Mitt Romney returns to New Hampshire, hoping to beat expectations

Updated 9:30 a.m. ET

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- After the last 72 hours in the Republican presidential race, Mitt Romney's strategy of avoiding the multiple rounds of morning show interviews, Sunday show skewerings and evening news sit downs so popular with his rivals looks smart. But if the second-time-around GOP presidential candidate has kept a low profile nationally, it's an entirely different story in the state where he's returning Thursday.

A hop, skip and a jump away from Romney's Boston campaign headquarters, New Hampshire is where Romney announced his candidacy on June 2. It's where he owns property and summers with his wife, five children, and 16 grandchildren. It's where he has held 15 town halls, racked up 85 endorsements, and had 225 volunteers - 110 of whom don't even live in New Hampshire - turn out for him over the weekend to make calls and hang signs despite an unexpected snowstorm that knocked out half of the northeast.

And it's where, on Wednesday, Elaine Swinford became the second Republican state lawmaker in a week to defect from Texas Gov. Rick Perry's presidential campaign to Romney.

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When Romney returns to the state Thursday to deliver what his campaign is billing as a major policy address on spending, "it's like he's coming home," says Jason McBride, Romney's New Hampshire state director.

Support for the former governor of neighboring Massachusetts appears strong in the state that will hold the nation's first presidential primary on Jan. 10. In a CNN/Time/ORC International poll out last week, 40 percent of New Hampshire respondents said they prefer Romney if the election were held now. That put him 27 points ahead of the next closest candidate, Herman Cain. He has also nailed down dozens of endorsements from well known politicians, notably John H. Sununu, a former New Hampshire governor and White House chief of staff, and Judd Gregg, a former governor and senator.

But all of that good news comes with a downside: Romney not only has to do well in New Hampshire, he has to beat expectations. Anything less than a convincing win in a state where he's so well connected could be a potentially lethal blow to the juggernaut Romney hopes to launch here. And this is a state that likes to humble frontrunners, notes New Hampshire Republican Chairman Wayne MacDonald, recalling a 1984 New Hampshire primary race when Sen. Gary Hart upended a former vice president, Walter Mondale. That's why Romney's supporters say he's taking nothing for granted.

Compared to his 2008 effort, "Romney's campaign is better run and better organized than it was four years ago by a significant proportion," said Gregg. "I don't think there's much he or his people could be doing any better."

MacDonald, officially neutral in the race, seconds that assessment. "I would say definitely - with no bias intended - Mitt Romney is looking very strong right now," he said.

Romney's visit Thursday is just the latest installment in a long-term effort to build support in a state whose voters demand candidates' attention - and lots of it. "This is a hands on place," Gregg said, joking of people complaining that "I've only met him three times!"

The Romney New Hampshire team holds regular meetings every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at campaign headquarters here. If a new poll has just coming out showing Romney in the lead, McBride says he tells his troops: "We have to run like we're behind."

One potential stumbling block for Romney in New Hampshire: the Iowa caucus. While New Hampshire cherishes its "First in the Nation" primary status, the result of the Iowa caucuses, scheduled for a week before, "doesn't dominate but it does resonate" when New Hampshire voters go to the polls the following week, said Gregg. "Iowa is still the first serious step in the process."

Romney has been so ambivalent about campaigning in Iowa, where he has a hard time winning over the state's influential evangelical voters, that the state's governor, Terry Branstad, scolded him for his truancy this week.

Another problem that Gregg sees for Romney? "Just the fact that the national media wants a race. It's understandable So they're trying to rehab this candidate or that candidate after they shoot themselves in the foot. So I'm presuming that someone will rehabilitate themselves here to seem like a viable candidate."

New Hampshire Congressman Frank Guinta sees Jon Huntsman as one of the biggest threats to Romney in the state's presidential primary, with a serious potential to "slingshot" up in the polls. The former Utah governor is devoting all of his resources to New Hampshire and is making an appeal to moderate Republicans and the state's independent voters - who are allowed to vote in the GOP primary. Huntsman now has more than 20 paid staffers in the state since relocating his headquarters staff from Orlando to Manchester.

"Huntsman's strategy is a smart one," Guinta said. "I think he feels that his issues have an ability to gain traction, particularly with the way the field is set up." Guinta points to Huntsman's accessibility and full-time investment in New Hampshire as a selling point to voters. "My staff runs into him getting coffee around the corner from my office. You see him in the polls and he's not resonating - but he's got the ability to jump 10 or 15 points, I think."

Nancy Bell, a secretary from Wolfeboro, N.H., is hoping so.  A lifelong Republican very active in the political process, this is only the second time in her life she has put a campaign sign on her front lawn - and it is Huntsman's. "He dropped out of high school and joined a band. Then he dropped back in. He's a real person! He's just like all of us." Bell finds Romney, by contrast, too polished.

Nor can Rick Perry be counted out in the state. The Perry team is on par with the Romney staff: Both campaigns have nine paid staffers in the state - and Perry's "still hiring," according to former New Hampshire Republican Chairman Paul Young, who is working for the campaign. About 75 Perry supporters showed up at midday in Concord last week to cheer their candidate on as he filed paperwork to win a spot on the primary ballot.

Herman Cain's campaign currently has one paid staffer in New Hampshire - director of field operations Charlie Spano. He says the campaign has about more than 50 volunteers and is planning on adding two more staff jobs soon.

Guinta has yet to decide whom he is going to endorse, but all of the candidates have courted the former Manchester mayor. When he won his first congressional race last November, a myriad of congratulatory calls rolled in. Among the very first to dial up? Mitt Romney.