Sen. Sam Brownback may be eyeing the White House these days, but there was a time when his ambition was different.

“He wanted to be a farmer,” his mother, Nancy Brownback, said.

The Republican senator and darling of the religious right plans to jump into the presidential race officially with an announcement Saturday in Topeka.

It’s a move his mother said she didn’t foresee when her son was just a lad running tractors and watering hogs on the family farm outside Parker, a town of fewer than 300 people southeast of Ottawa in Linn County.

“I know he feels very strongly about that type of thing,” Nancy Brownback said of her son’s ambition. “He wants to help, so I suppose it’s just another step up.”

After 20 years in public life – as Kansas secretary of agriculture and United States representative and senator – Brownback has fashioned himself into a politician with what he calls “full-scale conservative values.”

He opposes abortion, gay marriage and embryonic stem cell research. He is an outspoken critic of turmoil in Sudan. He wants a flat tax rate and term limits for judges and members of Congress.

Journal-World Illustration Sam Brownback

When family, childhood friends and teachers think back on the senator’s early years, they recall a straight-laced do-gooder.

“Just a good kid that wanted to please,” Nancy Brownback said.

Sam Brownback was born in 1956 in Garnett and raised on the farm near Parker.

“It’s right in the middle of farm country,” said Dianne Bailey, a Parker resident and the town’s former mayor. “It’s a very close-knit community, a very religious community. Everybody knows everybody and everybody is concerned about everybody.”

Juanita Holderman, Brownback’s second-grade teacher, said she recalls a wee perfectionist.

“He wanted everything perfect, especially his arithmetic,” she said. “He was that way with everything.”

Brownback was the third of four children. And his upbringing was typical for the area.

“He was always a workin’,” Nancy Brownback said. “The boys did the chores and the daughter stayed in helping me cooking.”

Nancy Brownback said she didn’t need to set a lot of rules at home.

“If they had chores to do in the morning and chores to do after school, they didn’t have time to get into trouble,” she said.

In high school, Brownback played sports and was active in Future Farmers of America. He went on to be state president of FFA.

“We used to tease him a lot and call him ‘governor,'” said Joe Atwood, a childhood friend. “He was like ‘oh, no.'”

Brownback went to Kansas State University, where he was student body president.

After graduating from K-State, Brownback headed to Kansas University’s law school, where he got a degree in 1982.

Sam Brownback timeline

Robert Casad, the John H. and John M. Kane professor emeritus in the KU School of Law, remembers Brownback from his class for his distinctive name and as a student driven to graduate.

“He was a serious student. And I don’t ever recall him getting into any trouble,” Casad said.

Four years later, at age 30, Brownback became Kansas Secretary of Agriculture, and a political career was born.

“He was just a wholesome, all-American, Kansas country boy,” Atwood said. “He had the country values, the family values and, as far as my knowledge, still has that same value system.”