The New York Times - From Back of G.O.P. Pack, Huckabee Is Stirring

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The New York Times - From Back of G.O.P. Pack, Huckabee Is Stirring

By MICHAEL LUO

Mike Huckabee's field staff had expected a modest crowd for a campaign event at a tiny rural community college near here on Wednesday. But as people began to cram into the shoe-box-size room, campaign organizers scurried to roll back a dividing wall and set up extra chairs.

To the Huckabee campaign, it was another small note in a recent trickle of encouraging moments. His fund-raising is up, the campaign just received its first major Christian conservative endorsement and most of all — to Mr. Huckabee's obvious delight — opponents are beginning to take potshots at him.

"I've always said as a hunter, ‘You never put the cross hairs on a dead carcass,'" Mr. Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor, told reporters Wednesday. "You only aim for something that's alive that you'd like to take home."

With less than two months until Iowa's first-in-the-nation caucuses, there are signs that Mr. Huckabee, a former Baptist pastor for whom Bible verses flow easily off the tongue, is charming, quipping and sermonizing his way from a long shot ensconced in the second tier of the Republican presidential sweepstakes to a possible contender here.

"The candidate du jour right now is Mike Huckabee," said Chuck Laudner, executive director of the Iowa Republican Party. "He certainly can win. It's still a wide-open race here in Iowa."

Even if Mr. Huckabee wins here, what that would mean over the course of the campaign is another question. He would be vastly underfinanced — and underorganized — going into a crush of contests in big and expensive states. A victory here would also put intense scrutiny on his record as governor, which has been largely ignored in the focus on his Republican rivals, Rudolph W. Giuliani, Senator John McCain of Arizona, Fred D. Thompson and Mitt Romney.

Still, there is a new sense of possibility in the Huckabee campaign. It has been fueled in large part by evangelicals, including a politically active home-schooling population, dissatisfied with his better-financed competitors. Mr. Romney continues to lead state polls and has made significant inroads among Christian conservatives, but many are searching for an alternative.

On Thursday, Mr. Huckabee scored his first endorsement from a prominent Christian conservative leader, the Rev. Donald E. Wildmon, founder of the American Family Association. Meanwhile, Mr. Thompson, who is vying for the same conservative mantle, singled out Mr. Huckabee this week, calling him a "pro-life liberal."

Mr. Huckabee fired back in an interview with Marc Ambinder, a political blogger. "The Writers Guild is on strike, and Fred is kind of struggling to get some lines," he said. "Whoever put that line together is writing for comedy and not for a serious political drama."

But other Christian conservative leaders have been reluctant to get behind Mr. Huckabee's campaign, in no small part because they worry that he cannot win the nomination, much less the general election. Beyond that, they wonder whether this former governor who has never served in Washington has the credentials to be a wartime president, and they fret that he does not have the resources to compete in 50 states against someone like Mr. Giuliani, a supporter of abortion rights whom many conservatives want to stop at all costs. Mr. Huckabee has depicted the leaders' lack of support as a source of strength, adding, "some people have become more process-focused than they are principle-focused."

While Mr. Huckabee's fund-raising still badly trails that of his better-known rivals, as well as that of Representative Ron Paul, Republican of Texas, his campaign took in more than $1 million online in October, more than it raised in the entire third quarter. Most of the donations came in 10 days at the end of the month, on the heels of a strong debate performance, a rousing speech at the Values Voter Summit in Washington and, as Mr. Huckabee invariably inserts in interviews, an endorsement by Chuck Norris, the martial arts star.

In that period, the campaign saw Web site traffic jump to levels second among Republicans only to that of Mr. Paul, who has a strong base of Internet supporters, forcing it to upgrade its server three times.

Chip Saltsman, Mr. Huckabee's campaign manager, maps out a series of events, though somewhat short on details, of his candidate scoring a victory or strong second in Iowa that could earn him bushels of media coverage, then drawing on resources he has held back to compete in New Hampshire and South Carolina, where he says the campaign has built viable field staffs.

Mr. Saltsman predicts that other prominent contenders will fade, narrowing the field to perhaps two major candidates. After that, he said, the campaign could take advantage of money pouring in from the early momentum to compete in the crush of states holding primaries on Feb. 5.

Mr. Laudner said prospects beyond Iowa remained Mr. Huckabee's chief hurdle among politically savvy caucusgoers. "If there isn't going to be enough money to compete beyond Iowa and New Hampshire," he said, "that goes to the heart of the viability question. That's his No. 1 limit here."

Mr. Huckabee has a homespun approach that draws heavily on the story of his climb from humble roots — a generation, he likes to say, from "dirt floors and outdoor bathrooms" to the governor's office, where he served for more than a decade in a largely Democratic state. He promotes a populist message that seeks to tap into the economic anxiety he says many working-class families feel.

Conservative stances on social issues are at the center of his campaign, but he often tempers them with a declaration of the need to end the divisiveness plaguing the country.

He is one of few Republican candidates to speak out on environmental issues. He is an ardent proponent of the "fair tax," which would scrap the national income tax for a national sales tax. He talks tough on securing the borders and refusing amnesty to illegal immigrants, but he championed a bill in Arkansas that would have made illegal immigrants eligible for in-state tuition and scholarships.

In short, he is difficult to categorize politically, even as he has sought to play up his conservative credentials for the primaries.

As he has begun to edge up in some polls, his rivals have seized on his record, accusing him of being soft on illegal immigration, which he denies. The fiscal group Club for Growth has attacked his fiscal conservative credentials for months and recently started a Web site, taxhikemike.org.

For his part, Mr. Huckabee has thrown darts at his Republican rivals in a folksy manner, fueling speculation that he is really running for the vice presidency.

But some Republican critics in his home state say there is more below his affable exterior.

"He, historically, has acted very thin-skinned," said Joe Yates, one of Mr. Huckabee's top advisers in the governor's office who does not support his candidacy. "When somebody criticized him, he reacted."

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