Two one-sentence statements read in a federal courtroom Tuesday altered Arkansas's political landscape.
Democratic Gov. Jim Guy Tucker, declared guilty on two of seven Whitewater charges against him, announced in the wake of the jury's verdict that he will resign by July 15, turning the office over to Republican Lt. Gov. Mike Huckabee.Tucker's decision will hand to the GOP the top political office in Arkansas the party has not held since Frank White defeated fledgling governor Bill Clinton in 1980.
But it also throws into doubt the party's chances of winning another coveted political job that has been a top target of national Republicans - the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Democratic Sen. David Pryor.
Huckabee, 41, was considered the leading contender for the job from either party. Recent independent polls conducted by Arkansas newspapers showed Huckabee ahead of both Democrats still competing for that party's nomination - Attorney General Winston Bryant and state Sen. Lu Hardin.
The race has been made a top-tier objective of the National Republican Party and the Senate Republican Campaign Committee.
Huckabee, who read a statement shortly after Tucker's announcement, called on Arkansans to "stop pointing fingers and start joining hands.
"Without getting into the what-if here, what-if there, let me just say that the decisions that I have to make is one that only I can make," Huckabee said.
"Nobody can make that for me. This will not be a decision that I'm going to make on politics. It'll be an honest-to-God decision I've got to make from the depth of my soul, what's the best thing to do. What my desire is will not be as much of a factor as what's my duty."
Huckabee stopped short of saying he would abandon his Senate race in order to assume the one duty the state constitution places on the lieutenant governor - to assume the governorship if the office is vacated by death, disability or resignation.
"Right now the only decision that we need to be thinking about is how can we best do for Arkansas what it deserves, and that's bring stability to it," he said. "And so I have not made any plans at this point whatsoever other than to begin meeting with the governor as soon as he's willing to do that to start discussing a transition."
He declined to directly answer whether he would drop out of the Senate race and serve the remaining 2-1/2 years of Tucker's term.
Tucker, 52, was a former Pulaski County prosecuting attorney and two-term state attorney general before Clinton won his first political race. He served in Congress for one term, having replaced another Arkansan brought down by scandal - former Ways and Means Committee Chairman Wilbur Mills, D-Ark.
He lost the 1978 Democratic primary for U.S. Senate to Pryor and finished third in a five-man field in the 1982 Democratic primary for governor, which Clinton won. Clinton testified it was a race that left the two men estranged politically for some time.
He dropped out of politics during the remainder of the 1980s - the time when he devoted himself to building a cable television business and dabbling in real estate markets that brought him into contact with his Whitewater co-defendants, James McDougal and his former wife, Susan McDougal.
After a bout with a life-threatening intestinal disease, Tucker returned to politics in 1990. Gambling that Clinton would eschew a fifth term as governor, Tucker was the first Democrat to announce for the primary. When Clinton went ahead and announced for re-election weeks later, an angry Tucker withdrew and ran instead for lieutenant governor.
He became governor in December 1992 when Clinton resigned to become president. He was elected to a four-year term in his own right in 1994 with a 60 percent margin and was indicted in the Whitewater investigation in August 1995.