Huntsman: I need a "market moving" event

Portsmouth, N.H. -- Five days before the New Hampshire presidential primary, where he's staked his campaign, Jon Huntsman said Thursday that he will need a "market-moving event" to pull off a win against GOP front-runner Mitt Romney and invited Democrats and independents to support him.

At a campaign stop at the Pease International Trade Port in Portsmouth, Huntsman was asked by a member of the audience how he would beat Romney when poll numbers continue to dramatically favor the former Massachusetts governor, who also has made New Hampshire a prime target.

"You have to have a market-moving event," Huntsman told the crowd in an overflowing conference room. He said he hoped for a turnaround like the one former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum pulled off when he placed just eight votes behind Romney in the Iowa caucus Tuesday night. Santorum had been trailing in the polls until the final days before the caucus, and he attributed his success to several months of town-by-town retail politics.

"The investment that we're making here in New Hampshire is very much along those lines," Huntsman said. "And I'm guessing that the retail politics we have done in this state will [be] to our benefit in creating a market-moving event. You don't have a market-moving event, you're done!"

At another event later in the day, Huntsman said, "I look at Santorum in Iowa, and he put in a lot of miles. And as I was sharing with somebody earlier, a poll I think even a week ago, we were leading him in one poll, we were at six percent, he was at five percent - things changed very, very quickly. So I think it's premature to be extrapolating any of the data coming from polls."

As his rivals tailor their pitches conservatives, Huntsman said that he'll need crossover Democrats and independents to win in New Hampshire. "I'm the underdog in this race, make no mistake about it," he told employees of Goss International in Durham, N.H. "But you know what? New Hampshire loves an underdog. ... Do you have an enormous responsibility next week as voters? I don't care if you're Republican, Democrat or independent, I'll take any of ya!"

Huntsman says that that exceeding expectations would qualify as enough of a "market-moving event" to propel him into the next two early primaries. "We have to prove that we can perform well in this market. That's called a market-moving event. That then proves a point of electability, and it's then interpreted as such downstream in South Carolina and Florida," he said.

Reminded that Romney is still leading polls in the state by a large margin, Huntsman took the opportunity to slam the former Massachusetts governor for being "on three sides of all the major issues of the day."