Mike Huckabee will endorse a Tea Party-backed candidate in the Michigan GOP Senate primary. The American Spectator has learned. The endorsement Wednesday from the former Arkansas governor is expected to be a major boost for Gary Glenn, waging an insurgent campaign for the Republican nomination to face Democrat Sen. Debbie Stabenow in 2012.

“People had thought we had a two-man race between [former U.S. Rep. Pete] Hoekstra and [charter school executive Clark] Durant,” said a source close to the Glenn campaign. “But the people of Michigan didn’t get that memo.”

An endorsement by Huckabee, whose 2008 presidential campaign made him a popular figure with grassroots conservatives, would lend Glenn’s campaign instant national credibility and can be expected to boost his fundraising efforts.

A longtime leader of Michigan’s chapter of the American Family Association, a social conservative organization, Glenn has also been a leader in the fight against the state’s “closed shop” laws that compel workers to pay union dues. His ability as a public speaker has already caught the notice of Tea Party activists and Republican rank-and-file. At one Tea Party forum last month where he and several other candidates for the GOP nomination spoke, a straw poll immediately after the debate showed Glenn the winner with 32 percent, beating both Hoesktra (23 percent) and Durant (18 percent).