WASHINGTON - Mike Huckabee was ahead in a poll out Friday among Republican presidential hopefuls in the key early primary state of South Carolina, as his campaign announced hiring a strategist who worked with former president Ronald Reagan.
A CNN/Opinion Research poll showed Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, ahead of his better-known Republican rivals with 24 percent support.
Next in the poll came former Tennessee senator and television actor Fred Thompson with 17 percent, while New York City's former mayor Rudolph Giuliani and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney tied at 16 percent.
In October Huckabee had just four percent in national polls, far behind long-time front-runner Giuliani.
The Republican South Carolina primary is set for January 19. Democrats in the state have their primary one week later, on January 26.
The telephone poll of 1,256 people, conducted December 9-12, has a four point plus or minus margin of error.
The poll results were released on the same day that Huckabee announced hiring Ed Rollins, best known for managing Ronald Reagan's sweeping 1984 presidential re-election, as his new national campaign manager.
"Ed is an unparalleled strategist," Huckabee said in a statement. "Ed's experience and track record of building winning coalitions within our party ... makes him a good fit for our campaign."
Rollins also has a reputation for leading slash-and-burn campaigns -- detailed in his 1996 memoir "Bare Knuckles and Back Rooms" -- that may seem out of step with Huckabee's cheery public persona.
Rollins, for example, managed Christine Todd Whitman's razor-thin successful 1993 New Jersey gubernatorial race, then claimed in a magazine interview that he secretly paid black pastors and Democratic Party workers to stay home on election day. He partially retracted the claim in a later interview.
Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister, shares the home town of Hope, Arkansas, with Democratic former president Bill Clinton.
ch-bur/sg
12/15/2007 03:21 GMT