Hannibal-LaGrange University is continuing its trend of high-profile Booster Banquet speakers. The university announced recently it will bring Mike Huckabee to campus for its 70th annual Booster Banquet Nov. 15.

Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas and a Republican presidential candidate in 2008, has been keeping busy as an author and as the host of the Fox News Channel’s “Huckabee.” His name had been floated earlier this year and last as a possible contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, but he said in May he will not run. He is an ordained Southern Baptist minister who has not been shy about his faith, which explains the connection with HLGU, a Southern Baptist institution.

This is at least the third consecutive year that HLGU has brought in a high-profile Christian speaker for the Booster Banquet. Last year the headliner was “Growing Pains” and “Fireproof” actor Kirk Cameron, who spoke on his conversion to Christianity (and, in the second video on this Local Q post, gave a terrific sound-bite synopsis of his star turn as Mike Seaver). In 2009, the university brought in author Bruce Wilkinson, who had a bestselling Christian devotional in the late 1990s with “The Prayer of Jabez.”

Tickets for the Booster Banquet start at $60 and can be purchased on HLGU’s website.