GOP hopefuls reach out to New Hampshire voters

HUDSON, N.H. - Ejected brass shell casings, glittering as the light caught them, flew as former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee emptied a Sig Sauer P238 pistol at a human silhouette target at the Granite State Indoor Range & Gun Shop.

Saturday was a great day to test the compact weapon for his wife, Janet, who wants something less bulky to carry, and to pay homage to the Second Amendment as a potential 2016 Republican presidential candidate in the first primary state.

At the tail-end of mud season and after the sugar maple trees had been tapped for syrup, ambitions were rising in New Hampshire last week as Huckabee and 18 other Republican candidates or potential candidates for president trooped through the state and gathered for a two-day forum hosted by the state party in Nashua.

Call it tire-kicking season. After generations in the role, New Hampshire party activists and primary voters take their screening role seriously and approach the task with vigor. They want to see candidates up close, and many ask questions as sophisticated as those posed on the Washington-based Sunday morning TV talk shows, or more so.

For Huckabee, thick walls and soundproofed windows muffled the gunfire so it sounded like a sledgehammer hitting concrete at some distance. When he was done, his shots were stitched neatly down the centerline of the target.

"The Second Amendment is not so much about hunting, and it even extends beyond basic self-protection," Huckabee, 59, said afterward. "It's the ultimate line of defense that free citizens have to protect themselves from tyranny."

Whether Huckabee, a social conservative and ordained Baptist preacher, can hit the political target in New Hampshire should he run is an open question. He finished third in the state in 2008.

And, coming between contests in Iowa and South Carolina that draw large numbers of evangelical voters, New Hampshire often has served as the last line of defense for mainstream, center-right candidates favored by the GOP establishment, such as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

The party's last two nominees - Mitt Romney in 2012 and John McCain in 2008 - carried New Hampshire after losing the Iowa caucuses to social conservatives. Huckabee won Iowa seven years ago before hitting the wall in the Granite State.

"Yes, it was a tough state for me eight years ago, but then you've got to remember that John McCain had pretty much owned the political ground of this state, having won it in 2000, and Mitt Romney was the governor of a neighboring state and had a vacation home on a lake here," Huckabee said. "Coming in third was about what I could have expected."

State House Speaker Shawn N. Jasper, a Hudson Republican, said he enjoyed talking to Huckabee with a handful of other people for breakfast at the North Side Grille here Saturday. But don't read anything into that. "I'm not endorsing," Jasper said. "I'm kicking the tires like everyone else."

Nobody has emerged as a front-runner here in the crowded GOP field, which features an array of candidates from almost every ideological gradation within the party. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has a narrow lead in the Real Clear Politics average of the state's polls, followed by Bush and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, a libertarian-leaning senator who has inherited much of the network that backed his father, former Texas Rep. Ron Paul, in his two tries for the nomination.

But experienced strategists know that a significant portion of New Hampshire primary voters decide late, so they warn that horse-race numbers have even less predictive value than they do normally.

"Is there a front-runner? No, it's wide open," said Debra Vanderbeek, who managed Huckabee's 2008 effort in the state and is advising him now. "In this state you've got to crunch the pavement and then do it again and again."

Several score of New Hampshire Republicans launched Bush's examination process inside the rustic Snow Shoe Club in Concord on Thursday night for a "Politics and Pie" event hosted by the local party. The questioning illustrated some of the hurdles he has: mistrust on some issues from the right, and wariness about electing a third president from the same family.

"With 300 million people in the country, why should only two families produce the leaders in our country?" retiree Bill Doherty asked, alluding to Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton. "It's a question I'm sure you're going to face in other places. How do you answer that?"

Bush joked that his goal was not to "break a tie" between his family and the Adams family - which has the father-son presidential duo of John Adams and John Quincy Adams.

"That really isn't my motivation, but I have to prove that," he said. "It's a serious question, and the campaign needs to be about the future, not the past." The former Florida governor said he'd do that by "showing my heart" and with his policy proposals.

He faces competition from several plausible contenders for the support of the business-oriented wing of the GOP, including Walker, Rand Paul, and Gov. Christie.

In response to a question about immigration, Bush said he would increase the number of people allowed in the country on visas for critical business needs, decrease the number of spots given to the extended families of immigrants, and provide a path to legal residency for those in the country illegally.

Polls show most Republican voters oppose that approach. "You're going to have a tough sell," said Charles Prewitt, 46, who wore a faded New England Patriots football cap and sparred with Bush from his spot near the front of the room.

"Well, that's my job," Bush said, adding he wouldn't "back down on my beliefs" but respected Prewitt's.

Afterward, Margy Welch said she was impressed with Bush and did not consider his being the son and brother of presidents a disqualifier for her.

"I have an open mind on that," said Welch, of Bow, who retired from the health-insurance industry. "But I want to listen to more candidates."

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