Candidates hunt for votes in Iowa, New Hampshire
(Adds Giuliani doctor, paragraphs 7-9)
By John Whitesides, Political Correspondent
DES MOINES, Iowa, Dec 26 (Reuters) - Shotgun in hand, rising Republican candidate Mike Huckabee bagged a pheasant on Wednesday as U.S. presidential hopefuls hunted for votes eight days before the first contest in a wide-open nomination race.
After a 36-hour Christmas break, Republican and Democratic candidates poured back on to the campaign trail, battling snow, cold temperatures and air traffic delays as they fanned out through Iowa and New Hampshire.
Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor and Baptist minister, nailed a pheasant during a hunting expedition in southern Iowa. He has rocketed to the top of polls in the Midwestern state, largely on the basis of his appeal to its sizable bloc of religious conservative voters.
"Hopefully we'll just shoot pheasants, not each other," Huckabee told reporters during the outing.
In New Hampshire, Republican Mitt Romney criticized rival John McCain's stances on immigration and taxes. Romney, who would be the first Mormon president, has seen his poll lead in New Hampshire erode under pressure from McCain, an Arizona senator.
Most contenders focused Wednesday's back-to-work efforts on Iowa, which on Jan. 3 begins state-by-state battles to choose one candidate from each party for the presidential election on Nov. 4, 2008.
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, whose longtime lead in national polls has shrunk or disappeared in recent weeks, skipped both early states and campaigned in Florida.
Giuliani's personal physician said on Wednesday he was in very good health, a week after the candidate spent a night in the hospital after complaining of a severe headache.
Giuliani, who had prostate cancer in 2000, has largely bypassed Iowa and New Hampshire in hopes of scoring big in Florida's Jan. 29 primary and in the 22 states with nomination contests on "Super Tuesday" on Feb. 5.
Hillary Clinton, striving to become the country's first female president, leads national polls among Democratic voters but is locked in a tight three-way struggle with Barack Obama and John Edwards in Iowa.
Obama, an Illinois senator hoping to be the first black president, campaigned in northern Iowa, while Clinton's return to the state was delayed by air traffic problems in New York.
The New York senator's campaign events with her husband, former President Bill Clinton, were pushed to late in the day.
'RISE UP TOGETHER'
Edwards, a former North Carolina senator who has touted a populist message of fighting special interests, courted voters in New Hampshire. The state holds its nominating contest on Jan. 8, just five days after Iowa.
During a stop in Conway, nestled in New Hampshire's picturesque White Mountains, Edwards cited polls showing he could beat the leading Republican contenders in November.
"People want someone that they know can win in the general election and I think the evidence is overwhelming that I am a very strong, the strongest, general election candidate," Edwards told reporters.
"My campaign is a call across party lines to rise up together and say, 'Enough is enough,'" he told the crowd of about 300 people.
Romney noted McCain's support earlier this year of a bill that would have given illegal immigrants a path toward legal status -- an approach that angered many party conservatives -- and criticized McCain's past opposition to President George W. Bush's tax cuts.
"I'm happy to talk about times when I've been wrong but I don't recall Senator McCain saying he was wrong to say that all illegal aliens should be able to stay here permanently or that he was wrong to vote against the Bush tax cuts," Romney said during a visit to the Pat's Peak ski slope in Henniker.
McCain, who won the New Hampshire primary during his failed 2000 presidential campaign, fired back at the former Massachusetts governor.
"I know something about tailspins, and it's pretty clear Mitt Romney is in one," he said in a statement. "It's disappointing that he would launch desperate, flailing and false attacks in an attempt to maintain relevance."
The hunting trip by Huckabee, whose conservative social agenda has helped him connect with Christian "values voters," was a brief photo opportunity before he headed to Florida.
The image of the gun-toting candidate-hunter is iconic in U.S. campaigns, partly because the gun lobby is politically powerful, particularly in more rural states.
In this case, it was also a Huckabee jab at Romney, whose claim of being a lifelong hunter was deflated when it turned out he had hunted exactly twice. (Additional reporting by Ed Stoddard, Scott Malone, Caren Bohan, Joanne Kenen and JoAnne Allen; Editing by Peter Cooney) (For more about the U.S. political campaign, visit Reuters "Tales from the Trail: 2008" online at blogs.reuters.com/trail08/)
By John Whitesides, Political Correspondent
DES MOINES, Iowa, Dec 26 (Reuters) - Shotgun in hand, rising Republican candidate Mike Huckabee bagged a pheasant on Wednesday as U.S. presidential hopefuls hunted for votes eight days before the first contest in a wide-open nomination race.
After a 36-hour Christmas break, Republican and Democratic candidates poured back on to the campaign trail, battling snow, cold temperatures and air traffic delays as they fanned out through Iowa and New Hampshire.
Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor and Baptist minister, nailed a pheasant during a hunting expedition in southern Iowa. He has rocketed to the top of polls in the Midwestern state, largely on the basis of his appeal to its sizable bloc of religious conservative voters.
"Hopefully we'll just shoot pheasants, not each other," Huckabee told reporters during the outing.
In New Hampshire, Republican Mitt Romney criticized rival John McCain's stances on immigration and taxes. Romney, who would be the first Mormon president, has seen his poll lead in New Hampshire erode under pressure from McCain, an Arizona senator.
Most contenders focused Wednesday's back-to-work efforts on Iowa, which on Jan. 3 begins state-by-state battles to choose one candidate from each party for the presidential election on Nov. 4, 2008.
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, whose longtime lead in national polls has shrunk or disappeared in recent weeks, skipped both early states and campaigned in Florida.
Giuliani's personal physician said on Wednesday he was in very good health, a week after the candidate spent a night in the hospital after complaining of a severe headache.
Giuliani, who had prostate cancer in 2000, has largely bypassed Iowa and New Hampshire in hopes of scoring big in Florida's Jan. 29 primary and in the 22 states with nomination contests on "Super Tuesday" on Feb. 5.
Hillary Clinton, striving to become the country's first female president, leads national polls among Democratic voters but is locked in a tight three-way struggle with Barack Obama and John Edwards in Iowa.
Obama, an Illinois senator hoping to be the first black president, campaigned in northern Iowa, while Clinton's return to the state was delayed by air traffic problems in New York.
The New York senator's campaign events with her husband, former President Bill Clinton, were pushed to late in the day.
'RISE UP TOGETHER'
Edwards, a former North Carolina senator who has touted a populist message of fighting special interests, courted voters in New Hampshire. The state holds its nominating contest on Jan. 8, just five days after Iowa.
During a stop in Conway, nestled in New Hampshire's picturesque White Mountains, Edwards cited polls showing he could beat the leading Republican contenders in November.
"People want someone that they know can win in the general election and I think the evidence is overwhelming that I am a very strong, the strongest, general election candidate," Edwards told reporters.
"My campaign is a call across party lines to rise up together and say, 'Enough is enough,'" he told the crowd of about 300 people.
Romney noted McCain's support earlier this year of a bill that would have given illegal immigrants a path toward legal status -- an approach that angered many party conservatives -- and criticized McCain's past opposition to President George W. Bush's tax cuts.
"I'm happy to talk about times when I've been wrong but I don't recall Senator McCain saying he was wrong to say that all illegal aliens should be able to stay here permanently or that he was wrong to vote against the Bush tax cuts," Romney said during a visit to the Pat's Peak ski slope in Henniker.
McCain, who won the New Hampshire primary during his failed 2000 presidential campaign, fired back at the former Massachusetts governor.
"I know something about tailspins, and it's pretty clear Mitt Romney is in one," he said in a statement. "It's disappointing that he would launch desperate, flailing and false attacks in an attempt to maintain relevance."
The hunting trip by Huckabee, whose conservative social agenda has helped him connect with Christian "values voters," was a brief photo opportunity before he headed to Florida.
The image of the gun-toting candidate-hunter is iconic in U.S. campaigns, partly because the gun lobby is politically powerful, particularly in more rural states.
In this case, it was also a Huckabee jab at Romney, whose claim of being a lifelong hunter was deflated when it turned out he had hunted exactly twice. (Additional reporting by Ed Stoddard, Scott Malone, Caren Bohan, Joanne Kenen and JoAnne Allen; Editing by Peter Cooney) (For more about the U.S. political campaign, visit Reuters "Tales from the Trail: 2008" online at blogs.reuters.com/trail08/)
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