Risky moves drove McCain's comeback

K.V. Kumar joined the cheering at a John McCain rally in Nashua last night. The candidate's primary win gives new life to a campaign that once was deemed moribund by many pundits. (Shannon Stapleton/reuters)

MANCHESTER, N.H. - Senator John McCain of Arizona, whose political obituary was written last summer when his campaign nearly ran out of money and all but collapsed, is back in the thick of the race for the Republican presidential nomination, propelled by a back-to-basics approach focused on winning the New Hampshire primary.

The decisive Granite State win over Mitt Romney - the former Massachusetts governor who spent heavily here - gives McCain momentum heading into the next round of Republican primaries. It also validated his decision to stake his candidacy on the same voters who handed him a big political victory in the 2000 presidential campaign.

"Tonight we sure showed them what a comeback looks like," McCain, 71, told a cheering crowd.

"When the pundits declared us finished, I told them, 'I'm going to New Hampshire, where the voters don't let you make their decision for them,' " McCain said. "And when they asked, 'How are you going to do it? You're down in the polls. You don't have the money.' I answered, 'I'm going to New Hampshire, and I'm going to tell people the truth.' "

Just eight months ago, McCain's presidential campaign had hit rock bottom.

He had just $500,000 left from a $25 million campaign war chest. More than 80 campaign staff members resigned or were fired, including some top advisers who jumped to Mitt Romney's campaign. As the money vanished, so did McCain's prospects of winning New Hampshire; only a month ago, Romney's lead was as large as 13 percentage points.

His political demise was predicted with grim headlines in July such as, "The McCain Campaign Meltdown."

From the beginning of McCain's run for the nomination early last year, his support for the widely unpopular Iraq war troubled some of his top advisers in New Hampshire, who told him the issue was hurting his standing here, especially among independent voters.

Instead of tempering his support, McCain decided he would continue to speak out about his belief in the Iraq war, even if it hurt his presidential campaign. He also wagered his political ambitions on backing President Bush's plan to send additional US troops to quell rising violence in Iraq.

Last summer, when Congress grappled with the issue of immigration reform, McCain's pollster told the senator that his support for legislation that would permit illegal immigrants to become citizens had dragged down his public-opinion poll ratings.

"The immigration issue certainly hurt me," McCain told reporters last month, recalling his early campaign difficulties. But he stuck by his basic position: undocumented, otherwise law-abiding immigrants should be allowed a way to seek citizenship.

At about the same time, McCain's White House run broke down over the strategy to run a national campaign, which would require spending significantly in 30 states. But the senator failed to raise enough money for that plan and he quickly blew through the $25 million he raised in the first six months of 2007.

The money problems forced McCain's campaign to downsize and led him to rely on his New Hampshire organization.

"The drop-off of money and huge staff was probably a blessing in disguise," said Steve Duprey, the vice chairman of McCain's New Hampshire campaign. It was made "very clear that John McCain would 'live off the land' and campaign like he had in 2000. It was what the staff here was asking for."

At summer's end, McCain simplified his strategy, campaigned modestly for the Iowa caucuses and focused on winning New Hampshire, where he defeated George W. Bush in the 2000 primary.

He resurrected the Straight Talk Express, the low-budget campaign bus on which he famously talked for hours with reporters. He spent months attending more than 100 town hall-style meetings in New Hampshire, making quips, delivering anecdotes, and taking questions from anyone who asked.

At the same time, McCain met with nearly every editorial board at newspapers in New Hampshire, as well as some in Massachusetts and Maine. The campaign calculated that he won 22 of 24 major newspaper endorsements in the Granite State.

The New Hampshire Union Leader backed him. So did the Concord Monitor, which ran what became known as the "anti-endorsement" of Romney, whom the paper labeled a "phony."

Romney's advisers warned him months ago that McCain was so well known and well liked in the state that some nicknamed him "the third senator from New Hampshire." Romney tried to defend his lead by defining McCain with a barrage of attack ads, declaring McCain favored amnesty for illegal immigrants and opposed President Bush's tax cuts.

McCain answered that he did not favor amnesty but instead backed a plan that required undocumented immigrants to pay a fine and line up behind legal immigrants in the queue for citizenship - a plan, he noted, Romney once called reasonable. The senator said he opposed the Bush tax cuts because they were not coupled with spending cuts.

McCain spokesman Steve Schmidt said last night that Romney's attack ads backfired on the former Massachusetts governor and were rejected by New Hampshire voters.

Political analysts suggest that two other factors helped McCain: losing in Iowa hurt Romney's momentum, while the caucus victor, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, peeled away Romney's support among New Hampshire's social conservatives.