The traits that
helped Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee race
to a second-place finish in last week's Iowa straw poll
might be more of a drag with voters in New Hampshire.
Huckabee returns
to the state Friday with an uptick in fundraising and
fresh criticism aimed at his chief rivals. The former
Arkansas governor's trip also carries a bevy of
questions: Can he convince New Hampshire the straw
poll results matter? Can the few religious voters in the
state mobilize on his behalf? Can he scramble a state
organization late in an already frenetic campaign
cycle?
The straw poll in
Iowa is viewed by some as an early sign of
organizational strength. With supporters paying to cast
ballots, it's also a huge fund-raiser for the state
party. While Huckabee and others pushed hard for
votes, three top Republicans--Rudy Giuliani, John
McCain, and the all-but-declared Fred
Thompson--skipped the event and, to many,
diminished its impact.
''I think that
voters correctly see the straw poll as a scam,'' said
Charlie Arlinghaus, a former Republican Party executive
director who is now president of the Concord-based
Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy. ''The only
bump he'll get from it is the fact that he was scammed
for less money than the rest of them.''
Huckabee, a
former Baptist pastor and broadcast executive, has struggled
to find support in New Hampshire, a state where economic
issues overshadow social ones.
However, Huckabee
said he's not going to change his social-conservative
message or biography to avoid scaring voters in New
Hampshire. He plans a breakfast for clergy and remarks
at an Auburn church, with both events closed to
reporters.
''If he's looking
for troops--door-to-door stuff, to build an
organization on a shoestring--that may be
significant,'' said Mark Silk, director of Trinity
College's Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life.
''It's not that
anyone has any trouble getting people to the polls on
primary day, but in terms of getting literature out there,
it'd be great to be a fly on the wall and hear how
they orchestrate the appeal to bona fide white
evangelicals in New Hampshire,'' Silk said.
Nationally,
Huckabee badly lags behind rivals, both in money and
support. His campaign raised only $1.3 million and
reported less than $500,000 on hand after the first
six months of this year. Only 2% of those surveyed in
the most recent Granite State Poll conducted for WMUR-TV and
CNN picked him instead of other Republican candidates.
''New Hampshire's
not his greatest ground. Republicans there are
different than Republicans are elsewhere,'' said Alan Wolfe,
director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American
Public Life at Boston College. ''Republicans in New
England are economic conservatives and social
liberals. That's what they've always been. He's not the
obvious person to appeal to that.''
Not that Huckabee
won't try to boost his profile and show the differences
with his top rivals who have been beset with charges of
inconsistent positions on abortion and gay rights. He
isn't afraid to remind voters of his upbringing in
Hope, Ark., and to compare himself to multimillionaire
Mitt Romney, the winner of the Iowa straw poll.
''Not all
Republicans are from privilege,'' Huckabee said in an
Associated Press interview Wednesday. ''Many of us aren't
Wall Street Republicans. We're Main Street
Republicans.''
The record, he
said, will produce votes.
''When you have a
lifelong history of believing and actually acting on
your beliefs on a topic, you don't have to go proving it to
anybody,'' he said. ''One of the reason you're going
to see a lot of the candidates running and saying 'I'm
pro-life, I'm pro-life, I'm pro-Second Amendment, oh,
and I believe in traditional marriage,' it's because no one
believes they are, so they're trying to convince
either the voters or themselves.... I don't have to go
and convince anybody.''
Huckabee, perhaps
wisely, tries to move quickly past the questions about
religion--much like Romney does with questions about
his Mormon faith. It's not an effort to dodge, he
said, it's just that he wants to talk about matters
related to the presidency. As he tells voters, he's running
for commander in chief, not pastor in chief.
What remains,
though, is for Huckabee to convince voters that he's their
guy. Boston College's Wolfe remains skeptical.
''I still think
it's going to be a hard sell for a Southern Baptist
governor in a cold, increasingly liberal state like New
Hampshire,'' Wolfe said. (Philip Elliott, AP)