on our broadcast tonight, amazing race. a photo finish in the first presidential contest of the year, as tight as it gets. now it's on to new hampshire without the only woman in the race. fighting cancer. tonight there is a new progress report on what's saving lives and the new growing risk factor. driven to court. a woman takes on a major automaker over what she considered a promise of exactly the kind of gas mileage she'd get with her new hybrid. and making a difference. a mom on a mission making dreams come true for some young superheroes. come true for some young superheroes. "nightly news" begins now. captions paid for by nbc-universal television

good evening. what a wild start to the gop presidential primary season. it was a long night, as close as they get, and perfectly in keeping with the wild swings of this campaign so far. and today, two different campaigns woke up to the ultimate good news/bad news equation in politics. the good news for mitt romney, he won in iowa. the bad news, it was just by eight votes and he couldn't crack 25%, just like four years ago and millions of dollars ago. good news for rick santorum, a huge second place finish for him. he came within eight votes of winning and now he's got to go compete with a fraction of the money and the staff of the bigger campaigns. it was such a wild night. it went so late the des moines register went through half a dozen dummy front pages for just about any outcome until we knew the outcome was going to hinge on eight votes and they could finally put out a morning paper front page. today the field of candidates

got lighter by one and today the focus shifted all the way to the east to new hampshire. the rest of the campaign begins now and our coverage begins tonight with nbc's peter alexander in manchester, new hampshire. peter, good evening. >> reporter: brian, good evening to you. after a long night, mitt romney hustled here to new hampshire looking to translate the narrow victory into big momentum in the state announcing a key endorsement from a man who has won two republican primaries here in the past. mitt romney with his wife ann at his side, all smiles as they arrived in new hampshire after a dramatic late night iowa win. >> get any sleep last night? >> no. >> reporter: romney's slim margin of just eight votes over a surging rick santorum exposed sharp a divisions among republicans. >> many of the most conservative elements of the party have not embraced him. they will not embrace him. they do not trust him.

so he has a long way to go to get conservatives in his column. >> reporter: the gop's 2008 presidential nominee, john mccain, today endorsed his former rival arguing new hampshire where romney holds a wide lead will erase any doubt that romney should be the republican nominee. >> we will get an overwhelming vote that will catapult this candidate to the white house. >> reporter: while the campaign hoped for a triumphant arrival here, romney was met by a series of tough, combative questions at this town hall organized by his own campaign. >> hold on. it's my turn. you had your turn. now it's my turn. >> reporter: newt gingrich made it clear he will step up his fight despite the disappointing fourth place finish. >> all we want -- a massachusetts moderate who will be good at managing the decay. >> reporter: today gingrich welcomed romney to the granite state with this full-page ad calling the former governor a timid massachusetts moderate while continuing to denounce the barrage of negative campaign ads

from romney supporters. >> well, it's pretty clear. he's not truthful about his record in massachusetts and his background. he's not truthful about his pac which has his staff running it and his millionaire friends donating to it, although in secret. >> reporter: romney faces challenges on two fronts in new hampshire. gingrich and santorum on the right, huntsman on the left. the former utah governor who staked his entire campaign on this state today dismissed both the iowa results and the gop frontrunner. >> you can get all the doles and all the mccains in the world, as romney probably will. but in the end, nobody cares. >> reporter: for his part ron paul took the day off following his third place finish here in iowa where he nearly tripled his vote total from four years ago proving that his anti-war, limited government message may prove a significant factor in the rest of this race. >> peter alexander in manchester starting off our coverage tonight. peter, thanks. as we said, the race lost a candidate today, the only woman

in the race is out. michele bachmann was also the only native iowan in the race but she failed to carry a single one of the 99 counties. in her announcement this morning surrounded by family, she kept up her criticism of president obama, said she would continue to work to try to defeat him. rick perry said late last night he was going home to texas to decide and reassess his campaign. he's now done that, says he's staying in and will participate in the debates in new hampshire this weekend. after that he will campaign in south carolina. if the big story line of last night was the rise of rick santorum, the question today became about the money and the organization he will need. as they say in the big leagues, welcome to the nfl. andrea mitchell is part of our team that traveled overnight from iowa to new hampshire. she's with us from there tonight. andrea, good evening. >> reporter: good evening, brian.

rick santorum today had a bare bones campaign and despite that managed to surge to a virtual tie, but now he's got to prove he can really deliver. [ applause ] >> oh, you're doing it! >> 99 counties. 381 town hall meetings. 36 pizza ranches. [ laughter ] >> reporter: a journey in a pickup truck, not a fancy campaign bus. with almost no staff and for months almost no one showing up. >> good morning, everybody. thank you so much for coming out. >> reporter: santorum seemed at times the rodney dangerfield of candidates, having to clamor for attention. >> i know those of us at the end don't get a lot of questions. >> reporter: so how did we he -- he do it? partly because of the blue collar appeal he said makes him more electable than mitt romney. it's how he got to the senate from pennsylvania. >> i won because i went out and worked in the communities like i grew up in. butler, pennsylvania, a steel town. >> reporter: in the house, then the senate for 16 years, santorum lost re-election in

2006. partly because he was too conservative for pennsylvania on social issues. but his life story, seven children including a special needs child, was perfectly in tune with iowa's evangelical voters. >> there is another little girl who's not here tonight. she's our little angel. that's isabella maria. >> reporter: he connected when he defended their decision to bring home another child, a premature infant who died in the hospital. >> we brought him home, showed him to our children. we wanted to let them know that they had a brother and who he was. >> reporter: already santorum's unscripted style is forcing a change in the well-oiled romney campaign. as santorum wound up his speech last night, the romney staff quickly pulled down their candidate's teleprompter for romney's appearance moments later. now he could be a real threat. santorum will face a barrage of attacks from republican rivals and democrats. to scare south carolina republicans democrats already

dredged up this old santorum ad. >> i'm even working with hillary clinton to limit inappropriate material in children's video games. >> reporter: santorum budgeted only $37,000 for tv ads in south carolina and new hampshire compared to romney's $1.5 million in those states. tonight santorum aides tell nbc news they raised $1 million in the last 24 hours alone. they hope that's the start of a truly competitive campaign. brian? >> andrea mitchell, part of our team on the ground in new hampshire. also there for us tonight, our political director and chief white house correspondent chuck todd and from our washington bureau, david gregory, moderator of "meet the press." chuck, we'll start with you. if you're mitt romney -- we just looked it up -- he got six fewer votes this time than four years ago. locked at 25%, four years apart, millions of dollars in expenditures apart. what is the lesson?

what's the takeaway from iowa last night? >> well, they do look on the bright side and they see it this way. number one, a win is a win. they won in a place that they lost last time. always important when you're running a second time. number two, they are kind of happy their chief conservative rival is not rick perry, is not newt gingrich, but is rick santorum for the very reason andrea brought up in her piece. he lacks resources. he may not be able to put together a national campaign. while it's still clear mitt romney has a base problem they think over time that they can overcome this and eventually woo conservatives to them, possibly by the south carolina primary, but even if they lose there, by the florida primary at the end of the month, brian. >> david gregory, a question to you about santorum. the risk, of course, in iowa is what happens in iowa can stay in iowa. after all, huckabee won it there last time. how does santorum convert and what's he up against? >> he's got a big hill to climb here.

good news/bad news. he's got ron paul, rick perry still and newt gingrich attacking frontrunner mitt romney. he'd like to be alone. the only social conservative needs to get the energy behind him. he may not be able to do that for a while. as andrea noted as well, he's going to make a play on electability. he had an effective message on the economy as well. it wasn't just cultural conservative messages. it was about restoring the manufacturing base in this country as working class voter appeal here. it's a good contrast the santorum folks think they will have against mitt romney. >> chuck, a final word. i used the expression, "welcome to the nfl." it gets tough starting right about now. this calendar becomes gruelling. >> it does. you have to move quickly. we are already six days from the new hampshire primary. for rick santorum to prove he can go the distance, he's at least got to finish second here

and probably in a healthy number with 20%, 25%. now by the way if you're the conservative candidate you have to win south carolina. that's only 11 days away. ten days is florida. if mitt romney wins just two of any of the next three he's going to be the nominee. it may take a while before he formally gets a delegate but he will be the de facto nominee. >> chuck todd, david gregory on what happened last night and what it means going forward. gentlemen, thank you very much. the final debate before the vote in new hampshire will be on this nbc station. it's the nbc news facebook debate. it will be on "meet the press" this sunday morning at 9:00 eastern time. president obama was on the road himself today in shaker heights, ohio, outside cleveland where he announced he's appointing that state's former attorney general to head the new consumer financial protection agency. this is what's known as a recess appointment. the president went around congress. he gave richard cordray the job over the objection of senate republicans who have been blocking the nomination. they argue the appointment is illegal because the senate isn't

technically in recess. the white house calls the senate session under way now a sham meant only to keep the president from filling jobs during the break. the courts will probably have the last word in this. the american cancer society's annual report on cancer stats and cancer trends is out today with some encouraging news inside it. for the biggest cancer killers, death rates are down across the board over the past two decades. 23% for men. 16% for women. that works out to about 1 million lives saved since researchers started counting in the early '90s. with us to talk more about it, our chief medical editor dr. nancy snyderman. we were talking about this earlier. as i understand it, you could take away from the figures that the stop smoking effort is going to have to yield to the obesity effort, that it's obesity that's killing us. >> there is a mixed message here. if you look at the big three --

breast, lung and colon -- there is good news. numbers have dropped. men have gotten the message. cigarettes will kill you. that's why we have seen the big drops in lung cancer and to some degree heart disease. take a look at the cancers that are now getting our attention. throat cancer linked to the hpv virus you and i have spoken about so many times. esophageal and pancreatic cancer, definitely obesity related, and thyroid cancer, probably in women, because more doctors are doing portable ultrasound screenings. i'm not sure we are seeing more of these cancers. i think we are finding more of these cancers. >> detection. >> here's what i predict. obesity increasingly is going to be linked to cancers. i think we are going to solve many more cancer treatments at a very basic cellular level when we figure out this obesity epidemic. increasingly we're going to talk about being fat being a killer because it increases your risk of cancer head to toe. >> that's a dark mark amidst otherwise good news in this. nancy, thank you, as always. >> you bet. up next as we continue here tonight, making her case.

a woman takes a big carmaker to court over miles per gallon. are the numbers on the window sticker for real in real life? and later, a rare sighting off the california coast. this one got everybody's attention.

when you buy a car you kind of know it's a buyer beware business. those mileage numbers on the window sticker and on the ads, for example, sometimes they don't compare to the real world, actual road conditions. it's at the crux of a case in california brought to court by a woman who bought a hybrid for the promise of 50 miles per gallon. the story from nbc's kristen dahlgren. >> reporter: it didn't start as a story of david versus goliath. >> i just wanted my car fixed. i didn't intend to be a crusader. >> reporter: but that's exactly what heather peters' fight with

honda has become. she loved her 2006 civic hybrid. >> it was green. it helped the environment. you were going to be a good citizen to the world. >> reporter: and it would get 50 miles to the gallon. she says it never did. >> i'm getting 29.3 miles per gallon. >> reporter: she heard about a class action suit by other angry owners, but the payoff, $200 and a discount toward a new honda. >> no! absolutely not. >> reporter: peters, a former lawyer, took the matter to small claims court. >> the second element of fraud -- >> reporter: she's suing honda for the small claim maximum, $10,000. this could be about more than $10,000 if peters is successful. other car owners could follow suit, foregoing class action for thousands of individual cases. tara weingarten, an auto expert, said it's not just honda. she thinks fuel efficiency might be overestimated on most cars. >> the e.p.a. needs to step in and say, let's look at how we evaluate real world driving mileage and figure out a new way to more accurately reflect what we actually get.

>> reporter: honda insists peters never complained until the lawsuit saying, we do not believe ms. peters was deceived. the window sticker clearly indicated that her mileage would vary. honda argued in court -- >> the biggest effect is how you drive. >> reporter: peters has a website offering other drivers a lawsuit blueprint. and while she and the honda corporation now wait for the judge to mail his ruling, it seems her small claim may already have wheels. kristen dahlgren, nbc news, los angeles. up next here tonight, the photos that leaked from the president's vacation that may reverberate with middle aged men everywhere.

we mention this next item because so many americans were up so late waiting for the iowa caucus results it was the perfect viewing time if you just stepped outside for a brief but spectacular predawn meteor shower.

at its peak they were coming in at the rate of one to two per minute, most of them burning up about 50 miles above the earth. it's an annual meteor shower first discovered on a dark night in 1825. the photos that came out today may make it tougher for men of a certain age who go to the beach for summer vacation this year. a lot of guys will be expected to dive for every football that comes remotely close to them. this is the 50-year-old president of the united states on new year's day in what appears to be a hard-core beach football game. somebody snapped these pictures even though the president was on the grounds of a protected u.s. marine base on oahu during the first family's ten-day vacation. recently you may recall the l.a. county sheriff's department re-opened a 30-year-old hollywood mystery, the drowning

death of natalie wood during a boisterous night on a boat really an accident? well, today a spokesman for the sheriff's department said the natalie wood case is now filed under cold cases. he said there is nothing new there and he blamed the publicity blitz for a book for putting the case back in the spotlight. and off the coast of california, as we mentioned tonight, a rare sight. killer whales apparently in search of sea lions and seals for their version of dinner. in the meantime providing an up close and personal thrill for some folks who were on whale watching excursions. wildlife officials in california watched them closely, but this is unusual for these waters so close to l.a. in the san pedro channel. up next, a mom making a difference with the best kind of medicine there is.

>> announcer: making a difference, brought to you by aleve. two pills, all day relief. in our making a difference report tonight comes to us from a viewer who wrote us to tell us about one of the toughest things any family can go through. that's the illness of a child. nbc's anne thompson introduces us to a florida woman who took that experience and turned it

around for others in the same situation and is making a difference by helping kids just be themselves. [ beeping ] >> reporter: the sights and sounds of a hospital can make an already scared child feel even more helpless, until they meet laura pita. they call her the tutu lady, giving tutus and capes to boys and girls. transforming the meek into the powerful. >> super man to the rescue! >> reporter: kids become superheroes. their doctors and nurses become children. all this joy springs from the heartache of this mother of four boys. in her home pita's support team replicates the first tutus she made last april to keep her hands busy as her second son josh got treatment for leukemia and her mom died from skin cancer. >> reporter: how did you get this done? >> through my friends.

these are the people who lifted me up. >> reporter: her charity, emmy's heart is named for her mom but the purpose comes from what she learned at josh's bedside. >> the little girls get up and they put it on and they giggle and they spin and they just feel beautiful. i don't know who gets more out of it -- the kids or me. >> reporter: the cape gets payton and his mom through nine therapies a week for down's syndrome and fortifies 6-year-old jacob brown. >> it's just like captain america. >> reporter: as he prepares for heart surgery. >> he's our superhero for sure. >> reporter: at parties like this, the kids discover they are not alone. it may not look like it but doctors say the organized chaos, the child's play is actually very effective medicine. >> now you're a superhero. >> reporter: for the patients and the doctors. >> sometimes we are stressed out. to see the children running

around and happy it's a good thing for all. >> reporter: indulging for a moment what no illness can take away, the desire to just be a child. anne thompson, nbc news, florida. >> great story to end our broadcast with on this wednesday night. thank you for being here with us. i'm brian williams. we hope to see you right back here tomorrow evening. we hope to see you right back here tomorrow evening. good night. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com right now, at 6:00. a story you will see only on nbc bay area. we're there as san jose police make several arrests connected to disturbing child porn. good evening, everyone. i'm jessica aguirre. >> i'm raj mathai. a nationwide stain hitting the bay area. special task force rounding up men accused of online child porn. sarstre in san made several