threw his gum in the trash during a Bush stop over four years ago. I understood his grieve because he really didn't strike me as the plastic explosives type. The last group, of course, was the standard Joe supporter of Huckabee. A good many of them were homeschool families. One mom had her children holding a large rolled out paper sign declaring "Homeschoolers for Huckabee."

So, there we all were waiting in a staging area between the airplane hanger and an open field. All the children were organized in a big semicircle behind the podium as we waited and waited for Governor Huckabee to arrive. He was coming from a Martin Luther King church service in Atlanta that went well over an hour longer than expected.