Mike Huckabee doesn't have a lot of money, for a presidential candidate. By the most recent accounts, he's raised just a fraction of the cash his competitors have.

In 2008, with the primary voting calendar significantly scrunched, political observers said it may be hard for the former Arkansas governor to parlay success in Iowa into the kind of fundraising, organization and infrastructure needed to do well in the New Hampshire primary and, ultimately, to win the Republican nomination.

"How do you go from being a single entrepreneur to (being) a Fortune 500 company in the matter of a week?" said David Carney, a New Hampshire Republican strategist. "No one's ever done it."

But, Carney added, that doesn't mean it can't be done. Carney and others said Huckabee could get a boost from free media attention, such as interviews with Matt Lauer and spots on the Tonight Show. Fergus Cullen, chairman of the state GOP, said the five days between last night's Iowa caucuses and Tuesday's primary are "about riding the media wave," not meeting voters. Observers also pointed out that a fat bank account doesn't necessarily guarantee a win. The proof? Steve Forbes, they said.

Still, money helps. In the last fundraising quarter, which ended in September, Huckabee raised a little over $1 million. By contrast, Mitt Romney raised $18.4 million, Rudy Giuliani raised $11.6 million and John McCain raised $5.7 million, according to figures from the Federal Election Commission.

That means Huckabee's operation in New Hampshire, and elsewhere, is notably smaller than his rivals', which makes spreading his message more difficult. Huckabee has one campaign office in New Hampshire, whereas Romney and McCain each have two, and Giuliani has three. Huckabee also only has five and a half paid campaign staffers, roughly one-sixth of McCain's payroll.

Registered Republicans such as Fran Wendleboe, a six-term state representative, said they haven't received a single Huckabee flier in the mail, as opposed to the stacks of literature they get from McCain and Romney. And Huckabee's presence on the airwaves has been smaller, too. Dante Scala, an associate political science professor at the University of New Hampshire who tracks political ads, said while Romney spent $150,000 on primary-week ads on statewide WMUR-TV, Huckabee spent $65,000.

Polls over the last week have consistently shown Huckabee in fourth place in New Hampshire.

Huckabee often says his campaign is about people, not money. As his Iowa poll numbers soared in the weeks leading up to the caucuses, Huckabee repeatedly pointed out that he was doing well despite "being outspent 20-to-1."

That isn't something to shrug at, observers said. Dayton Duncan, a longtime New Hampshire Democratic activist, put it simply: Huckabee has "that something that helped him springboard from almost nowhere to a contender . . . (in) the top tier among Republicans."

But Cullen warned that "that something" might not be enough to sustain Huckabee in New Hampshire, which is scheduled to hold its primary earlier than ever before. Cullen said Huckabee should take a lesson from McCain's 2000 campaign, when the cash-strapped Arizona senator won the New Hampshire primary but then was unable to capture the Republican nomination.

"If McCain did not have enough time after (the) New Hampshire (primary) last time to leverage his success here into organization and support in states voting two weeks away," Cullen said, "will Huckabee be able to leverage success in Iowa into success in New Hampshire five days later?"

Duncan said no. Doing well in Iowa will likely help Huckabee raise more money, he said, but not in time for the New Hampshire primary. "Even if . . . (Huckabee) brought in a couple million dollars tomorrow, he'd still have a little trouble finding a way to spend that over the weekend," Duncan said.

However, Duncan and others argued that Huckabee probably never expected to do as well in New Hampshire as in other early states with more socially conservative voters, such as South Carolina. Still, they said they worry about Huckabee's chances Feb. 5, when as many as 24 states are scheduled to hold primary elections. They questioned whether he could build in less than a month the type of organization and infrastructure that Romney and Giuliani have spent millions building over the past year and that McCain has cultivated over the past decade.

Having a "massive operation is overwhelming for what's been a low-key, stripped-to-the-bare-bones campaign," said Carney, who added that Huckabee's strategy has worked pretty well so far. "But now, they have a lot of growing to do to keep up. . . . I don't know if he's going to be able to do it or not."

Single page