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Huckabee eyes surprise in Michigan Sunday, Jan 13, 2008 By Aaron Sadler Stephens Washington Bureau WASHINGTON - Mike Huckabee is poised to make a strong play for Republican delegates from Michigan on Tuesday without leaving much of a footprint in the state. The only television advertisement for his presidential campaign started airing just last week. He has no office there. His first paid campaign employee arrived in Michigan just six days ago. Despite that, the Arkansan's popularity among GOP voters rivals that of Michigan native Mitt Romney and Sen. John McCain, who won the state's presidential primary in 2000, according to polls. "The guy has done phenomenally well in Michigan by doing nothing," said Bill Ballenger, editor of the highly regarded Inside Michigan Politics newsletter. Polling conducted by Ballenger a month ago put Huckabee in a statistical tie with Romney for Michigan's 30 GOP delegates. More recently, a poll released Thursday by Strategic Vision LLC, showed Huckabee with 18 percent support among Republican voters, trailing McCain with 29 percent and Romney at 20 percent. A strong showing would propel Huckabee into South Carolina, where Republicans will hold their primary next Saturday and where the Arkansan is battling McCain. "Logically, we shouldn't be in the mix, but we are," Huckabee said Friday about Michigan. "Anything we do that's respectable shows that our message is getting across here." Huckabee appeals to Michigan's small but strong evangelical contingent and those voters drawn to his economic populism, Ballenger and other analysts said. In his lone television advertisement, Huckabee tries to attract the disgruntled working class in a state slammed with the loss of thousands of manufacturing jobs. "He's got that appeal to people who are beleaguered by Michigan's battered economy and he identifies, as he likes to quip, as the fellow co-worker who's gotten laid off, not the one that fired them," Ballenger said. Ballenger wondered, though, whether Huckabee's economic message resonates within the GOP. His economic talk has been labeled as "class warfare" by some establishment Republicans, who at the same time have raised questions about Huckabee's views on taxes and trade. Huckabee advocates elimination of the current income tax code. He would replace it with a "fair tax" - a sales tax of at least 23 percent on all goods. In a speech at the Detroit Economic Club on Friday, Huckabee touted the tax overhaul as an economic fix. He said better worker training and less government regulation would revitalize Michigan's economy. He mentioned how Morrilton lost 1,200 manufacturing jobs in a week while he was governor. With workforce training for the unemployed, those workers later took better jobs with better pay. "I think there's always a chance to get the jobs back, it's a matter of making sure that the climate in which the companies operate help them to be profitable," he said. Huckabee gained the endorsement of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers and the International painters' union. Labor most often votes Democratic, but the endorsements may aid Huckabee in heavily unionized Michigan. Huckabee maintains he is the only Republican candidate to talk about the economic worries of most Americans. The housing crisis and high prices of fuel, health care and education have working-class people in a bind, he said. "You have many millions of Americans who aren't making as much real money as they were a year ago, even though they're working harder," he said. "That's where the anxiety is, and if we don't acknowledge it, people will think we're just disconnected from reality." Also in Michigan, Huckabee is getting help from an unlikely source: A state representative from Detroit who started "Democrats for Huckabee." LaMar Lemmons organized a crossover voting effort for McCain in 2000 and is doing the same for Huckabee this year. A supporter of Sen. Barack Obama's bid for the Democratic nomination, Lemmons told the Detroit Free Press he started the Huckabee effort because "the Republican establishment supports Romney and McCain." Democrats may be more apt to vote Republican in Tuesday's open primary since no Democratic candidates are campaigning in Michigan. The Democratic National Committee in December stripped Michigan of its 156 nominating delegates for breaking party rules and holding its primary Tuesday. Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina are the only states allowed by Democrats to hold nominating contests before Feb. 5. In a similar action, national Republicans took away half of Michigan's delegates this year. Huckabee said he has never met Lemmons, but welcomed his help. "If somebody is going to go vote for me, I'm less concerned about why," Huckabee said. "I'd be happy to have their support." Huckabee held campaign rallies this weekend in western Michigan, home of most of the state's evangelicals. They account for about 30 percent of the Republican electorate. The Southern Baptist minister may have a more difficult time swaying them than he did Iowa evangelicals, who pushed him to his Jan. 3 caucus win. James Penning, a political scientist at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich., said voters may be turned off by the strict fundamentalism of Huckabee's Baptist faith. On the other hand, they are troubled by Romney's Mormonism. "Huckabee seems to be more of a fundamentalist than a lot of the evangelicals in Michigan are accustomed to," said Penning, whose school is affiliated with the Christian Reformed Church. "But there are many that like and respect Huckabee, see him as a fellow believer and will vote on that basis." |
