Mike Huckabee was never about fire and brimstone. As a preacher, he was buoyant. The first time he took to the pulpit, as a 16-year-old preaching on a Sunday night, he turned water into wine. Sort of.

"He had a clear bottle of water, a gallon jug of water, and he turned it red," said Don Still, who grew up with Huckabee in the small city of Hope, Ark. "He talked about how God cleanses our soul. He was probably in the 11th or 12th grade, and he was probably taking chemistry and learned it in chemistry."

Science or miracle, Still was impressed. Looking back now, Still said he knew then that Huckabee - or Mike, as he seems to be known to everyone in Arkansas - was destined for politics, "a born leader."

Huckabee himself said he'd thought about becoming a politician since he was a boy. But he gave up that notion when he became a Baptist preacher.

"I couldn't see, in my mind, any pathway from the pastorate to political office," said Huckabee, who began preaching full time when he was 25.

His outlook changed when, at age 34, he was elected the youngest-ever president of the Arkansas State Baptist Convention, a position he says helped launch his political career.

Still, some churchgoers said they were surprised when Huckabee announced in 1992 that he was leaving the church after 12 years to run for office. He was such a great preacher, they said.

But the same skills that made him memorable in the pulpit helped him succeed in politics: He could deliver a heavy moral message in such a light, folksy way that you didn't even notice the proselytizing. He remembered everyone's name. And he had a way of winning support for his good ideas by making the deacons think the ideas were their own.

"He was an intelligent and communicative kind of guy that understood people and how to deal with them," said David Beaty, a retired electronics store manager and a senior deacon at Beech Street First Baptist Church in Texarkana, Ark., where Huckabee was pastor in the 1980s and '90s.

Now, after 10½ years as the Republican governor of Democrat-heavy Arkansas, Huckabee, 52, is attempting to parlay his charm into a bid for the Republican presidential nomination that's gaining momentum and attention, if not money.

Some critics warn against painting Huckabee in such a simplistic light. They say that beneath the dimples and guffaws is a politically savvy conservative who's not immune to the pitfalls of politics.

But the digs don't matter to those who knew Huckabee when he was the head of a couple of small churches in southern Arkansas. They saw him become the leader of the state. And now, former congregants such as David Haak, a store owner from Texarkana, have their eye on bigger things.

After Huckabee was elected lieutenant governor in 1993, "several of us friends were up at the (governor's) mansion in Little Rock and a number were saying, 'I want to spend a night in the mansion,' " Haak said. "I said, 'I want to spend a night in the Lincoln bedroom.' "

'A good life'

Huckabee's beginnings were modest. He was born Aug. 24, 1955, in the same city as Bill Clinton. The son of a firefighter and an office assistant, Huckabee describes his childhood in his 2007 book From Hope to Higher Ground as idyllic: The city of fewer than 9,000 was close-knit and you could ride your bike after dark.

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