With limited campaign stops wedged between two televised debates, Mike Huckabee and John McCain continued to draw large crowds yesterday as new polls show them gaining support in the state. Meanwhile, Mitt Romney kept up his attacks on McCain, Rudy Giuliani sidestepped chances to attack others and Fred Thompson stayed out of sight.

More than 400 people showed up to a Windham elementary school to see Huckabee, whose definitive victory in the Iowa caucuses has led some New Hampshire voters to give him a second look.

The former Arkansas governor has drawn his biggest crowds of the primary campaign in the past few days; his campaign moved his sole event yesterday from a small seafood restaurant to the school's gymnasium. A mix of steadfast Huckabee supporters, undecided voters and political tourists from out of state filled the lunch tables, sat cross-legged on the tile floor and lined the walls.

Patricia Monbouquette, an independent voter from New Boston, said she was leaning toward McCain or Democrat Bill Richardson before she watched the ABC/WMUR Republican debate Saturday. Now she's interested in Huckabee.

"I wouldn't be here if I hadn't seen him on television," she said. "I like his gentle manner."

Huckabee, a former Baptist minister who won support from Iowa evangelicals, has tailored his speech for the second leg of the primary race, focusing on states' rights.

"The pursuit of happiness for many Americans is being diminished by a government that's thought that it's our nanny," Huckabee said to cheers. "It's not just our Uncle Sam. Now it wants to be our mommy and our daddy. We need to tell the government, 'We'll raise our own kids, thank you.' "

When asked how his promotion of limited government squares with the social programs he implemented as governor of Arkansas, Huckabee said education programs actually save money.

"Education is a lot less expensive than incarceration," Huckabee said. "What would you rather have: a kid that makes hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and pays taxes or one that's in prison?"

Huckabee also made veiled jabs at Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who openly attacked Huckabee in Iowa and finished second in the caucuses. Huckabee, a pro-gun hunter, chastised other politicians for talking about hunting when they "haven't been." Romney said in April that he's been a hunter "pretty much all my life" before acknowledging later that he had hunted only twice.

"A lot of times, politicians running for office who are asked about the Second Amendment start talking about how they like to go hunting," Huckabee said, as the crowd started to laugh and clap. "They like to hunt without having a hunting license or a gun. That's an amazing way to go hunting."

Huckabee, who served 10½ years as governor, implored voters to choose a candidate "who didn't just get elected one time in his state, but kept getting elected." Romney served four years as governor of Massachusetts.

Big crowd for McCain

For the second day, fire marshals shut out scores of people from a McCain campaign event. Yesterday, about 1,000 people piled into Salem's Woodbury School gymnasium, which was so tightly packed that McCain's staff advised reporters to "run" into the venue, lest they be kept out by authorities.

The crowd is new, but McCain's message isn't. While many candidates present closing arguments before Tuesday's vote, McCain has stuck to the same themes - and jokes - he's used throughout his campaign.

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