Huckabee cutting back

AP/Houston Chronicle:

Battling to stay competitive after his weekend loss in South Carolina, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is taking new steps to save money, including no longer scheduling planes and buses for journalists trying to cover his presidential campaign.

Huckabee said he will continue to campaign in Florida on a shoestring budget, but added that he may pull out of the state before its Jan. 29 Republican primary if his prospects look dim.

"I don't want to abandon Florida yet," Huckabee told reporters Monday on a late-night flight from Orlando to Atlanta, where he planned to campaign today. "We have not come to the conclusion that Florida is out of play."

He said his campaign will evaluate the Florida situation day by day. Meanwhile, he said, he will find time to campaign in several other southern states holding primaries on Feb. 5.

"We really need to conserve as much as we can" for TV and radio ads in those states, Huckabee said in a 36-minute news conference at the back of his press charter. He said he is airing no ads in Florida, one of the nation's largest and costliest states for campaigns.

"We don't have enough people to try to field staff in all of these states," he said. "So what we'll do is put a leaner team together."

...

Huckabee has always been an underfunded candidate and he did not get enough of a bump coming out of Iowa to sustain a full fledged campaign. His bet on South Carolina did not pay off so now he is having to pick his fights pretty carefully in hopes he will be viable somewhere. Florida does not look like it will be his place, even though just weeks ago he was in the lead there. If he drops back, it may be bad news for McCain, because the conservative vote may go to one of the other candidates left in the race meaning McCain's third to a quarter of the vote want be enough.