Candidates make last-minute Iowa appeals

For the most part, candidates spent New Year's Day trying to energize supporters.

'House Party Huddles'
In the Des Moines area, Romney combined football and politics at a series of "House Party Huddles." At one, children ran around bashing one another with large, red foam mitts that read "Mitt '08."

At an Elks Lodge in Cedar Rapids, Huckabee pulled out a bass guitar and played "Blue Suede Shoes" and "Mustang Sally" with a singer and drummer, a warm-up perhaps for his appearance Wednesday with Jay Leno on NBC's "Tonight Show."

Obama's family was enthusiastic, buoyed by a Des Moines Register poll that showed him leading. His wife, Michelle, talked about "when Barack is the next president of the United States" and he referred to her "the next first lady of the United States."

Later, in Council Bluffs, Obama said that while some of his rivals focused on their experience, he was proud to run a campaign on hope.

"You've got to have hope if you are a black man named Obama running for the presidency of the United States of America," he said.

His chief rival, Clinton, campaigned with her 88-year old mother, Dorothy Rodham, and daughter, Chelsea, in tow as she worked to solidify her already strong support among female voters. Her husband, former President Clinton, campaigned separately, joking at one event that he was missing out on a day of football games and being "the quintessential indolent American male on New Year's Day."

Video Clinton interview Jan. 2: Sen. Hillary Clinton talks with TODAY's Meredith Vieira about her run. Today show

His faux grumbling aside, Clinton's campaign seized on a CNN poll that had her in the lead as aides picked apart the methodology of the Register survey.

"I don't know about you but I am feeling great!" she said at her first event in Ames. Working hard to grab the momentum, Clinton joked about the extremes to which she would go to win support, recalling a campaign appearance among farmers and ranchers in an arena that normally is the site of cattle auctions.

"If you want to look inside my mouth to figure out whether you want to vote for me, that's fine, too," Clinton quipped. "Whatever it takes."

Edwards also brought his wife and two young children along for the final push, a "marathon for the middle class" during which he will continue to hammer away at pocketbook issues on an overnight drive to energize backers and deliver them to the caucuses.

"We hope for the next 36 hours that all of you will be as focused and energized as we are," he said, beginning the tour with a rally before about 500 people jammed into a ballroom at the student union at Iowa State University in Ames.

Turning to the airwaves
All three also turned to the airwaves to urge voters to attend caucuses.

Clinton and Obama were to air longer-than-usual, two-minute ads during Wednesday's evening news programs. Edwards bought a full-page ad in the Des Moines Register featuring a testimonial from a worker who was laid off from an Iowa Maytag plant. The worker also will appear in a one-minute TV ad for Edwards.

In a sign of the increasingly heated battles beyond Iowa, Republican John McCain, who isn't playing Iowa as aggressively as he is New Hampshire, opened a new line of criticism against Romney in a new Web video that could end up on TV. "Mitt Romney says the next president doesn't need foreign policy experience," it says.

Conversely, Romney rolled out a Web video skewering McCain, and began airing a TV ad in New Hampshire that pivots from his criticism of his rivals and urges people to "vote for tomorrow."

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