By Reid Wilson
Arizona Capitol Times correspondent
NASHUA, New Hampshire — Eight years ago, insurgent candidate John McCain won a huge boost when Granite State voters gave him a wide victory over then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush.
This week, just months after pundits everywhere declared his campaign all but dead in the water, McCain stood at the same podium in the same hotel ballroom in Nashua to again declare victory. The win, many have speculated, could put McCain on a path to steal the GOP nomination from other, better-funded candidates.
While McCain likely spent less than half of what former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney doled out, the victory was surprisingly convincing. Surrounded by top advisers, family and a few close friends, McCain did not have to wait long to celebrate. Major news organizations called the race for the Arizonan just 12 minutes after the last polls closed, based largely on exit polls showing him winning across the board.
“We didn't feel confident until the end,” one senior adviser told the Arizona Capitol Times. Still, when a victory speech was written around 4 p.m., five hours before it was eventually delivered, the adviser said a concession speech was not written.
Once the results rolled in, as Cindy McCain wept with joy and campaign manager Rick Davis, communications strategist Steve Schmidt, ad man Mark McKinnon and senior advisers Mark Salter and Charlie Black celebrated, McCain took congratulatory phone calls from three rivals, including Romney, who finished second, Iowa winner and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. An hour later, he addressed a jubilant crowd downstairs, telling them to savor the win.
With Romney having invested so much in both Iowa and New Hampshire, and having come in second in both contests, many believe his campaign is on life support. On Jan. 9, his campaign canceled advertising budgets in South Carolina and Florida to focus solely on Michigan, where he will make his final stand. Because of the jumbled primary calendar, candidates are picking and choosing their battles, and Romney does not have to face the full field.
But he needs to face, and beat, the candidate with the most momentum, a candidate who has won Michigan before: McCain. Two new polls out this week show divergent results, with Romney leading by three percentage points, according to a Democratic polling firm called the Rossman Group, or McCain leading by nine, in a poll from Atlanta-based Strategic Vision, which has done work for Republicans in the past but is not working for a candidate this cycle. No polls have been conducted since McCain won in New Hampshire.
McCain, who saw his presidential campaign come to a screeching halt in South Carolina eight years ago, hopes that a Michigan win will help boost him past Huckabee in South Carolina and Giuliani in Florida. If McCain wins those two states leading into the Feb. 5 mega-Tuesday, when two-dozen states, including Arizona, hold their contests, many believe his momentum will be enough to carry him to the nomination.
The only thing that stands in McCain’s way is the potential for the same mischief he experienced in 2000. While Romney delivered some attacks in debates and in television ads in Iowa and New Hampshire, McCain can almost certainly expect to absorb more body blows as the contest continues. Several strategists said this time the McCain campaign is ready to hit back more aggressively than they did in 2000. This week the campaign formed what it calls a “Truth Squad” to tackle any rumors or negative attacks that emerge.
Election night, though, was a time to celebrate an improbable come-back victory, one even long-time supporters did not expect. “It's a great comeback,” said former Congressman Chuck Douglas, McCain’s New Hampshire vice chairman. “This summer, when everyone wrote him off and said he'd be out [of the race] by October, none of us jumped ship.”
McCain held more than 100 town hall meetings in the state, often in small towns though with increasingly large crowds as the primary approached. He won in large part because he had “no script, no rigged deal, and it paid off,” Douglas said. “Not that we weren't worried. I'm not going to claim we didn't have some sleepless nights.”
As McCain partisans packed the ballroom to hear their candidate give a second New Hampshire victory speech, chants erupted from around the hall. “Mac is back,” they screamed, and the candidate, appropriately, it seems, entered to the strains of “Eye of the Tiger,” theme song from the “Rocky” movies about the underdog boxer. “I'm past the age where I can claim the noun kid, no matter what adjective preceeds it,” McCain joked. “But tonight, we sure showed them what a comeback is.”
“New Hampshire, I reasoned with you. I listened to you. I answered you. Sometimes I argued with you. But I always told you the truth as best I can see the truth. You did me the great honor of listening,” McCain said.
The campaign is far from over, and while McCain enters Michigan and other later primary states with momentum, he has a long way to go. His New Hampshire totals earned him seven delegates to the Republican National Convention, to go with the three he won in Iowa. Those 10 delegates put McCain in third place, behind Romney’s 30 and Huckabee’s 21. All three have a long way to go until any reaches the 1,191 needed to clinch the GOP nomination.