Republican presidential candidate and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee made a brief stop in Selma Thursday afternoon to address supporters during a private fundraiser held at Side Porch Sandwiches.

Huckabee’s trip to Selma is part of a four-city tour of Alabama, including stops in Florence, Sylacauga and Dothan.

“We won here eight years ago, and I want to win here again, but I want to earn it,” Huckabee said. “I want to come to places like Selma and show the people of Alabama that they’re important to me. What they think about and care about, I care about.”

Huckabee said it was important for him to visit Alabama because of the impact of primary election, which was moved to March 1, along with several other southern states.

“The SEC primary next March is going to be very, very significant,” Huckabee said. “It’s going to make a big difference in the process of the nomination.”

Huckabee ran for president in 2008, but dropped out of the race after losing the Texas Republican Primary.

Huckabee said he spoke to supporters about a changing America.

“A lot of people are concerned about the moral climate of our country. They feel like the America that they grew up in is disappearing from them,” Huckabee asked. “With the fact of the threats that we now face in this country, it is a serious time, and it needs a person who has serious qualifications and serious answers to fix it.”

Huckabee said he wants to make a change in Washington if elected.

“I would love to see a balanced budget amendment so Congress has to live under the same kind of budget that American families have to live under,” Huckabee said.

He also mentioned limiting terms in Congress to prevent people from making a career out of being in office, as well as pay cuts to Congress until the budget is balanced.

With same-sex marriage as a national topic, Huckabee said it was important for him to show support for Kim Davis, a county clerk in Kentucky who was arrested for not complying with a court order to issues marriage licenses.

“I thought it was a seminal moment in America when an elected county clerk, who by the way was a Democrat at the time, was put in jail for following her conscience and for believing the same thing both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton claim to believe as recently as three years ago,” Huckabee said.

With another mass school shooting, this time in Oregon, making headlines Thursday, Huckabee said the answer to stopping this type of violence is not stricter gun laws.

“Since the time of Cain and Abel, people have been violent, people have murdered others. It’s not an issue of the weapon they have in their hand,” Huckabee said.

“It is the evil they have in their heart, and unless we come to grips with what really drives that kind of horrible behavior, we won’t fix it.”

As the fundraiser wound down Huckabee, who is also a musician, took a few minutes to strum a few chords on the bass guitar.