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Republican Mike Huckabee, riding a wave of success in recent presidential polls, drew around 400 supporters—including hundreds of home-schoolers and their children—to uptown Charlotte this morning.

Supporters clutching kids and signs crammed into a 27th floor restaurant in Charlotte Plaza, crowding elevators and creating temporary gridlock in the building's lobby, reports The Charlotte Observer's Jim Morrill.

The Charlotte stop kicked off a two-day swing through South Carolina for the former Arkansas governor. He'll visit Charleston, Myrtle Beach, Columbia and Greenville.

Two recent polls show Huckabee leading his GOP rivals in South Carolina. A new Associated Press poll released Friday shows he has surged to second in the GOP field behind former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. And a Des Moines Register poll this week showed him leading in Iowa, whose Jan. 3 caucuses kick off the presidential nominating contests.

Read more after the jump.

Mike Huckabee couldn't be coming to North Carolina at a better time.

The former Arkansas governor had long ago scheduled a fundraiser at the Greensboro home of longtime Republican activist Mary Elizabeth Irvin on Thursday.

But state campaign director Bill Cobey says they're planning for a lot more people, now that Huckabee is surging in the polls in Iowa.

"All of a sudden we're getting a lot of phone calls and e-mails," he told Dome. "A lot more people are interested in coming."

The $100-a-plate dinner is not Huckabee's first visit here. He had a low-key fundraiser in North Raleigh in March and came to the state GOP convention in New Bern in June of 2006.

He also spoke at the GOP convention in 2000, when he first met Cobey, then the state chairman.

"People thought I was crazy backing Governor Huckabee," he says. "But I knew him and how well he connects with people, and I knew what kind of candidate he would be."