Huck moves into a Statistical Tie with Clinton…This is encouraging when you realize that 26% of those surveyed don’t yet even know Huckabee…

• Clinton 46%
• Huckabee 43%

Survey of 1200 Likely Voters Nov. 2-4, 2007

The Union Leader reports in…

One national tracking poll has him in a statistical tie for third place with Romney and McCain, behind Giuliani and Fred Thompson. Ward said that in polls among SEA membership, Huckabee has drawn more support than the other Republican candidates combined.

“Corrections workers, retirees, workers at Health and Human Services, all find a reason to back him,” he said. The SEA political education committee and executive board also give Huckabee favorable reviews, Ward said.

Corrections workers were impressed that Huckabee recently toured the State Prison for Women in Goffstown and the Youth Development Center in Manchester.

HHS workers liked the idea that Huckabee used his state’s tobacco lawsuit settlement money on children’s health care, Ward said.

SEA represents 9,000 active and retired state workers.

Huckabee has been courting members for about a year. On a visit to the state this spring, he met with the SEA board for about an hour at its Concord headquarters. He’s followed that up with two meetings since.

State Sen. Bob Clegg, a Huckabee volunteer leader, said an SEA endorsement would not surprise him. He said he could see corrections workers were impressed when Huckabee talked with them.

“He gets a unique perspective … about what’s happening to the union guy,” he said.

New Hampshire campaign manager Debra Vanderbeek said Huckabee is excited about meeting with the SEA again.

“He identifies with people who are struggling, and that’s something they can understand too. His message resonates with a lot of their folks,” she said.

This could be big if it ends up happening…Huck is going to need a good showing in this state to have a chance…This could be his ticket, much like it was for the other guy from Hope, AR in 1992…

Now read the reaction to Thompson’s MTP interview from Bob Novak…

Thompson was a former senator working as television actor when on “Fox News Sunday” March 11 he made himself available for president. I started to take him seriously a month later when a religious conservative activist (call her Miss Jones because she works for a non-partisan organization) surprised me by telling me she favored Thompson to fill a void among announced presidential hopefuls. She complained that no first-tier candidate — Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney or John McCain — fit her model and that overt social conservatives — Mike Huckabee and Sam Brownback — could not be nominated.

I discovered broad support in April for Thompson among social conservatives, who were impressed by his 100 percent pro-life voting record during eight Senate years and could find fault only with his support for the McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill. As of Sunday, Thompson was still first in polls of conservatives by Human Events and American Values.

After Thompson’s unannounced candidacy got off to a shaky start, I checked again with Miss Jones shortly after Labor Day to see whether she had changed her mind. No, she still supported Thompson, though she seemed less enthusiastic than she had been five months earlier. But Sunday’s “Meet the Press” changed everything. “It was the last straw,” Miss Jones told me. “I’m outraged and so are a lot of other people.”

In the first question on abortion posed by Russert Sunday, he asked Thompson whether as a candidate he could run on the 2004 Republican platform that endorsed a “human life” constitutional amendment banning all abortions. “No,” Thompson replied, suddenly monosyllabic. “You would not?” “No,” said Thompson, adding “that’s been my position the entire time I’ve been in politics.” In fact, every Republican platform starting in 1980 has endorsed such an amendment and every Republican candidate since then has been able to run on it.

Thompson thought better of this position after the program. His campaign manager Bill Lacy told me Tuesday that Thompson “does not want to change the platform” in 2008. But there was no apology for raising the criminalization chimera. Neither Thompson nor Lacy seemed to understand that what he said antagonized the social right.

Miss Jones told me she switched off “Meet the Press” after Thompson’s talk about jailing women. If she had continued, she would have heard him reiterate positions that previously had disturbed social conservatives: opposition to a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and opposition to congressional intervention to save the life of Terri Schiavo.

Thompson may be blowing his chance…If Huck catches fire in the early states…Thompson becomes a non factor…