Kerry Healey

DES MOINES, Iowa -- Kerry Healey, Mitt Romney's former lieutenant governor, flew out to Iowa last night to help give him a final boost in Iowa.

We caught up with her this afternoon at the Polk County Convention Center in downtown Des Moines, where the press is gathering to begin covering tonight's caucus returns, and where Healey was doing a two-hour shift as one of a team of Romney surrogates hanging around to speak to the media.

She said she stopped by the campaign headquarters this morning, and planned to return later this afternoon to make some last-minute phone calls. Tonight, she'll be speaking on Romney's behalf at a caucus in Ankeny, a Des Moines suburb. (Each campaign is allowed to have a representative speak on the candidate's behalf for five minutes.)

Asked how she thought Romney would do tonight, she sought to lower expectations, as most of the campaigns are doing now.

"I'm cautiously optimistic, we have a strong ground game," she said. "I think we would like to win today, but we're also going to be happy with a strong finish one way or another."

And why does she think Mike Huckabee is ahead in the polls, despite the series of foreign policy related gaffes he has made in the last few weeks?

Healey would not speculate, but she said when voters get serious about the race, they will appreciate Romney's attributes -- "the gravitas, the intelligence, the well-informed nature of his foreign policy expertise," she said. "I think that those qualities will emerge as being more valuable than entertainment in the long run."

Healey has been busy since she lost the race for governor last year to Deval Patrick; she served as a fellow at Harvard University's Institute of Politics last spring and as a visiting fellow at Harvard's Center for Public Leadership in the fall. She has worked full-time on the Romney campaign since June, putting together his teams of policy experts on domestic and foreign policy, and, more recently, coming out to stump for him in Iowa several times.

So is she interested in a Washington job, should Romney get elected?

"I would always be honored to serve with the governor, but it's too soon to think about that," she said. "We have to pull out a good performance in Iowa and New Hampshire and the other early primary states before we can start thinking about things like that."