Huckabee Heads to N.H. to Win Converts

CONCORD, N.H., Jan. 4, 2008 — -- Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee was several thousand feet in the air Thursday evening when he learned he'd officially won the Iowa caucuses.

His campaign had chartered a plane to quickly fly from Des Moines to Waterloo for a quick visit to a Republican precinct. Because there was so much traffic around the precinct due to high voter turnout, the trip took longer than expected. On the flight back, Huckabee, his wife, Janet, and their team were trying to read their BlackBerries as e-mails poured in with updates.

Early precincts showed him in the lead, but Huckabee urged caution. His wife's BlackBerry service was better than his so Huckabee's was to a degree out of the loop.

"Everything was basically happening while we were in the air from Waterloo back to Des Moines so I'm the last guy in the whole of America to know that we had won the caucus," Huckabee told reporters early this morning.

At one point, as his charter flight got closer to Des Moines Airport, "the BlackBerries just started lighting up," he recalled. Networks began calling the race for him, The Associated Press called it, "and I'm thinking, ya know, we got a pretty good consensus going here."

At that point, recalled Huckabee's campaign press secretary Alice Stewart, Huckabee calmly said, smiling, "I guess we won."

He did indeed, decidedly defeating former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, 34 percent to 25 percent, propelled by little more than his message and likability, and the support of thousands of his fellow evangelicals, who comprised 60 percent of the GOP caucus goers.

"What is happening tonight here in Iowa is going to start, really, a prairie fire of new hope and zeal," the Baptist minister told cheering supporters gathered in a ballroom at the Des Moines Embassy Suites. "Tonight what we have seen is a new day in American politics. … It starts here in Iowa, but it doesn't end here. It goes all the way through the other states and ends at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave."

Huckabee's views against abortion rights and same-sex marriage resonated with the state's social conservatives, many of whom identified with Huckabee's humble roots more so than the multimillionaire Mormon.

But Huckabee's message went far beyond faith. Huckabee consistently talks about uniting the nation, and he often espouses populist views.

Those views were brought front and center as he squared off against Romney, the former CEO of a venture capital firm, who had spent more than $7 million just on TV ads in Iowa — at least a million dollars more than the roughly $5 million Huckabee has spent on his entire campaign nationally.

"People really are more important than the purse," Huckabee told the crowd Thursday evening, saying pundits had predicted "when you're outspent 15-1 it's simply impossible to overcome that mountain of money. … Well tonight we proved that American politics is in the hands of ordinary Americans like you."

Many challenges await Huckabee in New Hampshire, home of very different Republican voters who will cast their ballots in the Jan. 8 primary. With far fewer evangelicals and a more libertarian GOP electorate, most of whom favor abortion rights, the Granite State — where Romney is engaged in a tight race with Arizona Sen. John McCain — may prove rockier terrain.

"We're going to have to go convert a lot of people in New Hampshire in the next five days," Huckabee joked with reporters on the Huck-a-737 charter flight en route to Manchester, N.H. "A big tent revival out on the grounds of the Concord State Capitol. We'll get 'em all converted to the evangelical faith and then we'll win. How about that?"

More seriously, he said, though he "had great support from the evangelicals. … There were a whole lot of people out there who weren't evangelicals voting for us. And it doesn't explain numbers in Michigan and Delaware and places like that — is that an important part of our coalition? Absolutely. Is it all the support we have? Of course not."

Following the aphorism "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," McCain and Huckabee have recently been engaged in a love-fest of sorts, defending one another from Romney's attacks.

"I don't think it will change," Huckabee said on board the Huckaplane. "It's not like we don't realize we're competing for the same job, but I think we also realize e it can be done in civil manner and we're both committed to that."

Campaign manager Chip Saltsman called McCain "an American hero and there's a genuine affection there … but it's politics. It may get a little rough, but there will be a lot of respect between the two."

"The likelihood is that McCain will win" New Hampshire, Huckabee said. "He's had a long-standing organization there and that makes sense but I mean we're not looking at New Hampshire, we're looking at tonight we're savoring the moment — every now and then you get one of those special desserts in life you just want to inhale every last bit of it."

Huckabee's national campaign chairman, Ed Rollins, said the campaign was aware that it needed to grow, fast.

"We know the people we need to hire, we know the places we need to strengthen," he said. Referring to the Olympic spin of Romney, CEO of the 2002 games in Salt Lake City, Rollins said, "I'm glad that Gov. Romney is happy with a silver [medal], but my experience in politics is there are no bronzes and silvers. You win, you get to go on and govern. You lose, you go home."

ABC's Kevin Chupka contributed to this report.