PORTSMOUTH, N.H. -- With just five days to go until the New Hampshire primary, former Utah governor Jon Huntsman's most threatening opponent may not be Mitt Romney or Rick Santorum, but Father Time.

"We've got the tyranny of the clock moving against us now. And we're moving as quickly as we can," he said in Portsmouth today, citing his late entry into the race this summer.

Huntsman, who finished serving as Barack Obama's ambassador to China in May, has campaigned aggressively in New Hampshire and skipped Iowa over the past six months. However, with less than a week to go, he remains stuck in high single digits in state polls.

Send in your questions for Sunday's NBC News-Facebook debate on Meet the Press

With time running out, Huntsman admits he needs a "market moving event" to keep his candidacy alive. Consequently, he has ratcheted up his attacks on front-runner Romney, after criticizing the former Massachusetts governor as an "establishment" and "status quo" candidate for the last week.

"The people of New Hampshire will not be told for whom to vote," Huntsman told an audience of about 300 tonight in Newport. "They want people to earn their vote, as opposed to sitting down in South Carolina, so certain of victory."

Huntsman was referring to Romney's Thursday trip to South Carolina, where he will campaign before returning to New Hampshire Friday afternoon.

The former ambassador to China added that Romney is resting on his laurels as he enjoys a wide lead in New Hampshire polls. By spending time outside of the first-in-the-nation state, Huntsman said, "That would pretty much suggest that you feel you've got it wrapped up and that would be taking the voters for granted."

Meanwhile, Huntsman is searching for every last vote he can find in a style that resembles Rick Santorum's town-by-town Iowa campaign.

 "I need your vote," he routinely bellows into the microphone at town hall meetings.

Huntsman hopes his handshake-by-handshake method will pay off. Santorum's near win in Iowa, he said, proved that "grassroots politicking still means something."

"You can't Twitter your way to prosperity. You can't Facebook your way to prosperity. You have to be in the state," Huntsman said today.

One voter in Portsmouth pointed out to Huntsman today that his long-shot campaign for the GOP nomination resembles a David versus Goliath effort, with Romney as Goliath. Huntsman agreed, then paused and tried to add a positive spin: "New Hampshire loves an underdog!" he said hopefully.

On a conference call this morning with more than 100 staffers and supporters, Herman Cain said that he will not endorse another Republican presidential candidate today, and that he has no plans to back anyone anytime soon.

"I am not endorsing anybody today or in the very immediate future," he said. "I can't say I won't endorse, but not in the immediate timeframe."

But Cain added that he would eventually endorse. "It's gonna happen, it's gonna happen. I have a process in mind that I'm going to go through in order to determine who I could possibly endorsement... It won't happen today. Most likely, it won't happen this week. They can calm down about that expectation."

Today's conference call -- to which NBC News listened after being tipped off by a source close to the campaign -- was the first time Cain addressed his full campaign team since the announcement on Saturday that he would suspend his campaign. The ex-Godfather's Pizza CEO was energetic and nostalgic throughout the call, and he remained defiant that the allegations against him (extramarital affair, sexual harassment) were all false. He described the "unrelenting" personal pain that the campaign had had on him and his family.

Cain also went into more detail about his much-anticipated talk with his wife on Friday evening, telling supporters that they arrived at the decision to leave the race together.

"The pain endured by my wife and my family was unrelenting," Cain said of the past few months on the campaign trail.

"My wife and I talked on Friday at home. It was honest and open; it was a great conversation. What went on in the conversation, that's between my wife and me. I was at peace with her and she was at peace with me. The sooner the media stopped spinning this crap ... the better."

But the candidate who has been criticized for running to sell books -- not win the presidency -- is not looking to shy from the spotlight.

"You will be hearing about my next plans," he said chuckling. "I am probably going to do another book. So what! I don't know what my plans are relatively to radio and TV, but remember I did radio and TV before running for office," he said.

Cain's plans for the next chapter of his career were quickly followed by an attempt to directly address accusations that he sought to promote his recently-published book while campaigning, or perhaps host a cable news television show in the future.

"That is not my motivation," he said. "I did not choose to run for the president of the United States to advance my own self.

Cain also used the call to ease his staffer's minds in the wake of them finding out just days ago that they had lost their jobs. Financially, he said his campaign aims to pay his staff through the end of December, "so you can at least have a Merry Christmas and not worry about whether not you're going to have a paycheck," he said. "I didn't want you to worry about what you were going to do over the holidays."

As Cain concluded his thoughts, he left his staff with a few reflections rife with nostalgia and self-congratulation.

"We went from 21% name ID to 99.9% name I.D., if you catch my drift" he said.

Cain relished the frequency of GOP debates, and credited them as the reason for his one-time surge in the polls. "I believe the debates propelled my candidacy and gave me a chance and people to get to know Herman Cain," he said. "That is historic for a non-politician. On the other hand, what it says is, 'How long is it going to be before the next non-politcian to do what I did, what happened to me?' This is just an open question. I think America is going to decide and make a choice at some point."

But, above all, Cain wanted his supporters to know that he did not run for president to advance his personal brand.

"If you look at the whole situation going back to where I started, I did not want to be president just for sake of being president. I wanted to be president so we can change from the inside," he said.

By NBC's Jo Ling Kent and Alex Moe

CONCORD, NH and DES MOINES, Iowa-- While filing papers for the New Hampshire primary Tuesday, Newt Gingrich announced his campaign fundraising totals this month alone have surpassed the amount raised in the entire third quarter.

"As of today, [we] raised more money in October than we raised in the entire last quarter.  And we have more donors as of 2 days ago than we've had all the last quarter," Gingrich said.

Campaign spokesman R.C. Hammond confirmed to NBC News that Gingrich "surpassed the $800,000 mark today." According to the campaign, they have received 11,200 donations this month at an average of $75. Three out of four donors are first-time contributors.

This comes after Herman Cain said he'd been raising $1 million a week since Oct. 1. Gingrich's team gave no indication of how much exactly they've raised, just that it was more than the $808,000 it took in from July to September.

"There was a long stretch where we didn't have much resources and a lot of people thought we were dead," Gingrich told reporters.

Gingrich - who recently expanded his staff and hired a New Hampshire state director, Andrew Hemingway - also hired a former Michele Bachmann staffer. Matt LeDuc recently left the Bachmann campaign in the Granite State during the staff exodus this week, Hemingway confirmed to NBC News today.

The former House Speaker called this an "upward swing that gives us the resources to be more competitive" across the country. The Gingrich campaign's Iowa headquarters will be officially opening in the coming weeks.

"If we continue to improve at this pace, I think we'll be able to run a full-blown campaign and be totally competitive in terms of advertising and other things by the time we get to early January," Gingrich said.

“Money translates into ground game and ground game is important in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina,” Hammond said. The addition of paid Iowa staffers is forthcoming.

Gingrich also declared his commitment to competing in the New Hampshire primary, arguing that front-runner Mitt Romney will face a challenge in the state's contest despite the former Massachusetts governor's strong poll numbers that put him in a double-digit lead in the state.

"I do not believe that Governor Romney has a lock on this state," Gingrich said. "The governor has a strong lead here, but the campaign has only begun in terms of ideas and issues and drawing contrast." 

Gingrich is polling nationally at 8 percent, according to a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

When asked why he felt momentum in his campaign, Gingrich credited his recent debate performances and criticized his fellow candidates.

"I do think that bickering is destructive for the Republican Party," he said of the debates. "I think that it diminishes the respect people have for the process..I think it's bad for the party."