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By Sarah Elkins
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For someone who'd just tied for third place in Iowa, Sen. John McCain looked pretty happy Thursday night. The Arizona Republican, who spent very little time in Iowa and admitted to having low expectations there, beamed from ear to ear as he congratulated former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, the GOP caucus winner. Huckabee's victory, McCain said, was proof that "negative campaigns don't work"--a clear shot at Mitt Romney, a vocal Huckabee critic down the stretch in the Hawkeye State, and McCain's principle rival in New Hampshire.
Romney returned fire Friday morning. Just hours after landing in the northeast, the former Massachusetts governor lashed out at McCain. "There's no way Senator McCain can come to New Hampshire and say he can be the candidate to change Washington. He is Washington," Romney said. The McCain camp blasted back, calling Romney "desperate" and adding that "it's not surprising to see that he has brought his angry, negative rhetoric to New Hampshire."
With the polls heading into Tuesday's primary showing McCain and Romney neck and neck, things will only get uglier. In Manchester on Friday, NEWSWEEK's Sarah Elkins spoke to former New Hampshire state Republican chairman Steve Duprey--now serving as McCain's New Hampshire vice chairman--about those nasty attack ads, Iowa and Mr. Iowa himself. Excerpts:
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NEWSWEEK: Iowa had to be somewhat of a disappointment for you. Is a third-place tie with Fred Thompson discouraging at all?
The only thing I can tell you is that I was out waving McCain signs at 7:30 this morning, and I think [third place] pumped up our group because, honestly, a lot of us thought we wouldn't be anything but last in Iowa. Tying for third definitely fired us up.
Mike Huckabee really stole the show in Iowa. Is he going to become more of a threat to McCain in New Hampshire?
I'm sure he will pick up some support here just because now he is better known. But we do not have a large evangelical community in New Hampshire and [Huckabee] has not had the resources to lead here. As former Republican chairman, my history from watching these things unfold says that any support that Governor Huckabee picks up here will take numbers away from Governor Romney, not Senator McCain.
Mitt Romney is still polling pretty well here, despite a recent McCain surge. Do you still see him as a serious threat?
Well, here's a historical fact: no Massachusetts governor who has ever run in a Republican primary in New Hampshire has ever lost. Ever. So, yeah, we still see him as a threat. This is a tight race. We know this is tight race, and we are just going to have to keep doing what we've been doing, including waving signs at 7:30 in the morning in 2 degree temperatures. We just came back from a town-hall meeting and [McCain] will do his 100th town-hall meeting tomorrow. We're just going to keep running the same campaign that we have from day one.
McCain has weathered some serious hits from Romney. How do you respond to his calling McCain the last person who could ever bring change to Washington?
I think Senator McCain has said it best: we are going to continue to run a positive campaign. And anyone who knows John McCain knows they don't call him a maverick for nothing. McCain has spent 20 years fighting for change in how this country does business. And yet in the last week we've seen Governor Romney--disappointingly, I might say as a former Republican chairman--deliver one negative attack after another.
Do you think these attack ads really hurt McCain? Or for that matter, do they really help Romney?
I think they are hurting Romney. No. 1, when you attack someone with the kind of service to his country that John McCain has, people are not going to look too kindly on it. And up until recently, Romney was running a campaign based on his morals and optimistic view on life, and people aren't responding well [to his attack ads]. Personally, I've had a number of people unaffiliated with the campaign come up to me and say, "We used to think so highly of Governor Romney and didn't realize he was this negative." I don't think people appreciate negative campaigns, particularly when they don't think the subject matter rings true … Senator McCain has rebutted the negative charges, and we are not going to keep answering them. It's not worth our time. Instead, we are going to focus on how to move this country forward.
The press is labeling McCain as "The Second Comeback Kid" and hailing his campaign as "back from the dead." Are these accurate descriptions, or is all this chatter just kind of silly?
I have to say, it was pretty tough up here in [July], but having known Senator McCain as long as I have, I was never more impressed with him as a person and a candidate as I was after the changes [when a fund-raising drop forced McCain's campaign to dismiss many staffers and aides]. He came up here and said all campaigns have an ebb and a flow, all campaigns make mistakes, and we've corrected ours. At that point we knew we would just have to move forward, live off the land and keep taking our message to the people. But I did have friends at the time who were asking if [McCain] was flying up to New Hampshire to withdraw. And when we were down, we were never quite as far down as the press said we were. And now that we're up, well, we still don't really listen to what they say.
You played an objective role in the 2000 New Hampshire primary as the state Republican chairman. Was there something about John McCain that captured your attention as an unbiased observer?
I've admired him as a leader in this country for a long time, because he does what is right regardless of the consequences. I was so inspired by him in 2000 that I told him, "If you ever do this again--crazy as it may sound--I would love to help. This is a dangerous world and I want someone I can trust to lead."
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