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Huckabee, Fiorina, Carson Blitz Iowa After Announcing Presidential Bids

Clay Masters
/
IPR

Recently announced Republican presidential candidate and former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina is campaigning in Iowa Thursday. She’s one of a number of GOP candidates who have officially announced they’re running for president this week to swing through the first-in-the-nation caucus state. 

Former Arkansas Governor and winner of the 2008 Iowa Republican caucuses Mike Huckabee wrapped up an early swing through the state on Wednesday night in a barn at Living History Farms in Urbandale.

“What this election needs to be about is making sure that America is once again a nation where people out here in the heartland of this country are not forgotten,” Huckabee says to the crowd of several hundred after sitting in on bass guitar with the opening country band. 

Huckabee also took aim at President Obama's foreign policy. 

"Can you name any country on earth with whom we have a better relationship now than we did six and a half years ago?” Huckabee asks the crowd that responds with a resounding 'no'.

"Sometimes if I ask that question somebody will say Iran," Huckabee says to a burst of laughter. “Actually we don’t have a better relationship with them because they take us for chumps.”

With kids in tow, husband and wife Richard Collum and Lori Joy Collum of Urbandale stayed afterwards to get a picture with Huckabee. Lori is already throwing her support behind the former Arkansas Governor.

“I think he just stands for family values and for America and bringing us back where we need to be,” says Lori Joy Collum. Her husband wants to see what other Republican candidates have to say before he makes up his mind.

"It’s too early,” says Richard Collum. “We’ll wait and see.”

Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson was also in the state this week. Meanwhile, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker leads in the most recent Quinnipiac University poll of Iowa voters. Walker has not yet officially announced he’s running for president but also has been spending a lot of time in Iowa. 

Clay Masters is the senior politics reporter for MPR News.