Mike Huckabee urged voters in Woodbridge to sign a petition to get him on the ballot, whether they end up voting for him or not.
The former Arkansas Governor said Virginia is the most difficult state to get a candidate’s name on a ballot. Unlike some states that require paying the appropriate fees that range between $20 and $40,000, or by simply submitting one’s name — the commonwealth requires a proportionate number of signatures from each congressional district before a candidate’s name is placed on the ballot, said Huckabee.
About 50 people came to see the Republican presidential at OWL Volunteer Fire Department Station 2 in Woodbridge Friday morning. It was the second visit to Prince William County this week by a candidate seeking the GOP nomination for president, followed by a stump by Donald Trump in Manassas Wednesday night.
Huckabee wasted no time in calling for a swift response to this week’s mass shootings in California that killed 14, calling them “terrorist attacks by radical Islam.”
“The attacks in San Bernadino is a reminder that we are at war, and this is unlike anything we have ever seen in this country,” said Huckabee, speaking of ISIS. “There not looking for more land, they don’t want a better seat at the table the [United Nations], they don’t want to negotiate.”
The Republican liked ISIS to cancer that should not be contained but rather eradicated.
“This is not a benign tumor, this is a malignancy, and we have to take the fight to them,” he said.
Huckabee also took the New York Daily News to task for it’s Thursday newspaper front page that stated”God’s Not Fixing This,” and showed Tweets from several GOP members of Congress offering their prayers and condolences in the wake of the shootings.
“Call me politically incorrect, but I believe God intervened in the creation of this country,” he said. “We can’t explain the notion of America if our morals are in a vacuum.”
The governor also promoted his “fair tax” plan that calls for doing away with both income tax and the IRS and replacing it with a federal tax on goods sold.
“For 40 years, workers have been working harder and wages in the country have been stagnant. When work is taxed, it makes it hard for people to climb the ladder,” said Huckabee.
The Republican took a series of questions from the audience, and explained his “fair tax” would allow U.S. workers to take home a larger paycheck. He also said low cost “illegal” laborers end up making more than taxed documented workers.
“If an illegal is making $8 an hour, and another person on the books is making $12, even though the boss might be trying to save money by using cheap illegal labor, the illegal ends up making more after taxes,” said Huckabee.
OWL Volunteer Fire Department President William Spicer, Jr. gave Huckabee a tour of the fire station and explained Prince William County career staff operate the out of the station during the day while volunteers work on nights, weekends, and holidays. Huckabee said his father worked as a firefighter in his hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas and that he spent several days as a child in the firehouse.
Huckabee left Woodbridge and headed back to Washington to tape a segment for Fox News Channel. He spent about an hour at the Woodbridge fire house on F Street.
