Suddenly ‘neck and neck’ — Romney, Gingrich in SC

DAVID ESPO

AP Spe­cial Correspondent

CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — On the eve of a South­ern show­down, Mitt Rom­ney con­ceded Fri­day he’s in a tight race with Newt Gin­grich for Saturday’s South Car­olina pri­mary in a Repub­li­can cam­paign sud­denly turned turbulent.

It’s “neck and neck,” Rom­ney declared, while a third pres­i­den­tial con­tender, for­mer Sen. Rick San­to­rum, swiped at both men in hopes of spring­ing yet another cam­paign surprise.

Sev­eral days after fore­cast­ing a Rom­ney vic­tory in his state, Sen. Jim DeMint said the campaign’s first South­ern pri­mary was now a two-man race between the for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts gov­er­nor, who has strug­gled in recent days with ques­tions about his per­sonal wealth and taxes, and Gin­grich, the for­mer House speaker who has been surg­ing in polls after a pair of well-received debate performances.

The stakes were high as Repub­li­cans sought a chal­lenger to Demo­c­ra­tic Pres­i­dent Barack Obama. Tele­vi­sion adver­tis­ing by the can­di­dates and their sup­port­ers exceeded $10 mil­lion here, much of it spent in the past two weeks, and mail­boxes were stuffed with cam­paign flyers.

In a bit of home-state boos­t­er­ism, DeMint said the pri­mary win­ner was “likely to be the next pres­i­dent of the United States.”

Indeed, the win­ner of the state’s pri­mary has gone on to cap­ture the Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion each year since 1980.

A vic­tory by Rom­ney would place him in a com­mand­ing posi­tion head­ing into the Florida pri­mary on Jan. 31. He and an orga­ni­za­tion sup­port­ing him are already air­ing tele­vi­sion ads in that state, which is one of the country’s costli­est in which to campaign.

If the for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts gov­er­nor stum­bles in South Car­olina, it could por­tend a long, drawn-out bat­tle for the nom­i­na­tion stretch­ing well into spring and fur­ther expose rifts inside the party between those who want a can­di­date who can defeat Obama more than any­thing else, and those whose strong pref­er­ence is for a solid conservative.

Rom­ney sounded any­thing but con­fi­dent as he told reporters that in South Car­olina, “I real­ize that I had a lot of ground to make up and Speaker Gin­grich is from a neigh­bor­ing state, well known, pop­u­lar … and frankly to be in a neck-and-neck race at this last moment is kind of exciting.”

Left unspo­ken was that he swept into South Car­olina 10 days ago on the strength of a strong vic­tory in the New Hamp­shire pri­mary and main­tained a double-digit lead in the South Car­olina polls for much of the week.

Cam­paign­ing in Gilbert, S.C., on Fri­day, Rom­ney demanded that Gin­grich release hun­dreds of sup­port­ing doc­u­ments relat­ing to an ethics com­mit­tee inves­ti­ga­tion into his activ­i­ties while he was speaker of the House in the mid-1990s.

“”Of course he should,” he told reporters. Refer­ring to the House Demo­c­ra­tic leader, he said, “Nancy Pelosi has the full record of that ethics inves­ti­ga­tion. You know it’s going to get out ahead of the gen­eral election.”

That was an attempt to turn the tables on Gin­grich, who has demanded Rom­ney release his income tax returns before the week­end pri­mary so Repub­li­cans can know in advance if they con­tain any­thing that could com­pro­mise the party’s chances against Obama this fall.

Gingrich’s cam­paign brushed off Romney’s demand, call­ing it a “panic attack” brought on by sink­ing poll numbers.

“Don’t you love these guys?” the for­mer speaker said in Orange­burg. “He doesn’t release any­thing. He doesn’t answer any­thing and he’s even con­fused about whether he will ever release any­thing. And then they decide to pick a fight over releas­ing stuff?”

In Jan­u­ary 1997, Gin­grich became the first speaker ever rep­ri­manded and fined for ethics vio­la­tions, slapped with a $300,000 penalty. He said he’d failed to fol­low legal advice con­cern­ing the use of tax-exempt con­tri­bu­tions to advance poten­tially par­ti­san goals, but he was also cleared of numer­ous other allegations.

At the same time he fended off a demand on one front Fri­day, Gin­grich was less than eager to face fur­ther ques­tions made by his sec­ond wife, Mar­i­anne, who said in an ABC inter­view broad­cast Thurs­day night that he had once sought an open mar­riage so he could keep the mis­tress who later became his cur­rent wife.

He denies the ex-wife’s account.

On his final lap through the state, San­to­rum cam­paigned as the Goldilocks can­di­date — just right for the state’s con­ser­v­a­tive voters.

“One can­di­date is too radioac­tive, a lit­tle too hot,” he said, refer­ring to Gin­grich. “And we have another can­di­date who is just too darn cold, who doesn’t have bold plans,” he added, speak­ing of Romney.

His cam­paign also announced endorse­ments from con­ser­v­a­tive lead­ers in the upcounty por­tion of the state around Greenville, where the heav­i­est con­cen­tra­tion of evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers lives.

San­to­rum, a for­mer Penn­syl­va­nia sen­a­tor, dis­missed Texas Rep. Ron Paul, the fourth con­tender in the race. “There are four, three of whom have a chance to win the nom­i­na­tion,” he said, includ­ing himself.

Paul, who fin­ished third in the Iowa cau­cuses and sec­ond in the New Hamp­shire pri­mary, has had a lim­ited pres­ence in South Carolina.

But he flew to six cities on a burst of cam­paign­ing on the race’s final day, and drew applause for hav­ing returned to Wash­ing­ton, D.C., ear­lier in the week to vote against Obama’s requested increase in the debt limit.

“When you hear the word prin­ci­ple, you think of Ron Paul. He’s the embod­i­ment of that,” said Derek Smith, a 26-year-old engi­neer for the Navy in Charleston. “If he were to run as a third-party can­di­date, I would vote for him unconditionally.”

Paul has said he has no inten­tion of doing that.

Inter­viewed on C-SPAN, San­to­rum said the race “has just trans­formed itself in the last 24 hours.” It was hard for any of the cam­paigns to argue with that.

In a bewil­der­ing series of events on Thurs­day, Rom­ney was stripped of his vic­tory in the Jan. 3 Iowa cau­cuses by state party offi­cials, who said a recount showed San­to­rum ahead by 34 votes.

Then came an unex­pected with­drawal by Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who endorsed Gin­grich. But Gin­grich was sud­denly caught in a con­tro­versy caused by his ex-wife’s accusations.

At a two-hour debate that capped the day, Gin­grich drew applause when he strongly attacked ABC and the “lib­eral news media” in gen­eral for inject­ing the issue into the final days of the South Car­olina campaign.

By con­trast, Rom­ney faced a round of boos from the audi­ence when he stuck by ear­lier state­ments that he would wait until April to release his tax returns.

Rom­ney has stum­bled sev­eral times in recent days, includ­ing once when he said he paid an effec­tive tax rate of about 15 per­cent. That’s half what many middle-income Amer­i­cans pay, but it’s what the law stip­u­lates because his income derives from invest­ments, which are taxed at a lower rate than wages.

Gin­grich posted his own tax returns online dur­ing the Thurs­day debate, report­ing he paid 31.5 per­cent of his income to the IRS.

Posted by AP News on Jan 20 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.