Votes aren’t wasted with this underdog, he says

LACONIA, N.H. — No letup in the last hours

After Iowa, change is in the air in New Hampshire. In the Democratic primary, Barack Obama’s emphasis on change has suddenly made him the candidate to beat. On the Republican side, Mike Huckabee has a tall order in replicating his win, but this has forced Mitt Romney to alter his tactics and helped revive John McCain’s chances. A look at the front-runners on their last full day of campaigning in New Hampshire:

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Wooing the state’s maverick voters, presidential hopeful John Edwards has crisscrossed the state portraying himself as a scrappy underdog vastly outgunned by two well-financed rivals.

Edwards portrays himself as the sole candidate who can take on special interests that are destroying the middle class.

“That is the cause of my life,” the former senator from North Carolina said after a Monday morning rally attended by hundreds in this lakeside town. “It’s not about me. It’s about the families who deserve a real chance in this country.”

The rally came about 24 hours into a 36-hour marathon similar to the one he had last week before the Iowa caucuses. His message, that he has fought special interests and greedy corporations since his trial lawyer days in North Carolina, remains unchanged. But he emphasized the funding disparity between himself and his rivals, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois.

“I was the underdog [in Iowa]. I am the underdog here,” Edwards told hundreds of supporters at a rally in Concord on Saturday. “We ran against two candidates who had over $200 million between them. They had the national media saying they were the only candidates in the race. But the voters, the caucus-goers said, no, we’ve got a candidate who may not have all that money, a candidate who’s speaking the truth, a candidate who will stand up for the working people, and the middle class.”

Polls show Edwards in third in New Hampshire, but he constantly tells supporters that a vote for him is not wasted.

Campaign advisors concede that stopping Obama’s momentum in five days is impossible but add that a top-three finish allows them to continue on to South Carolina and beyond.

The campaign is making a big play in the Palmetto State, where Edwards was born and whose primary he won in 2004. A Nielsen Monitor-Plus survey shows that from Dec. 16 to Jan. 1, Edwards’ media ads appeared 2,237 times in South Carolina, Obama’s ads aired 227 times and Clinton’s four times.

-- Seema Mehta