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Candidates arrive in N.H.; Hillary vows changes

Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. greet a customer at the Gala Cafe restaurant in Manchester, N.H. (Getty Images / January 4, 2008)

BY CRAIG GORDON | craig.gordon@newsday.com

4:47 PM EST, January 4, 2008

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MANCHESTER, N.H. - A day after Iowa rocked the political world, newly crowned winners Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee arrived in the Granite State Friday, looking to ride the momentum of their come-from-behind wins into the polls here just four days from now.

Meanwhile, chagrined former frontrunner Hillary Rodham Clinton promised to retool her campaign for New Hampshire after a stunning third-place finish in Iowa pledging to take as many questions as possible in a bid to connect with New Hampshire voters in a way that she sometimes failed to do with Iowans.

After a red-eye charter flight, Clinton told supporters to cut through all the "static in the air" to learn what they could about her candidacy, Obama and John Edwards, who claimed a narrow second-place finish in Iowa.

"I want to know from all of you ... what do you want to know about us? Who will be the best president based not on a leap of faith but on the kind of changes we've already produced?" said Clinton, who saw her hopes of becoming the nation's first female president dealt a serious setback by Obama's win.

Obama, who also flew overnight, was greeted here in the wee hours of a frigid morning by a raucous crowd. He promised to bring his message of changing the ways of Washington here, where the last pre-Iowa polls still showed him narrowly trailing Clinton.

"New Hampshire, if you give me the same chance that Iowa gave me last night, I truly believe I will be president of the United States of America," said Obama, who would become the nation's first African-American president.

On the Republican side, Huckabee planned another of his unconventional political stops in nearby Henniker, where he was expected to be joined by movie actor Chuck Norris and to jam with a local band. But Huckabee's mainly hoping for a respectable finish here in a race that will be dominated by a wounded Mitt Romney and newly resurgent John McCain, who cruised to a massive victory here in 2000.

Rudy Giuliani, who brings his sixth-place finish here later today for a pair of town hall meetings, insisted last night that he was standing by his big-state strategy, no matter how difficult it looked this morning.

At the same time, New Hampshire-ites, ever mindful of their powerful place on the political calendar, awoke today to find the old political field upended by two upstart candidates. Pollsters and analysts believe Obama will find friendly ground for his message of change here, where polls show he is better liked and better trusted than the former First Lady.

But Huckabee, a one-time Southern Baptist preacher who has put his religion front-and-center in his campaign, will have a tougher go of it among stoic New England Republicans who mainly want politicians to cut their taxes and stay out of their churches.

"It will be a different race here," said former Massachusetts Gov. Romney. "It was a wonderful strategy that he pursued effectively," he said. "I don't think that's the strategy that's going to work in every state."

Romney was already training his sights on McCain, who has concentrated his campaign efforts in New Hampshire and is the Republican most likely to benefit from Romney's second-place finish in Iowa. "There's no way Senator McCain can come to New Hampshire and say he can be the candidate to change Washington," Romney said.

An unfazed McCain said Romney's attacks on him would boomerang, just as his attacks on Huckabee did in Iowa. "It didn't work in Iowa, I don't think it will work in New Hampshire," McCain said.

Seeking to capitalize on his momentum out of Iowa, meanwhile, Huckabee appeared on morning talk shows, portraying his campaign as about issues broader than just the concerns of evangelical Christians and pitching his sales-tax plan to famously anti-tax New Hampshire residents.

"What we're seeing is that this campaign is not just about people who have religious fervor," he said. "It's about people who love America, but want it to be better and believe that change is necessary, and it's not going to happen from within Washington."