Obama Fundraising For 2012 Campaign, DNC Breaks Record

President Barack Obama collected $86 million combined for his re-election campaign and the Democratic party during the past three months, giving him a large fundraising advantage over the Republican field seeking to challenge him in 2012.

Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said in a video posted early Wednesday that it raised more than $47 million and the Democratic National Committee brought in more than $38 million through the end of June, building a foundation for advertising and get-out-the-vote efforts in next year’s election. Obama’s team had set a public goal of $60 million combined.

As expected, the fundraising totals outpace Republicans, who have collectively raised about $35 million so far, although some election candidates have yet to release their results. At the same time in 2007, 10 GOP presidential hopefuls had raised more than $118 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney leads the GOP field in fundraising, pulling in more than $18 million during the past three months. An independent fundraising group supporting Romney’s presidential bid has raised $12 million this year.

Following Romney, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty collected $4.2 million and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman brought in $4.1 million, with about half coming from his personal wealth. Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, a tea party favorite, has not yet released her fundraising totals.

Democrats, GOP Agree: Ryan Race Is National

In Wisconsin’s 1st district, one thing Rep. Paul Ryan (R) and his Democratic opponent Rob Zerban agree on is that the race is already a national one.

The state is consumed by politics more than a year out from November 2012, thanks in part to nine heavily competitive state Senate recall elections, which begin Tuesday. But in the Kenosha-based 1st district, Ryan, the House Budget chairman, is facing his first serious Democratic challenge in years thanks to the national uproar over his budget proposal that seeks to drastically overhaul Medicare.

The seven-term Republican said his race against Zerban, which was already heating up over Independence Day, barely two months after Zerban declared his candidacy, is a template for how things might play out nationwide.

”I’ve never really liked to travel, which is why I chose the committee track instead of the leadership track,” Ryan said, when asked whether he plans to campaign for election candidates throughout the country next fall.

Democrats consider Ryan’s a trophy seat to win after losing three of their own committee chairmen in last year’s bruising midterm elections.

Zerban’s election candidacy has buoyed the party as it tries to reclaim its House majority. The Kenosha County supervisor and one-time food services business owner announced his campaign in April and sent out his first email fundraising plea shortly after Democrats won an upset election in New York’s 26th district in May. In Kenosha, a manufacturing town badly hurt by the recession, Zerban found a warm reception from out-of-work union employees and die-hard Democrats eager to unseat Ryan.

”I feel like I’ve been received very warmly,” Zerban said. ”Granted, I’m not going to Republican Party meetings or anything like that, but I think in the state of Wisconsin, there’s a very warm reception to my candidacy. I think they like having a viable election candidate that can actually defeat Paul Ryan.”

A Democratic aide noted that Zerban is being heavily touted on the national stage and his campaign against Ryan helped boost the party’s message for 2012.

”Ryan is an issue in Congressional races around the country. He has been nationalized, via his proposal,” the aide said. ”This is the right time to be engaged, while people are engaged in Washington and we have an election candidate holding Ryan accountable back home with his voters.”

Sweating at the July 3 parade in Kenosha, Karen Erb, a 68-year-old retired teacher from Silver Lake, Wis., offered a more frank assessment of Ryan’s district.

owa Democrats trying to stay in the game

It’s an unsettling time for Iowa Democrats, who spent 2008 basking in the glow of having given Barack Obama his first major victory on the road to the White House. Since then, their one-term Democratic governor, Chet Culver, was defeated in November, and three Supreme Court justices were booted off the bench over a decision favoring same-sex marriage.

”After all the euphoria of ’8, ’10 was such a rude awakening,” said Iowa Democratic Party Chairwoman Sue Dvorsky, a chipper former special education teacher who refers to years by only their last digits. ” ’7 and ’8, for those of us who lived through it, was so spectacular.”

Almost all the excitement in Iowa now is on the Republican side. But Democrats are hardly sitting things out. The Iowa Democratic Party, which has steadily lost registered voters in the last 2 1/2 years, pumps out a stream of stinging retorts to the GOP news du jour.

”We want to keep ’em honest,” said Megan Jacobs, the party’s press secretary. She picks on nearly all the major GOP election candidates; not so much, though, on former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, whose campaign has been beset by defections and controversy. Gingrich, she said, ”kind of does my work for me.”

The state’s Democrats have recently taken jabs at former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney for his opposition to the auto industry bailout and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman for his plans to skip the Iowa caucus.

Romney’s jobs record a little shaky

Mitt Romney stood before a shuttered steel factory in Pennsylvania the other day, using the iconic backdrop to underscore what has become the most forceful theme of his presidential campaign: the need for more jobs.

”He has done everything wrong,” Romney said of President Obama as a breeze tousled overgrown weeds around the locked main gate of Allentown Metal Works. Then, as the Republican has done time and again, he touted himself as the chief executive America needs to get the country back to work.

But Romney’s tenure as a government CEO — the four years he served as governor of Massachusetts — may not buttress his claim to be the election candidate who, as he put it recently, ”has what it takes to create and grow jobs.”

During the years he was governor, the state ranked among the last in the nation in job creation. The percentage increase in jobs — about 1% — was lower than in all but three states, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In worse straits were Ohio, suffering the ongoing deterioration of its manufacturing infrastructure; Michigan, beset then by the decline of the auto industry; and Louisiana, devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

Many factors contribute to the economics of any given state, and a governor can sometimes have only limited influence. But Romney’s performance in the job represents his argument for election. He and his backers say he is responsible for demonstrable progress for the state, which faced a series of economic challenges, including a fiscal crisis that mushroomed shortly after Romney’s election.

Arizona conservatives scramble after campaign finance law’s defeat

When the U.S. Supreme Court struck down part of an Arizona campaign finance law last week, the court divided along ideological lines — with a five-justice conservative majority opposing the way Arizona uses public money to finance campaigns, and four liberals supporting it.

But in Arizona, the greatest beneficiaries of the state’s Clean Elections Act have been conservatives.

Consider newly elected state Sen. Steve Smith. A talent manager in exurban Phoenix who had never run for public office, Smith beat a better-known Democrat last year with the help of $36,000 in government funds he received under the law.

”Turns out, all I needed was that Clean Elections money and the grace of God,” Smith said. ”It certainly put me where I am today.”

Conservative political neophytes like Smith have steadily taken over Arizona politics since voters passed the Clean Elections Act in 1998, a demonstration that the real-world effects of policy can defy partisan stereotypes. Now conservatives are scrambling to come up with new ways to finance challengers to the more centrist Republicans who once dominated state politics.

First, the government distributes a set amount of money to election candidates who get enough small donations to demonstrate their viability and who pledge to refrain from raising additional funds. Second, an independent commission can give election candidates more of those public funds to match the spending of rivals who don’t abide by the Clean Elections pledge.

As for Querard, he assumes it’s inevitable that the law will wither away following the Supreme Court decision. He is starting a group called the Arizona Conservative Club to collect small-dollar donations to replace the Clean Elections money. He’ll appeal to those who sign up to bundle together modest contributions to conservative election candidates. Otherwise, he fears, the gains the movement has made will be rolled back.

”If you go back to the old way, logically, you go back to the old results,” Querard said.

July 4 parades are serious business for election candidates

In California and most other states, a Fourth of July parade may be just a parade. But here in New Hampshire and Iowa, the states that hold the first presidential contests, politicians with higher aspirations know parades are serious business.

More than an hour before Amherst’s parade, volunteers for GOP presidential rivals Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman Jr. gathered at the route, ready to rumble.

Huntsman, a presidential campaign newcomer, had followed the parade organizer’s rules and capped his group at 30 volunteers — leaving them stretched thinly across the parade route. He was trailed by a Jeep.

But with one presidential run under its belt, Romney’s campaign left nothing to chance, ignoring the rules to marshal more than 130 blue-shirted volunteers. A massive float bearing the state seal trailed the candidate.

When it came to impressing voters Monday, no detail was too small — which parade the election candidates would attend, their choice of clothing, their skill at skirting Amherst’s candy-tossing ban (Romney’s camp put small boys on scooters to ride the route offering sweets from blue buckets).

The election candidates were advised to walk briskly to avoid holding up those behind them and to weave from side to side of the parade route to shake as many hands as possible.

”The folks watching the parade, they want to see and touch the election candidates,” longtime New Hampshire political operative Mike Dennehy said.

About 1,400 miles away in Clear Lake, Iowa, ascendant election candidate Michele Bachmann and Newt Gingrich, who is fighting the perception that his campaign is circling the drain, were trying to accomplish the same thing.

All the effort might seem overkill but for the underlying political reality: Creating ”a buzz around town” is precisely what election candidates want to do as they try to amass volunteers and voters in key states, Dennehy said.

hen Bachmann spent too much time on one side of the road, a staffer would signal her to cross to the other side. A pickup preceded her so photographers crouched in its bed could perfectly document the moment.

”Give them hell, Michele!” one man screamed. Later, half a dozen women chanted, ”Go, Michele, go!”

Bachmann paused to speak with a boy in a wheelchair, who exclaimed, ”That’s a big bus!”

”That’s my bus,” Bachmann said, caressing his cheek.

Voters embraced her. ”We love Michele, her common sense, her fiscal responsibility for this country,” said Terri King, 53, a nurse from Dougherty.

Romney says he can work with Democrats

Voters in New Hampshire question the GOP presidential election candidate about partisan feuding in Washington. He says he can find common ground with the opposition.

As Democratic and Republican leaders in Washington struggled to find agreement on spending cuts and extending the debt limit, Mitt Romney struck a conciliatory note in New Hampshire on Monday by lamenting partisan feuding while touting his record of working with Democrats — even the Senate’s onetime liberal lion Edward M. Kennedy.

Taking a pause from a fundraising tour for two campaign appearances, Romney faced questions from voters that reflected frustration with the gridlock in Washington.
During a business roundtable at a technology company in Salem, state Sen. Chuck Morse pressed Romney to explain how he would unite ”a country that’s very divided.” Morse told the Republican front-runner: ”Quite honestly, it’s not working and they’re not getting the message in Washington right now.”

The questions were a reminder of the competing imperatives that Republican election candidates face in New Hampshire: They must win over the party’s most passionate conservatives while also appealing to independent voters who can cast ballots in the first-in-the nation primary next year.

Michele Bachmann Says John Quincy Adams Was ’One Of Our Founding Fathers,’ Flubs Slavery Remarks

During an appearance on ABC’s ”Good Morning America” on Tuesday, Republican presidential election candidate Michele Bachmann was given an opportunity to set the record straight with regard to comments she made earlier this year lauding the nation’s Founding Fathers for working ”tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States.”
ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked the conservative congresswoman to address the statement, noting that many of the country’s Founding Fathers, including Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, in fact had slaves and that slavery wasn’t abolished until the Civil War.

Also on the program, Bachmann accepted an apology issued by ”Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace after he asked her if she’s a ”flake” on last weekend’s edition of his show. Earlier in the day, the Tea Party favorite told ABC News’ Jonathan Karl, ”I think that it’s insulting to insinuate that an election candidate for president is less than serious. I’m a very serious individual.”

Seeking breakthrough, Tim Pawlenty is first Republican to launch Iowa TV ad

Making a move to regain momentum and boost his standing in the leadoff nominating state, Tim Pawlenty is launching the first television ad campaign by a presidential election candidate in Iowa, his campaign announced Wednesday

The 30-second advertisement is meant to sell the idea that Pawlenty has the conservative record to back up his rhetoric on the campaign trail, pointing to his two terms as governor of Minnesota.

Jon Huntsman, the former Utah governor and ambassador to China who launched his campaign Tuesday, said he won’t compete in Iowa at all.

But Pawlenty will face competition from a fellow Minnesotan in Michele Bachmann, who will formally announce her candidacy in Iowa next week. She had by most accounts a breakout performance in the New Hampshire GOP election candidates’ debate, while Pawlenty admittedly missed a chance to make his mark

Obama faces steep climb to reelection, new poll indicates

President Obama addresses the nation Wednesday night on foreign policy in Afghanistan, but his political future more likely rests with how he handles domestic issues such as the economy. And in that arena, the latest Bloomberg News poll offers little comfort for the man seeking his second term.

The president received a small bounce in approval in May after U.S. forces raided a compound in Pakistan and killed Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. But even as the president briefly benefited from that bump, polls showed a deep unease in how he was handling the economy. Whatever improvement Obama gained from that foreign policy triumph has largely dissipated, according to several other polls.

That unease over the economy has continued, bringing with it some tough political numbers for the president. Only 30% of those surveyed said they were certain to vote for the president while 36% said they definitely won’t. Of the key voting bloc of independents, fewer than one in four — 23% — said they would support Obama’s reelection while 36% said they wanted a fresh face.

While Obama’s popularity is low, Republicans still have to find an election candidate from a fractured field to face Obama. The Bloomberg poll offers the GOP little solace.

According to the poll, 60% said that any Republican election candidate would need to move so far to the right on fiscal and social issues to win the nomination that that it would be very hard for others to support the GOP.

Meet Jon Huntsman: ’No drama’ conservative and fan of street food

If there’s one thing the Jon Huntsman campaign wants you to come away with as his campaign begins, it’s that their election candidate is one like no other.

That’s the theme of many of the 36 — count ’em, 36 — videos that were posted to his new campaign website to coincide his formal announcement on Tuesday.

Sure, he has the titles of governor and ambassador. But really he is ”a quiet, no drama conservative” who vacations in Coronado Beach and loves Henry’s taco stand in Los Angeles.

Huntsman’s children are introduced by name, and by the instrument they play in the family band (Jon III on drums, ”dad on keys,” and Will on guitar).

”This guy is different,” one of the five biographical videos says.

There are five more videos on the economy, and another five on foreign policy. Six separate videos — one featuring wife, Mary Kaye — tout his ”unique qualifications.”

Huntsman needs any weapon he can muster to break through. While he’s being treated as a top-flight election candidate by the national press, he’s yet to register much support in public polling.

A new Gallup poll released Tuesday shows Huntsman has the second-lowest name recognition in the GOP field, ahead of former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson.

Iowa could decide Romney’s top competition

Welcome to the state that may decide Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney’s top competition.

Rep. Michele Bachmann’s entry into the campaign ensures that the spotlight will shine bright on the leadoff caucus state — and the tea party darling from Minnesota with Iowa roots — despite suggestions that Iowa’s influence of the 2012 Republican presidential contest is waning. She will go head-to-head with former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty in a state he has said he must win or do very well in.

Iowa also is fertile ground for the latest Republican to say he’s considering running — Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a tax-cutting social conservative.

”The goal of Iowa this time seems to be to winnow the field to see who is going to be the main challenger to Mitt Romney,” said Bob Haus, a veteran Iowa Republican campaign strategist.

Republicans who compete in Iowa’s February caucuses will be looking to emerge with enough momentum to mount a strong challenge to Romney in New Hampshire, where the former Massachusetts governor is focusing.

Iowa Republicans picked the election candidates who ended up winning the nomination in 1996 and 2000. More often, the caucuses have sent would-be challengers on to New Hampshire, where they confronted the front-runners, such as in 1980 and 1988.

This year, with the election focused on the economy, Republicans in Iowa and across the nation have worried aloud that Christian conservatives, who make up the core of the caucus electorate, and a large number of campaign events sponsored by church and Christian advocacy organizations were distorting the importance of social issues and marginalizing the significance of the caucuses.

Last month, Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, a Republican, urged election candidates of all ideological stripes to participate.

Army veteran weighs Democratic run in 2nd District

An Army veteran who runs a military consulting company out of Washington says he’s close to jumping into the race for northern Indiana’s 2nd Congressional District, as national Democrats seek to hold on to the key seat in the wake of incumbent Rep. Joe Donnelly’s decision to run for Senate.

Brendan Mullen, a 33-year-old West Point graduate who served in Iraq, told The Associated Press he could soon enter the Democratic primary race in the swing district that stretches from his hometown of South Bend to the farming communities of central Indiana.

Like any Democrat seeking the seat, Mullen would face the stark political reality Donnelly acknowledged when he announced his decision to enter the Senate race: The 2nd District already was difficult to win and will be even more so after Indiana Republicans redrew its boundaries in their favor this spring.

However, at least one Democrat already in the 2nd District race believes the Elkhart County additions will work in his favor. Goshen lawyer Andrew Straw, who announced his election candidacy last month, said he plans to build on his family roots in the county.

The buzz among Indiana’s Democratic establishment, however, has focused on Mullen as of late. During a Democratic fundraiser in Indianapolis last week, Mullen spoke with Democratic Party Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, after which Mullen and a Democratic Party spokesman described her as supportive of his efforts.

Anthony Weiner Resigning

Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) has told his friends he is prepared to resign from Congress, the New York Times reports.

A Democratic source tells HuffPost’s Sam Stein that Weiner called Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), who chairs the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday night to alert them of his plans to step down today.

A Democratic source tells HuffPost’s Mike McAuliff, ”At least the nightmare is over.”

In recent weeks, the embattled congressman has resisted calls to resign from his post amid intense controversy surrounding inappropriate interactions he admitted to engaging in online and lewd photos surfacing of the congressman.

Mitt Romney confident after debate; Jon Huntsman says he’ll run

A confident Mitt Romney took a post-debate victory lap threaded with swipes at President Obama on Tuesday, even as the ranks of the presumed front-runner’s Republican challengers grew with the announced entrance of former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman.

Huntsman’s announcement, made at a long-scheduled appearance in New York, was brief: ”I intend to announce I’ll be an election candidate for the presidency a week from now,” Huntsman said.

In response to a question about differences in the economic remedies being prescribed by the Republican election candidates, Romney said he was reminded of a question he was once asked: ”Who do you think would win a debate about running a business, between Jack Welch [the former GE chairman] and a second-year business student?”

Romney went on to say that ”that would be Jack Welch” and that there is a difference between merely mouthing words about a problem and finding solutions.

”The words are easy. The experience took a long time to get,” he said, referring to his years in business, including as an executive of a venture capital firm. Asked whether he was referring to Pawlenty, Romney declined to answer directly, noting that he hadn’t mentioned any names, and then turned the topic back to what he said were Obama’s shortcomings.

As he shook hands with patrons at diners in Derry and Manchester, Romney received compliments for his performance in Monday’s debate, which was defined more than anything else by his six rivals’ refusal to criticize him.

Romney felt confident enough, in chatting with the owner of a local hardware store, to promise a return visit in four years when, he said, ”I’ll probably have Secret Service with me.”

Huntsman’s announcement that he would be an election candidate came as little surprise. He has been courting voters in early primary states since he returned in April from his post as Obama’s ambassador to China.

7 Democrats seek Assembly seat in special election

Seven Democratic election candidates have filed nomination papers for a special election to fill the seat of a former Madison-area Democratic assemblyman.

A primary would be required on July 12 to replace former Rep. Joe Parisi, pending certification of election candidates by the Government Accountability Board. Parisi resigned in April after being elected Dane County executive.

No Republican election candidates filed for the seat that represents the heavily Democratic District 48. It covers parts of Madison and central Dane County.

The special election would be Aug. 9.

Election candidates are Fred Arnold, Dave De Felice, Andy Heidt, Katherine Jean Kocs, Bethany Ordaz, Vicky Selkowe and Chris Taylor, all of Madison.

The outcome will not alter the balance of the Assembly, where Republicans hold a large majority.

16 election candidates file for Wisconsin recall elections

Sixteen election candidates have filed nomination papers by Tuesday’s deadline in six state Senate districts where the Republican incumbents are being targeted for recall elections.

The Republican Party of Wisconsin recruited six people as ”protest candidates” — Republicans running as Democrats to force primaries, giving the Republican incumbents an additional month to prepare for a general election. The Democratic Party of Wisconsin encouraged three ”placeholder” election candidates meant to ensure all the races had primaries in the event Republicans didn’t run a so-called protest candidate in a given race. The Democrats wanted to ensure all the primary races will be on the same day.

Three Democrats also face recall elections.

The effort to remove the senators from office stems from the fight earlier this year over Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal to take away collective bargaining rights from nearly all public employees. The state Supreme Court overturned a lower court ruling Tuesday and said the law can go into effect.

The Republicans facing recall elections voted for the measure, and the Democrats fled to Illinois to block its passage. It’s the largest concerted effort to remove incumbents from office during their terms in Wisconsin history.

The Republican Party of Wisconsin’s executive director, Stephan Thompson, said in a statement that the so-called protest candidates are ”standing up in direct response to the fact that Republican election candidates face recall not for misconduct, but for taking a vote to protect middle-class families, unlike Democrat senators who face recalls for abandoning their responsibilities.”

The Democratic Party has said it doesn’t want to let Republicans to decide whether there is a primary or not in each race. Gillian Morris, the press secretary of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, said the three candidates it pushed were ”placeholder” candidates.

”These are not protest candidates they are placeholders because we need to help protect the integrity of the recall election process from the cynical Republican plot to delay the recall and deny the people their voice,” she said.

She said they expect to win all the recall elections.

Election candidates interested in taking on the Democratic incumbents in the July 19 recall elections have until next Tuesday to file. The targeted Democrats are Sens. Bob Wirch of Pleasant Prairie, Jim Holperin of Conover and Dave Hansen of Green Bay.

Obama offers optimistic assessment of economy in North Carolina

President Obama pushed a glass-half-full message on the economy as he visited a North Carolina manufacturing plant Monday, preferring a long-term view of the nation’s economic recovery amid new uncertainty.

”We shouldn’t pretend that a lot of folks out there are not still struggling. But I am absolutely optimistic that we’ve got everything it takes for us to succeed in the 21st century,” Obama said at Cree Inc., which produces energy-efficient lighting. ”We are a people who dream big, even when times are tough — especially when times are tough. We’re a people who reach forward, who look out to the horizon and remember that together there’s nothing we can’t do.”

It was the latest event on jobs from the president in a state he’s likely to contest fiercely in the 2012 campaign. North Carolina was one of the long-running red states that Obama carried in 2008.

Obama sought some measure of credit for progress at Cree, citing growth in its business since he visited as an election candidate three years ago.

”You’re helping to lead a clean-energy revolution. You’re helping lead the comeback of American manufacturing. This is a company where the future will be won,” he said.

Though much of his message was familiar, the White House’s strategy is focused on generating positive coverage in local media.
Obama made a point of mentioning that the council was organized ”many months ago, not in response to one jobs report.” The national unemployment rate ticked up to 9.1% in May; it stood at 9.7% in North Carolina, according to the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

North Carolina is the first stop on a two-day trip that is heavy on politics. In Miami on Monday night, Obama will raise money for his reelection campaign. On Tuesday he visits Puerto Rico, the first such visit by a sitting president in half a century and the latest sign of outreach to the Latino community.

GOP rivals go easy on Romney in first major debate

Mitt Romney led six of his Republican rivals in attacks on President Obama in a highly diffuse debate Monday night that did nothing to upend the former Massachusetts governor’s front-runner status.

The nationally broadcast two-hour debate, the first major meeting of the 2012 presidential contest, hewed to Ronald Reagan’s ”11th commandment” of intraparty harmony. On more than one occasion, rival election candidates ducked direct invitations to attack Romney. Tim Pawlenty, who had skewered Romney’s healthcare mandate on Sunday as ”Obamneycare,” shrank from leveling that charge face to face on the New Hampshire debate stage.

”President Obama is the person who I quoted in saying he looked to Massachusetts for designing his program. He’s the one who said it’s a blueprint and that he merged the two programs,” Pawlenty said, shrugging off ownership of the term he had used.

Another Romney rival, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, a staunch social conservative, dodged when asked by an audience member whether the former Massachusetts governor’s turnaround on the issue of abortion, from supporting abortion rights to being avowedly antiabortion, had been genuine or a matter of political calculation.

That prompted the moderator to ask the rest of the election candidates whether his flip on abortion rights, an issue that dogged Romney in his unsuccessful 2008 run, should be important in 2012.

The debate, in the first-in-the-nation primary state, was devoted largely to domestic issues. And the election candidates showcased their agreement on a solidly conservative agenda: the need to cut taxes, set ambitious economic growth targets, make it more difficult for labor unions to organize, and repeal Obama’s healthcare law. Except for Cain and Texas Rep. Ron Paul, all the election candidates also said they favored a constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage.

New Hampshire Debate: News & Updates From GOP Presidential Forum

Seven Republican presidential hopeful election candidates are facing off in New Hampshire’s first presidential debate of the 2012 election season Monday night.

The list of names taking part in the forum includes: U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, and former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.).

All of the participants have officially launched campaigns for the White House in the next election cycle with the exception of Bachmann, who is expected to officially announce her candidacy for president later this month in Iowa.

Two new polls out on the evolving primary match-up show Romney to be running ahead of the pack. The race for the Republican presidential nomination, however, remains far from settled.

Granite State-based outlets WMUR and the Union Leader, along with CNN, are sponsoring the debate being held at St. Anselm College on Monday night.