When he wasn't greeting the public, Huckabee churned out more television interviews, which often provide low-confrontation moments for a candidate to shine -- as when Huckabee donned a Green Bay Packers necktie for a boyish-looking television news reporter. (The reporter promptly dropped his journalistic impartiality, offering his support to the candidate.)
Yet even friendly venues can't spare Huckabee from repeated questions about why he soldiers on. Former candidate Mitt Romney's endorsement last week of McCain prompted a new round of reminders from reporters that Huckabee could win virtually every remaining contest, by a wide margin, and still fall short of the delegate total needed to secure his party's nomination.
Huckabee has several answers to the question: that McCain could still stumble. That he won't be forced out by Washington insiders. That he still speaks for many voters, whom he refuses to let down.
"I'm yet to have one of my supporters tell me it's time to quit, not one," Huckabee said. "We are still seeing dramatic traffic to my website, new donors every day. They are saying, 'Don't quit, you are speaking for us.' "
News that Huckabee was leaving the campaign trail Friday for the Cayman Islands, where he was delivering a paid speech to young professionals Saturday night, renewed questions about whether his campaign was losing steam.
But the candidate said that the speaking engagement had been scheduled long ago and that he had to continue to accept such engagements to pay his bills.
Not unlike former Democratic candidate John Edwards, Huckabee plays on his personal story -- the boy with modest Southern roots striving to make it in the world of national politics -- to build empathy with audiences filled with working-class voters.
He tells of a mother who grew up in a home with dirt floors and no electricity, and of a father who didn't graduate from high school. He describes going to work at 14, and then pushing through college in a hurry because he couldn't afford to keep paying the tuition.
Huckabee doesn't say it explicitly, but when he talks about the Declaration of Independence -- "all men are created equal" -- it's clear he means the audience to see his hopes, and theirs, in those famous words.
Long before Democratic candidate Barack Obama, Huckabee insists, "I have been out there, talking about hope.
"There is a certain, I think, vicarious attachment people have, because they know if the American dream can work for me, then it can work for their kids too," he said.
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james.rainey@latimes.com
