Peter Kane

Huckabee spokesman Peter KaneFormer Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's Super Tuesday performance sparked his supporters here in New Jersey, including State Campaign Director Peter Kane, who also couldn't resist taking a shot at the GOP field's favorite target, former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney.

"They said we had a second tier candidate," Kane said in a statement. "They said the Iowa win was a fluke. They said we were just in it to be a spoiler. They said we should just get out of the race now. They said we had limited appeal to a narrow slice of the electorate."

Huckabee picked up victories in his homestate of Arkansas, in Georgia, Alabama and West Virginia, and was competing in at least two more states Wednesday morning.

"With wins in several states, throughout this country and the delegate count
rising steadily maybe this has finally become a two person race," said Kane. "And maybe, it is time for Gov. Romney to bow out gracefully and leave the battle to the one true, sincere conservative in this race: Mike Huckabee."

Their candidates are not expected to win in New Jersey, but Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul supporters are preparing for different kinds of victories.

Huckabee state campaign head Peter Kane spent part of the day working the phones and handing out flyers at supermarkets. He’ll hold a victory party tonight at the Scotchwood Diner in Scotch Plains.

New Jersey Right to Life endorsed Mike Huckabee, saying that Ron Paul's libertarian views conflic with his pro-life stand: Getty Images Photo
New Jersey Right to Life has endorsed Mike Huckabee for the GOP presidential nomination, saying that the former Governor of Arkansas supports passage of a constitutional amendment to protect the right to life, and believes that Roe v. Wade should be overturned.

New Jersey Republicans who had signed on with Mitt Romney looked as though they were heading straight for the triage unit going into Michigan on Tuesday when their presidential candidate came alive and beat the surging Sen. John McCain.

"It was the first state in the mix that looks like America, and he won it by ten points," state Sen. Joseph Kyrillos, Romney’s state chairman in New Jersey, said of Romney’s performance in the ethnically diverse mid-western state.

Huckabee spokesman Peter KaneComing off a primary victory in Iowa, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's New Jersey representatives are gearing up to play a bigger role in driving their candidate toward the White House.

"In the face of overwhelming resources and negative campaign advertisements, the Republican voters of this country will show that they are thirsting for sincerity and honesty in a presidential candidate," said campaign spokesman Peter Kane of Summit. "New Jersey Republicans will rally to this cause on February 5th. Mike Huckabee represents a clear, clarion call to changing this country in 2008." His chief organizer on the ground here who has so far held diner meet-ups with core supporters and coordinated a successful ballot signature drive, Kane said Iowa voters rewarded Huckabee for running a substantive campaign that avoided personal attacks.

Peter Kane, the NJ for Huckabee leader, presides over the group's second meet-up WednesdaySeated at two tables pushed together in a diner in Scotch Plains, the core of presidential candidate Mike Huckabee's New Jersey supporters plan their next move.

"We've got to be relentlessly positive," says Huckabee for President 2008 lead organizer Peter Kane of Summit. It's a message to which the group immediately responds because most of them say they like Huckabee because he hasn't gone negative in Iowa, and because he just generally projects likeability.

Some of these people gathered signatures for Huckabee, helping to submit 2,300 here in New Jersey or 1,300 more than what the state requires, and now they're ready for the next challenges: busing up to New Hampshire to volunteer for the campaign, writing letters to the editor, or convincing friends and relatives to back their man.

"Very few of New Jersey's Republican Congressional delegation have declared their support for a presidential candidate, and we're reaching out to them," says Kane, a senior vice president at CitiGroup who worked for the Dole campaign in Iowa in the 1996 election, and spent three days with Huckabee in the summer before committing to the former governor of Arkansas.