Jon Huntsman steps up attacks on Mitt Romney

Huntsman, the former Utah governor and ambassador to China, has staked his presidential ambitions on a strong showing here in Tuesday’s first-in-the-nation primary. He has held more than 160 events in the state and is capping off his campaign on Monday with a six-stop “diner tour” and an evening town hall in Exeter.


But while Huntsman’s moderate profile would seem to be a perfect fit for New Hampshire, he faces a popular frontrunner with a home turf advantage.


“His roots are here,” Jeff Camara, a 57-year-old high school custodian from Swansea, Mass., said of Mitt Romney.


Camara was one of maybe 100 people who swarmed the former Massachusetts governor early Saturday morning after a town hall in the nearby town of Derry. He was also among the dozen or so supporters who reached through the crowd to thrust a baseball in Romney’s direction, in the hope that the GOP frontrunner might sign it.


Asked to explain Romney’s advantage in New Hampshire, Camara employed a baseball analogy.


“It’s the next state over from Mass, so that helps, being in your own back yard,” he said. “It’s like playing ball: If you’re back at your home park, it’s a better turnout. So he has a better turnout here.”


More than a dozen interviews with attendees at Romney’s Saturday event yielded the same answer: Romney is a favorite son here, a candidate that Granite Staters can call their own.


The second slap, about how Romney enjoys firing people, was in response to a comment that Romney made earlier in the day that has been seized upon by his rivals on both sides of the aisle.


“I want individuals to have their own insurance. That means the insurance company will have an incentive to keep you healthy,” Romney said while campaigning in Nashua. “It also means that if you don’t like what they do, you can fire them. I like being able to fire people who provide services to me. You know if someone doesn’t give me the good service I need, I want to say, you know, I’m going to go get someone else to provide that service to me.”


Huntsman said this shows how Romney is removed from the perils facing Americans. “It may be that he’s slightly out of touch with the economic reality playing out in America right now and that’s a dangerous place for somebody to be,” Huntsman said.


Huntsman, the former governor of Utah, has pegged his presidential bid on New Hampshire. Romney maintains a massive lead in polling, though Huntsman has been showing a small burst of momentum in recent days. Although his chances of taking the top spot are virtually non-existent, he said a strong showing would give him a bounce going into South Carolina and Florida.


“Our strategy moving forward is getting a head of steam out of New Hampshire. We have got to prove the point of electability here. This is why the New Hampshire primary is so critically important. Having established that and I think we’re going to find that tomorrow night, we can then move on to South Carolina,” he said. “But you’ve got to prove a point that you can move a market first and foremost, and that’s what we’re in the process of doing. I’m the underdog.


"We’re working aggressively all the way to the finish line. It’s about getting out the vote, it’s about getting people to the polls and I’m not going to rest till we cross the finish line.