I would say that Huntsman's retail politicking has worked, in the sense that he is reaching the voters he might have been expected to reach, given the way he has framed his campaign to the public.

The two states' claim to homespun "retail politicking" is increasingly a media conceit.

Gore had done more retail politicking there, in part because an aggressive campaign team on the ground had won some of its screaming matches with the vice-presidential staff.

For more than three decades, the Iowa presidential caucuses and the New Hampshire primary have been hailed as the last hopes for keeping the candidates focused on human-scale retail politicking.

Rendell defeated Fisher with "endless retail politicking" and a hard-working campaign.

If we didn't know better, we might have compared the scene to the sort of retail politicking found every four years in a place like, oh, New Hampshire.

But any doubts that these tours served more than journalistic duty were put to rest by his display of retail politicking at a country club outside Pittsburgh.

C. Virginia Fields did a bit of retail politicking as well, but mostly stuck to chatting with her aide, as did the others.

If Mr. Bush likes to call his retail politicking "fertilizing the grass roots," the volunteer recruitment can create a kind of hothouse effect.

Yet, freed from the need to raise money, he has also spent 18 months traveling around the state and talking to some 700 groups and individuals in the most old-fashioned sort of retail politicking.