Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

Huckabee comes out of the blue
By Ashton Shurson
The Daily Iowan (U. Iowa)
01/04/2008

(U-WIRE) IOWA CITY, Iowa — Although Mike Huckabee started out the road to the caucus without fame or a household name, the former-Arkansas governor pulled ahead to win Republican Iowa on Thursday night.

Huckabee won with approximately 34 percent of the votes, beating longtime Iowa front-runner Mitt Romney, who garnered around 25 percent.

After confusion on who placed third and fourth, former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson finished third while former Arizona Sen. John McCain followed closely behind in fourth place. Both hovered around 13 percent as of press time.

Before the final numbers were in, Huckabee's campaign in Des Moines was shouting "Huckaboom!" and "Who's it gonna be? Huckabee!" Soon afterwards, "We like Mike, we like Mike, we like Mike!" turned into a constant chant, while red, white, and blue pompoms were shaking above their heads and alcoholic beverages were passed around.

"You know, I wasn't sure I'd ever be able to love a state as much as I love my home state of Arkansas, but tonight I love Iowa a whole lot," Huckabee said.

After winning the caucuses, he said, the election is not about him but about "we" and the country.

"One is not elected to be part of the ruling class; he's elected to be part of the serving class," he said. "Because 'We the people' are the ruling class of America."

Ed Rollins, Huckabee's national campaign chairman, said voters should be congratulated because they primarily ignored the millions of dollars spent on negative ads and the consultants trying to distort Huckabee's record.

"This was a campaign that was supposed to be that if you weren't rich or you weren't famous you couldn't win," Rollins said.

Huckabee's win is a shocker to some because the Romney outspent the 51-year-old significantly in Iowa. Romney's campaign has spent several million dollars in Iowa over the past year. Time reported that Romney spent $200 per supporter in Iowa while Huckabee spent $8.90 per supporter.

Romney spoke for only a few minutes at his packed and upbeat party in West Des Moines - with his wife and five sons by his side - saying he was going to be after Iowa again in November.

"The top people in this race [Obama, Huckabee, and him] show America wants a change outside of Washington," Romney said. "We need new faces in Washington. I intend to be one of them."

Rollins echoed this at Huckabee's party, saying, "We want change; we want hope."

In New Hampshire, McCain congratulated Huckabee but said he was very confident in a win in the New England state, as well as in Michigan and South Carolina.

"I thank each and every Iowan who braved the cold to caucus tonight, as well as my tremendous Iowa staff and leadership for all of their hard work over the past year," McCain said. "They worked wonders with far fewer resources than their competitors."

Thompson spoke briefly at 11 p.m. and was upbeat about the results and his future on the campaign trail.

"We'll have to look at the final numbers, and we'll have to look at our money situation and all of that, but it looks like someone's going to need to carry a consistent conservative, and it looks like it ought to be me," Thompson said.

The results line closely with the latest Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll, conducted between Dec. 30 and Jan. 2, which showed that Huckabee lead Romney by six points at 31 percent. Thompson and McCain were around 10 percent, while Giuliani collected only 5 percent in the poll.

But Huckabee's lead only came recently. As of May 2007, Romney was leading with 30 percent, while Huckabee was only at 4 percent. Giuliani was then at second with 17 percent, according to the Iowa Poll. The same poll showed that when November 2007 rolled around, Huckabee had pulled ahead to 29 percent, while Romney trailed at 24 percent.

Tim Hagle, a UI associate professor of political science, doesn't believe Huckabee's win was totally unexpected and the election still has five viable GOP candidates.

"The fact that Huckabee beat Romney isn't as much of the surprise as the margin," he said. "The races are still open. We're going to see a lot of activity until we get to [Feb. 5]."

The caucuses had record voter turnout on the Republican side. Projections show roughly 114,000 Republicans in 2008 compared with the 87,666 GOP caucus-goers in 2000, according to the Associated Press.

Huckabee, a former Baptist preacher, has also been a strong advocate of his faith and said there is no separation between his beliefs and his professional and personal life, according to his website. Huckabee won 46 percent of evangelical Christian voters.

Next for the Republicans is the Wyoming nomination event on Jan. 5 and the New Hampshire primary on Jan. 8.

As of a Jan. 2 CNN/WMUR poll, McCain was tied with Romney for first place with 29 percent in New Hampshire. Giuliani scored 12 percent, but Iowa's winner Huckabee only garnered 10 percent.

DI reporters Shawn Gude, Christopher Patton, Kelli Shaffner, and Brian Stewart contributed to this report.

E-mail DI reporter Ashton Shurson at: ashton-shurson@uiowa.edu

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