Watching Mike Huckabee’s surge in Iowa, Jackson T. “Steve” Stephens Jr. is second-guessing his one-time flirtation with elected office. “If had it to do over again, I would probably challenge Huckabee,” he said of the short time in 2001 when he considered running against him for the Republican gubernatorial nomination.

But he doesn’t have it to do all over again, which is why he now feels a heightened obligation. As an Arkansan who knows Huckabee well, he feels obliged to make sure the rest of the country knows much more about his former governor’s “taxing and spending” ways.

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Stephens isn’t just any person; he is a board member of the anti-tax, and increasingly anti-Huckabee, Club for Growth — a group Huckabee routinely refers to as the “Club for Greed.” He is also the son of the late Jack Stephens, one of Arkansas’s most successful businessmen, who grew a local investment banking business into Stephens, Inc., a company which houses one of the largest trading floors off Wall Street and has offices all over the world. He worked in the family business for a time, though now he is the CEO of a biomedical firm which he founded.

He doesn’t have a preferred Republican candidate, but adds that his “sole purpose is to educate people about Huckabee.” According to Stephens, the Club for Growth will target Huckabee this week with “significant” television ad buy, both in Iowa and nationally. “We will use his own words against him,” he said referring to the ad, which features Huckabee standing before the Arkansas Legislature in 2003, reciting the litany of tax increases he would be willing to sign into law.

Anti-tax groups, like the Club for Growth, have been at odds with Huckabee for a while, and at times it’s become quite heated. In 2001, when the Club for Growth gave the then-Arkansas governor a low “C” grade for his handling of budget and tax policy, Huckabee sent Stephen Moore, who was the group’s president, a fiery missive protesting his rating. “Grades given by out-of-state eggheads don't go on our permanent record.” Huckabee wrote.

In 2003, when Grover Norquist, president for Americans for Tax Reform, criticized Huckabee’s tendency to raise taxes instead of scaling back spending, he fired back.

“What do our critics want - to rip the feeding tubes out of an 8-year-old or an elderly person on Medicaid? Grover needs to run for governor somewhere, win, and then try to govern,” Huckabee told the Washington Times. “He makes it sound so easy.”

As for Stephens and Huckabee, the two men haven’t always been on opposite ends of ideological spectrum. Stephens began working with Huckabee as chairman of the Arkansas Policy Foundation, a state-based free-market think tank, which, shortly after Huckabee became governor in 1996, launched a complete top-to-bottom review of Arkansas government called the Murphy Commission.