Rivals fight for second place

January 7, 2012 at 12:00a.m.

McClatchy Newspapers

PORTSMOUTH, N.H.

Even for supporters of other Republican candidates, there’s no overstating the scale of Mitt Romney’s lead in New Hampshire. John Troiano, who supports Jon Huntsman, sees it in biblical terms.

“He needs to get a lot of rocks in his sling shot,” said Troiano, a 50-year-old financial adviser from Hampton, N.H., after meeting Huntsman at a luncheon.

For Huntsman, who has staked his candidacy on a strong showing in New Hampshire, bringing down Goliath is crucial. But each of the Republicans is trying to scrape a victory, real or moral, in a state where Romney leads in polls by at least 20 points.

Winning the nation’s first primary is probably out of the question for anyone except Romney, but his rivals hope that narrowing the margin of his victory and beating expectation themselves can reshape the rest of the GOP nomination contest.

After all, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum was buoyed by a strong showing in the Iowa caucuses, coming within eight votes of first-place Romney and laying claim, at least for one week, to being the conservative alternative to the former Massachusetts governor.

“It’s not a contest for the lead. Nobody is going to catch Romney,” said Fergus Cullen, the former chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party. “The other candidates are fighting to finish ahead of each other.”

There’s little time to do so, with the primary Tuesday, but the candidates will make their pitches to New Hampshire voters in back-to-back debates on Saturday night and Sunday morning.

The split between Romney and his rivals shows in their strategies.

After the Iowa caucuses, Romney quickly enlisted the help of Arizona Sen. John McCain, the Republican nominee from four years ago who endorsed his former rival and joined him on the campaign trail.

Romney doesn’t mention his Republican opponents when he engages New Hampshire voters. He instead turns his guns toward President Barack Obama.