US Election:A five-day blitz heralds the crucial next phase of the race to the White House, writes Alec MacGillisin Concord, New Hampshire.
As the presidential race shifts to New Hampshire, the Democratic candidates are continuing the intensive organisational battle that defined their race in Iowa. But the Republican candidates find themselves confronted with what amounts to an entirely different race, with a different slate of top contenders, a new set of issues and only five days to sort it all out.
The Iowa contest had become, in effect, a two-person race between former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee. The race was dominated by immigration and the spectacle of a Baptist minister taking on a Mormon in a state with a sizeable population of evangelical Christians.
New Hampshire, however, presents a new two-man showdown, this one between Romney and Senator John McCain of Arizona who has focused most of his efforts in the state where he upset George W Bush in 2000.
Former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani is in the mix as well, but has scaled back his efforts in recent months to focus on Florida and other large states whose primaries come later.
According to a New Hampshire Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll released yesterday, though conducted before Iowa's caucuses, Hillary Clinton leads Barack Obama by 32 per cent to 26 per cent among likely voters in the state's Democratic primary. Former senator John Edwards was at 20 per cent.
"There will be an Iowa bounce in New Hampshire for Obama," pollster John Zogby said.
"Clearly the burden here is going to be on Clinton to maintain the validity of her candidacy."
Among Republicans in New Hampshire, McCain holds an early four-point edge on Mitt Romney with 34 per cent to 30 per cent. Huckabee was at 10 per cent in New Hampshire, which does not have as many of the evangelical voters who helped propel him to his Iowa win.
The focus will be on Romney and McCain, with the debate shifting to Romney's attacks on McCain over his past stances on immigration and taxes, and McCain countering by questioning Romney's consistency on a variety of issues and lack of foreign policy experience.
Harsh ads laying out those cases are crowding the local airwaves.
The McCain campaign relishes its position here. After going all out and ceding defeat in Iowa, McCain has been able to invest more time here than Romney has, and is seeing much less competition from Giuliani for the national security-minded voters that both are pursuing.
McCain's co-chairman here, former state party chairman Steve Duprey, believes that the barrage of ads criticising McCain may be muddling voters' image of Romney by contrasting with Romney's upbeat demeanour on the trail.
Duprey also predicted that Romney, who has been campaigning hard in both Iowa and New Hampshire, faces the challenge of making his pitches to the two constituencies seem consistent. Romney generally has emphasised his social conservative planks in Iowa while playing up his managerial experience in New Hampshire.
Senator Judd Gregg, a top Romney supporter here, argues that a candidate like McCain, who did not compete heavily in Iowa, will have just five days to seize control of the race here. Some of that period is reserved for a debate and party events.
"There's not a whole lot of opportunity for candidates to change the dynamic."
The biggest question is which candidate will win over the state's independent voters, who typically make up about a quarter of the primary vote. McCain is pursuing them as he did in 2000, but polls have consistently shown that a majority of them are planning to vote in the Democratic primary this year, which likely would help Obama.
The Democratic race here is shaping up as a battle of organisations similar to the one waged in Iowa. John Edwards, who in 2004 saw his campaign fade here, this time has invested enough resources to sustain any momentum gained in Iowa. He has 80 organisers in the state.
Obama has not spent nearly as much time in New Hampshire as he has in Iowa, but his campaign has not stinted on its organisation, with more than a dozen field offices, over 100 paid staff, and a captain for every town and city ward.
Obama has attempted innovative efforts to spread interest in a candidate that few in New Hampshire knew much about before he arrived in the state a year ago. The campaign organised book clubs for residents to discuss Obama's 1995 memoir and set up a statewide three-on-three basketball tournament in which residents could participate if they agreed to volunteer.
The campaign also set up small groups of supporters organised not only by geography but by profession or interest - lawyers, doctors, environmentalists - and sent relevant surrogates to address them.
But Obama will be up against a rock-solid organisation for Clinton that benefits from her widespread support across much of the state's Democratic leadership, as well as the ties that the Clintons formed here in the 1990s. The campaign says it has 350,000 homes, with 100,000 more targeted this weekend.
- (LA Times/Washington Post service)