Town of Hope is home to presidential hopefuls

By Missy Ryan

HOPE, Arkansas (Reuters) - Along Main Street in Hope, the small Arkansas town that was birthplace to former President Bill Clinton, storefronts are vacant and business is slow. It's hard to imagine what makes it produce presidential candidates.

A health clinic and other shops are shuttered, leaving a martial arts studio and a lonely cafe among the few businesses that haven't relocated to strip malls bordering the highway.

Unemployment is well above the national average in this blue-collar town of 11,000 people, tucked away in the low pine forests of southwest Arkansas, and local officials complain that too many jobs have moved overseas.

But as the presidential race intensifies ahead of the November election, many are marveling that the town has produced a Democrat who served two terms as president and now a Republican who is in the running for the White House.

Mike Huckabee, the 52-year-old former Republican governor and a Baptist preacher, grew up across town from the white foursquare house where Bill Clinton spent his early years.

Should Huckabee win the Republican nomination, he could face off in November against New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic front-runner and wife of the former president who is still popular in this largely rural, Democratic state.

Plenty of people have theories about why this has happened.

Some note that voters in Arkansas require an energetic style of politics from their candidates, who cut their teeth by shaking hands across the state, calling people by their first names and often signing up for watermelon-eating contests.