Leadoff Primary Shapes White House Race

(AP) — Only five days after the Iowa caucuses opened the presidential race, New Hampshire took its turn Tuesday shaping an electric Democratic contest and a mystifying Republican one. Bidding for victory were a surging Barack Obama and a field full of would-be “comeback kids.”

In a sign of these fast-moving times, the nation’s first primary offered Obama a chance to become the clear favorite for the Democratic presidential nomination while John McCain and Mitt Romney competed head to head in a Republican race that could sink the aspirations of one of them.

Paradoxically, the struggle for primacy in the Democratic and Republican campaigns was, to an outsized degree, in the hands of independents who make up a large share of the voters here and by definition are not loyal to either party.

That was an opportunity for McCain, a GOP iconoclast who won New Hampshire against establishment pick George W. Bush in 2000, and for Obama, pressing hard to build a constituency broader than his party. But it also was a complication because they were dipping into the same nonaligned pool.

Even so, polls indicated Obama had pulled ahead of Hillary Rodham Clinton as she fought to write a “comeback kid” story to rival that of her husband, Bill, in 1992. The difference: His second-place finish in New Hampshire sparked his revival. As the presumptive national favorite until she finished third in Iowa, Hillary Clinton needed a win to get her equilibrium back.

In a northern New Hampshire hamlet tradition, voters of Dixville Notch and Hart’s Location cast the first 46 ballots of the primary season – half for Democrats and half for Republicans – at midnight, hours before polls opened statewide at 6 a.m. EST. Polls close at 8 p.m.

Combined results from the two spots showed Obama with 16 votes, Clinton 3, John Edwards 3 and Bill Richardson 1. On the Republican side, McCain received 10 votes, Mike Huckabee 5, Ron Paul 4, Romney 3 and Rudy Giuliani 1.

By 7 a.m., three of the Republican candidates had already showed up at a church in Manchester that is the site of one of the largest polling places in the city. When Huckabee and Giuliani passed each other outside, Huckabee jokingly asked the former New York mayor for his vote.

“We started below the bottom. For us to come in the top four would be a win for us,” Huckabee told reporters.

Moments later a third GOP contender, Romney, arrived at the site and declared, “The Republicans will vote for me. The independents will get behind me.”

Looking down the road, Romney said, “My record of bringing change is going to post up very well against Barack Obama.”

Campaigns spared no effort to get out the vote. Clinton’ campaign was mobilizing more than 6,000 volunteers to knock on doors and nearly 300 drivers. Romney said his state headquarters, his “machine shop,” had made 100,000 phone calls.

About 45 percent of the state’s 828,000 registered voters were unaffiliated, more than double the percentage in Iowa, and they can vote in either party primary.

Oddly, it was the 71-year-old McCain who seemed to gather more energy as a brutal day of campaigning unfolded Monday. Obama, ignoring medical advice to rest his ragged voice, flubbed a line to comical effect (“The time for come has change!”) while Clinton let her emotions nearly spill over.

Conceding the rhetorical advantage to the first-term Illinois senator, the second-term New York senator and former first lady said her opponent was untested in times that require her firm grasp of policy. “What is the substance here?” she demanded. “You know, where is the reality?”

Aides have urged her to show more passion and emotion, and, coincidentally or not, she did so by nearly breaking down during a restaurant appearance. Eyes welling up and voice quavering, she declared the campaign “is very personal for me. It’s not just political.”

At Jack’s coffee shop in New London, which has separate bathrooms for men, women and politicians, Obama said he didn’t see the video of his opponent tearing up. “I know that this process is a grind, so that’s not something I would care to comment on,” he said.

Clinton later told Fox News Channel, “We have gone through years of male political figures who have done everything from cry to scream,” and people know she is cool under fire. “But I also want them to know I’m a real person.”

McCain fed off his crowd’s energy – flat in the morning, buzzing and boisterous as the day wore on. The Arizona senator’s seven-rally bus tour was called “Mac is Back,” meaning he was back looking for victory in the state that supported him eight years ago, and his campaign was back from the near-dead.

“No, no, no,” he said when AP asked if long days like these wear him out. “When you see that kind of crowd, it pumps you up. … It’s a certain excitement that will never happen again in my life.”

Lest anyone take that to mean this was his swan song, he added: “If I’m a president running for re-election, it wouldn’t be the same as this.”

Edwards, a former senator from North Carolina, hoped Clinton would be sufficiently weakened Tuesday to give him an opening and, to that end, he aimed his barbs at her instead of the front-runner. He again portrayed her as an agent of the status quo.

“The candidate, Democrat or Republican, who has taken the most money from drug companies is not a Republican,” he told a crowd in Lakeport. “It’s a Democrat, and she’s in this race.”

Romney rallied at a packed school hall in Bedford and sought advantage by predicting a repeat Obama blowout on the Democratic side.

The former Massachusetts governor cast himself as the Republican best able to take on Obama, tying the Illinois senator to the sort of European socialism he once said Clinton embodied.

“He’ll be talking about taking it in a sharp left turn, following in the path of the Europe of old with big brother and big government and big taxing and that won’t sell,” Romney said. “And I’ll be talking about following in the footsteps that Ronald Reagan did.”

McCain held a statistically insignificant lead over Romney in late polls. Obama had a clear advantage over Clinton in surveys and Edwards trailed both, with Richardson, the New Mexico governor, in the rear.

Iowa GOP winner Huckabee campaigned vigorously in New Hampshire in the final days but without expectations of victory. He, former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson and one-time national poll leader Giuliani looked to later contests.