Candidates enter home stretch in N.H.
Making final pitches before primary
NASHUA, N.H. — It’s less than two days until New Hampshire voters go to the polls. But Hillary Clinton is in Michigan. And other candidates, even Jeb Bush, say their campaigns will go on no matter how they do on Tuesday. Donald Trump says he doesn’t need to win New Hampshire — but he’d like to.
From their movements and remarks on Sunday, you’d think New Hampshire is unimportant in the race for president. In fact, it’s the nation’s first primary and the next in a series of clues about what Americans want in their next president. And at least two candidates, Govs. John Ka- sich of Ohio and Chris Christie of New Jersey, have hung all of their White House hopes on strong showings in New Hampshire.
Republican hopeful Marco Rubio is downplaying his rough outing in Saturday’s GOP debate, while touting his overall momentum after his third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses.
Trump, who finished second in Iowa, is pleased with his debate performance and place atop New Hampshire’s GOP polls, and he’s doubling down on his call for the U.S. to reinstitute waterboarding and even harsher treatment of foreign prisoners.
On the Democratic side, New Hampshire favorite Bernie Sanders and Clinton — who narrowly won Iowa — are avoiding predictions about Tuesday and looking beyond to South Carolina and Nevada, the next two states up in the nomination process.
But for other candidates, such as Christie, Kasich and former Florida Gov. Bush, the task is to
make sure the closing argument here isn’t their last.
Christie, fresh from a debate in which he battered Rubio as unprepared for the presidency, told a crowd Sunday in Hampton, New Hampshire, that his exchanges with Rubio showed “who’s ready. I am. He’s not.”
Christie offered Kasich praise-with-a-punch, calling him an effective leader of Ohio but saying Kasich’s tenure is “like Candy Land” because he’s worked with a GOP-run legislature, ver- sus the Democratic legislature Christie works with in New Jersey.
Bush opted to take on Trump, and chided other candidates for not piling on. In Nashua, Bush said, “This guy is not a serious conservative and he’s not a serious leader. And no one else is taking him on?”
The governors have pitched their experience to GOP voters for months, but have struggled to keep Rubio from establishing himself as the alternative to Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who won Iowa.
Rubio was rattled by Christ ie’s debate onslaught Saturday, repeat- ing his standard critique of President Barack Obama several times and playing into Christie’s argument that the first-term senator is a scripted, inexperienced politician from a do-nothing Congress.
Rubio was back on message Sunday. “People said, ‘Oh, you said the same thing three or four times.’ I’m going to say it again,” Rubio said in Londonderry, New Hampshire.
Rubio said on ABC’s “This Week” that his belief about Obama’s job performance is “one of the main reasons why I am running.”
Trump continued to in- sist in a CNN appearance that he came in first in Iowa, losing only because representatives of the Cruz campaign spread false rumors that Ben Carson was dropping out. Trump says Carson backers switched their votes to Cruz.
Cruz is not expected to fare as well in New Hampshire as in Iowa, but he made memorable marks in Saturday’s debate, first repeating his apology to Carson for the false rumors and later offering an emotional account of his halfsister’s drug addiction and eventual death.
For Democrats, Sanders drew a large crowd Sunday i n Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where he reprised his indictment of a “rigged economy” and “corrupt campaign finance system.”
Cl i nton stopped in Flint, Michigan, which continues to deal with the fallout of a lead-contaminated water system. At the House of Prayer Missionary Church, Clinton noted that for two years, Flint residents drank poisoned water despite officials declaring it safe.
“This is not merely unacceptable or wrong, though it is both. What happened in Flint is immoral,” she said.