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GOP Battle Pushes On To Michigan, South Carolina

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By MICHAEL LUO, The New York Times

Published: January 9, 2008

MANCHESTER, N.H. - After Sen. John McCain's victory here Tuesday, the Republican field is more scrambled than ever, with the battleground now shifting to a series of states where each of the leading candidates thinks he holds certain advantages.

The next showdown will be on Jan. 15 in Michigan, a vast state struggling with a recession and the loss of manufacturing jobs. It is where Mitt Romney was born and reared and where many still fondly remember his late father, George, a three-term governor. Romney is to fly there this afternoon, with his aides saying the state has become his fire wall.

But McCain, who will be taking a charter flight to Michigan today as well, is looking to potentially finish off Romney there. In 2000, McCain defeated George W. Bush in Michigan, largely on the strength of support from independents and Democrats who switched over to vote for him.

A wild card is Mike Huckabee, who has surged to the front of the pack in some national polls. He hopes for a surprise performance in Michigan but is looking more toward the Jan. 19 primary in South Carolina, a state with large numbers of evangelical Christians who form a natural base for this former Baptist pastor.

Waiting in the wings is Rudolph Giuliani, who is at this point focused almost exclusively on a win in Florida's primary Jan. 29 to slingshot him to the nationwide contests on Feb. 5.

"It is going to be a brawl," said Katon Dawson, chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party.

Huckabee, a former governor of Arkansas, was heading to South Carolina overnight; Romney and McCain planned to fly there today after their stops in Michigan.

All of the Republican candidates are to gather in South Carolina on Thursday for a debate in Myrtle Beach.

McCain, of Arizona, held the advantage early on in South Carolina, collecting a long list of endorsements from Republican leaders and building a strong ground organization, only to have to lay off many on his staff members over the summer when his campaign stalled. Many of them stayed on as volunteers, and the campaign says it has been able to retool.

Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, has been broadcasting television commercials in South Carolina consistently over the last few months and has the most impressive field operation there, but many evangelicals continue to regard his Mormon faith with profound suspicion.

Huckabee has a commanding lead in polls of South Carolina Republicans, although McCain's advisers point to the compressed calendar and the prospect of a boost from their New Hampshire victory.

Former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee and Giuliani, a former mayor of New York, made pushes in the state, only to falter in recent months.

Many members of the Huckabee staff left New Hampshire for South Carolina, where his campaign is scrambling to build up his organization. In Michigan, polls indicate that three or four people are battling for the race, with Huckabee, McCain, Romney and, to a lesser extent, Giuliani.

"They all have followings through the state," said Steve Mitchell, a Republican pollster.

Nevertheless, the conventional wisdom is that the state is Romney's to lose.

Even before it was clear that Michigan was going to be one of the early voting states, Romney's advisers picked the state to be one of five where they would focus on building ground organizations.

Romney has the biggest paid organization there with 11 people and began broadcasting television commercials in the state in mid-December, two weeks earlier than his advisers originally had planned because of his increasingly tenuous prospects in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Romney started a full-fledged direct-mail program about six weeks ago, when absentee voters could begin casting their ballots, including some mailings that attacked his opponents' positions on fiscal issues and immigration.

Because of its size, Michigan is not a state conducive to retail politics.

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