Republican candidate Mike Huckabee says his daughter has moved to Iowa, part of a campaign push to press Huckabee past other competitors for the G.O.P.’s presidential nomination. "I’m confident that by the Caucus night we will be in good shape and have a great night here," Huckabee says. "…We know we’ve got to make this a real key place for us."
Huckabee has not had the fundraising success of others in the G.O.P. race, but Huckabee says last week he raised more money in on-line donations than he’d raised from all kinds of sources in the first three months of his campaign.
"We’ve upgraded our server three times in the last week to handle the traffic. We’ve had to add staff in Little Rock just to answer the phones," Huckabee says. "…There has been a dramatic upheaval of contributions in the last week alone." Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, says he got a "late start" to fundraising and wasn’t able to "prime the pump" with his own money — a shot at rival Mitt Romney who has transferred some of his personal wealth to his own campaign coffers.
"We had to start from zero and then it became this thing of people saying, ‘Well, if you get money, I’ll give you money,’" Huckabee says. "Now we’re showing that we can raise the money, but more importantly we’re raising the voters and that’s bringing money." Huckabee, by the way, is not alone in having family move to Iowa for the run up to the Caucuses.
On the Democratic side, Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd’s wife and two young children have moved to Des Moines for the remainder of the campaign as candidates face just 66 days before the January 3rd Caucuses. The Iowa Democratic Party’s state central committee voted last night to move their Caucuses to January 3rd. Iowa Republicans made that move earlier this month.