Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee said yesterday in Rindge that a "prohibit nothing, disclose everything" approach to campaign financing may be the best way to prevent wealth alone from determining who becomes president.

On the day he filed to declare his candidacy, the Republican presidential hopeful spoke at a Rotary Club meeting, where he was asked bluntly by an audience member whether he has enough money to compete for his party's nomination.

Huckabee conceded the obvious - he doesn't have as much as his rivals - and turned the answer into an attack on the system, which he said works to keep candidates like him behind in the money race.

He said the campaign finance law co-authored by one of his rivals - Arizona Sen. John McCain - has deformed rather than reformed the system and is moving the nation toward a plutocracy.

"We will end up with a ruling class and servant class, and we will ruin the middle class," he said. "We will make it so politics will become the domain of the extraordinarily wealthy."

Huckabee raised $1 million in the last fundraising quarter - his best so far - but still lags far behind the front-runners. Three months before the voting starts, his campaign has $651,300 on hand for the primary, compared with McCain's $1.7 million, Rudy Giuliani's $11.6 million and Mitt Romney's $9.2 million.

Huckabee argued that the financing system puts him at a disadvantage because, unlike members of Congress who are running, he can't transfer money from previous campaigns to his current bid and, unlike Mitt Romney, he does not have millions of his own to pour into the race.

Romney has loaned his campaign $17.4 million.

"If a person has personal wealth, he or she can write a check, jump-start their campaign and become instantly credible, and the national media will say, 'He's a front-runner.' Now, is he a front-runner because he has great ideas or because he has a great checkbook?" Huckabee said.

He chastised the news media for reports that, he said, emphasize only three candidates in the race.

"We really are creating this system driven more by money . . . than anything. In a way, it's a conspiracy," he said.

Huckabee said he would rather see a "nothing prohibited, everything disclosed" system where candidates could accept unlimited money from all sources but would have to publicly disclose each penny within 24 hours.

"I tend to think what we really need is, if you're going to say that someone who has unlimited wealth who can write a check for anything, then turn everybody loose and say no limits, but full disclosure on everything, down to the penny, and make it instantaneous disclosure," he said. "Not three months away. Make it 24-hour disclosure."

Huckabee's comments came as several people close to Sen. Sam Brownback said that he planned to end his campaign today in large part because he was unable to raise enough money. Huckabee declined to comment on Brownback's decision before the official announcement.

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