Second-tier hopefuls plug away

TREYNOR, Iowa — It was plain to see one recent morning why Mike Huckabee would bemoan the primacy of fame and money in presidential politics: Not a single TV crew trekked to the Pottawattamie County veterans hall where the Republican White House contender was making his pitch to a roomful of Iowans eating doughnuts and sipping coffee from plastic foam cups.

"If money and celebrity are the criteria to elect a president, then we can elect Paris Hilton," the former Arkansas governor wisecracked as a thunderstorm drenched the region.

One-liners aside, a dearth of money and fame poses huge obstacles for Huckabee and others struggling to break into the top tier of Republicans running for president.

In early polls, the second-tier candidates trail not just Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Mitt Romney but also two famous Republicans who have not entered the race: former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and "Law & Order" actor Fred Thompson, a former U.S. senator from Tennessee.

In Iowa, reminders of their secondary status abound. Huckabee drew fewer than 100 people to a rural Iowa country club where McCain had attracted a crowd four times that size just weeks before. Another Republican contender, Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, settled for small restaurant crowds in Iowa on the same day that Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton joined a nationally televised health-care forum on ABC's "Good Morning America."

But Huckabee, Brownback and other lower-tier candidates see an opening as the Republican contest takes shape: Giuliani, McCain and Romney have each strayed from ideological purity to varying degrees, leaving many conservatives unenthused by the party's trio of early front-runners.

So, Huckabee, Brownback and several others are scrambling to fill that vacuum by casting themselves as unwavering conservatives.

"I'm over here to the right," Huckabee told the Pottawattamie County crowd after warning that same-sex marriage threatens to undermine civilization. "I'm pro-life. I'm pro-family. I'm pro-Second Amendment. I can pass the litmus test on all those wonderful things we consider to be conservative."

A couple of mornings later, Brownback struck similar notes in a give-and-take with Republican activists at the Wig and Pen tavern in Iowa City.

"We've got to stop driving God out of the public square," Brownback said, lashing the American Civil Liberties Union for court cases against nativity scenes on government land.

Advisers to Huckabee and Brownback hope such appeals will resonate with the culturally conservative voters who dominate Republican politics in Iowa and South Carolina, two of the first states to hold 2008 nominating contests.

Victories in early-voting states, the theory goes, would produce a surge of money and momentum for Huckabee, a Southern Baptist minister known for shedding 110 pounds on a diet, or Brownback, one of the religious right's strongest allies in Congress.

Rich Bond, a former Republican national chairman, sees the small-arena politics of the Iowa caucuses as particularly favorable to Huckabee or Brownback. "While at times it appears to be mission impossible, nothing's impossible," said Bond, a McCain supporter. The Iowa contest is tentatively scheduled for Jan. 14.

But at the same time, the national landscape may be bleak for lesser known candidates, thanks partly to the rapidly shifting 2008 election calendar. In a dash for relevance in choosing the party nominees, more than a dozen states are moving to advance their presidential primaries.

The new calendar could force candidates to compete early on in such large and expensive states as New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Texas, Illinois and Florida — and that could prove to be too steep a barrier even for a lower-tier candidate who posted a solid showing in the earliest contests in Iowa, New Hampshire or South Carolina.

"You can't deny this is a giant mountain," Huckabee strategist and pollster Dick Dresner said.

History also suggests long odds. The two major parties share a pattern of ultimately snubbing long shots who score early successes, notably McCain in 2000 and Democrat Gary Hart in 1984.

The showcase triumph for a dark horse was Democrat Jimmy Carter, the peanut farmer and Georgia governor whose months of toiling in Iowa led to an upset in the state's 1976 caucuses and helped propel him to the White House.

But now, some Iowans eyeing Huckabee and Brownback wonder if the burst of big-state primaries next February has ruined the prospects for a Republican to surge as Carter did in 1976, when the pace of primaries was slow enough for him to ramp up a national campaign after his Iowa breakthrough.

"If the California primary was right out of the chute, Carter never would have been president," said Mark Lundberg, chairman of Iowa's Sioux County Republican Party.

For Huckabee and Brownback, the key to Iowa is to show they hew tightly to conservative orthodoxy. Frequent visits, they hope, could lead to a strong showing in an Ames straw poll in August, drawing attention and money.

If "we run on our principles, we will win," Brownback told the Wig and Pen tavern crowd.

A former Kansas agriculture secretary, Brownback, 50, won a Senate seat in 1996. He grew up on a family farm. Although raised a Methodist, he has converted to Catholicism. He opposes stem-cell research and considers homosexual conduct immoral. He favors banning all abortions, except when a mother's life is endangered.

Borrowing language that President Bush used to appeal to moderates in 2000, Brownback describes himself as a "compassionate conservative" who would fight global poverty and genocide in the Sudan.

But like Huckabee, Brownback has one pointed source of tension with conservatives: Both candidates favor steps to legalize undocumented immigrants.

Huckabee faces further strain with conservatives because of his mixed record on taxes in Arkansas.

Born in Hope, Ark., President Clinton's hometown, Huckabee was a preacher and broadcaster who became governor in 1996. The author of several books, Huckabee stresses arts education and health care to broaden his appeal.

"I'm more a 'thou shalt' than a 'thou shalt not' kind of believer," Huckabee said before an Italian restaurant lunch with Republicans in Sioux City.

"I'm not a candidate who goes to the evangelicals," Huckabee said. "I come from them."