ST PETERSBURG, Florida - Republican White House hopefuls Mitt Romney and Rudolph Giuliani traded body blows over illegal immigration Wednesday as tempers flared at the party's latest campaign debate.
The angry, personal clashes were the latest sign of rising tensions in the hyper competitive Republican race, just 35 days before the first nominating clash in the 2008 race -- the Iowa caucuses.
Former New York mayor Giuliani bluntly accused Romney of turning his official residence when he was governor of Massachusetts into a "sanctuary mansion" for undocumented workers.
"You did have illegal immigrants working at your mansion, didn't you?" Giuliani asked.
Romney hit back, branding Giuliani's remarks "offensive" and accused him of wanting to force homeowners to demand official papers from casual workers with a "funny accent."
He also accused Giuliani of pursuing policies favorable to illegal immigrants while he ran New York.
Senator John McCain meanwhile accused his colleagues of "demagoging" the immigration issue, which is a deep faultline in US politics.
The candidates had gathered for a pioneering CNN debate using questions uploaded by voters to video-sharing website YouTube.
Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee went into the debate on a roll, basking in a new opinion poll which found him overhauling Romney in Iowa.
He also rebuked Romney: "We are a better country than to punish children for what their parents did," he said, defending the idea of allowing the offspring of illegal immigrants to get state education benefits.
Huckabee led a new Rasmussen Reports poll with 28 percent of a sample of likely Republican caucus goers in Iowa, with Romney second on 25 percent.
National front-runner Giuliani was third in the midwestern state with 12 percent, and former actor and Senator Fred Thompson was the only other candidate in double figures on 11 percent.
Given the poll's 3.5 percentage point margin of error, the race remains statistically deadlocked in Iowa, but Huckabee's momentum has also been picked up by other recent opinion surveys.
Despite his surge in Iowa, Huckabee remains a long odds prospect in other key states and nationwide, but is hoping a victory or strong second place in Iowa could vault him into national contention.
Giuliani is seen as national front-runner in the Republican race, but faces an uphill task in trying to win over conservatives skeptical of his positions on gay rights and abortion.
Romney is strong in Iowa, and New Hampshire, which holds first-in-the-nation presidential primary elections on January 8.
Candidates had braced for the unknown in the debate, which follows a Democratic YouTube encounter earlier in the campaign.
While Democrats appeared to embrace the novel format, a sign of the way the Internet is writing campaigning blueprints, Republicans were more wary of handling unscripted and sometimes quirky questions.
Romney had expressed concern that the gravity of the presidential campaign could be called into question if he was forced to take questions from a mock up of a snowman.
11/29/2007 01:49 GMT