Mike Huckabee announces running for U.S. president

U.S. state of Arkansas former governor Mike Huckabee said Tuesday that he would seek the Republican nomination for president in 2016.

"So it seems perfectly fitting that it would be here that I announce that I am a candidate for president of the United States of America," Huckabee told a campaign rally in his hometown of Hope, Arkansas.

"We were promised hope, but it was just talk and now we really need the kind of change that really could get America from hope to higher ground," he said, "I learned how to govern and I learned how to lead."

Huckabee's Tuesday speech included a call to replace all federal taxes with a sales tax, criticism of trade pacts that he said would undermine U.S. workers' wages. "Power and money and political influence have left a lot of Americans lagging behind," he said.

Huckabee, 59, is seeking the nomination for the second time, having won the first contest of the 2008 intraparty primaries with a victory in the Iowa caucuses. He eventually won eight states, mostly in the South, but he was finally defeated by nominee John McCain.

He served two terms as governor of Arkansas, between 1996 and 2007, taking the office held just a few years earlier by Democratic president Bill Clinton. After falling short in his 2008 presidential bid, Huckabee hosted a popular television talk show on Fox News.

A recent Gallup poll found he was one of the most well-known potential Republican candidates, along with former Florida governor Jeb Bush. He is also well-positioned with blue-collar voters, senior citizens and conservatives as well as the evangelical voters who helped him in his 2008 Iowa victory.

After the Arkansas announcement, Huckabee will campaign Wednesday and go to Iowa Thursday on a "Factories, Farms and Freedom" tour before heading to South Carolina for a speech on economic opportunity in Greenville on Friday. Endite