The winner of the Boggs-Doniphan Award 2008 (aka Gentile of the Year) for the non-Mormon with the biggest impact on Mormonism, positive or negative, is Michael Dale Huckabee, unsuccessful Republican presidential candidate.

Huckabee's " 'aw-shucks anti-Mormonism' torpedoed Mitt's chances for the Republican nomination, thus ensuring that Americans were once again reminded that Mormons are too weird for the highest office in the land," Ronan James Head, a British Mormon, wrote on the blog www.bycommonconsent.com.

In addition to Huckabee, Head nominated Roman Catholic Archbishop George Niederauer, who got Latter-day Saints involved in California's Proposition 8; the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, whose raid on the YFZ ranch in Texas kept Mormon polygamy in the spotlight; and the Rev. Bill Keller, a Texas evangelist who said, "A vote for Romney is a vote for Satan."

The contest was named after Gov. Lilburn Boggs, the Missouri politician who issued the infamous "1838 Extermination Order," saying Mormons should be treated as enemies of the state and driven from their homes, and Gen. Alexander William Doniphan, the militia leader who refused to carry out the order to arrest and execute LDS founder Joseph Smith and other church leaders.