MOM VS. WINFREY: Seeking to steady her campaign in Iowa, Sen. Hillary Clinton will bring a wave of prominent women to blanket the state and target female voters in the final weeks before its first-in-the-nation caucuses. As Oprah Winfrey begins a swing through early primary states to promote Sen. Barack Obama, Clinton is countering with a move she has long resisted: having her mother join her on the campaign trail. Dorothy Rodham’s appearances at a series of rallies around the state this weekend are just the start of the effort to move women, a group the campaign has long viewed as its core constituency, into Clinton’s column. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and former secretary of state Madeleine Albright will go to Iowa and even more surrogates will be arriving in the next two weeks.
HUCKABEE’S SURGE: Mike Huckabee has vaulted into second place in the Republican presidential race, riding a burst of support from evangelicals, Southerners and conservatives, a nationwide poll showed Friday. The surge by the former Arkansas governor has come largely at the expense of Fred Thompson, according to the national survey by The Associated Press and Ipsos. Thompson has dropped after failing to galvanize the party’s right-wing core as much as some had expected. Rudolph Giuliani remains the front-runner, yet while his support has long been steady, it shows signs of fraying. Huckabee’s growing strength in the South has come as the former New York mayor’s support there has dropped, the poll found. The poll showed Giuliani at 26 percent among Republican and GOP-leaning voters, about where he has been since spring. Huckabee has 18 percent, up from 10 percent in an AP-Ipsos survey a month ago and 3 percent in July. Arizona Sen. John McCain has 13 percent, Mitt Romney 12 percent and Thompson 11 percent.
SENATOR WITH A PLAN: Sen. John McCain has an automatic response to the question of what he’d do if he lost the GOP presidential nomination contest. “If not, back to the Senate,” he said Friday. He’d have two more years left in his fourth term. What about running for a fifth term in 2010? “I haven’t even thought about it much but right now, I can see no reason not to run again,” he said, adding that an ultimate decision wouldn’t be made until late 2009 — if, of course, his second presidential run is thwarted. McCain, 71, said he’d quit working before his health declines, adding: “I want to retire before I reach a point where I’m not at my peak abilities.” McCain made the comments as he chatted with reporters on his campaign bus on a six-day New Hampshire bus tour.
A JAB AT CLINTON: Democrat John Edwards on Friday criticized rival Hillary Clinton, saying candidates who seek the White House should take strong, clear stands on difficult issues like Social Security. Clinton has said she doesn’t want to put forward a specific plan now to shore up Social Security, but would wait for recommendations from a bipartisan commission because any plan will need the support of Democrats and Republicans to be enacted.
HISPANIC SHIFT SEEN: Hispanics are returning to the Democratic Party after several years of drifting toward the Republicans, with many saying Bush administration policies have been harmful to their community, a poll last week showed. By 57 percent to 23 percent, more Hispanic registered voters say they favor Democrats than Republicans, according to a survey by the non-partisan Pew Hispanic Center. That 34 percentage point Democratic edge has grown since July 2006, when a Pew poll measured a 21 point difference. Then, 49 percent of registered Hispanic voters said they favored Democrats and 28 percent chose Republicans. Among Hispanics who are registered Democrats, 59 percent said they want Hillary Clinton to be their party’s presidential candidate, followed by 15 percent who prefer Barack Obama. Among Hispanic Republicans, Rudolph Giuliani leads Fred Thompson, 35 percent to 13 percent.
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