On to Super Tuesday: Santorum, Romney battle on

Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts Gov. Mitt Rom­ney, accom­pa­nied by his wife Ann, arrives at a town hall meet­ing at Cap­i­tal Uni­ver­sity in Bex­ley, Ohio, Wednes­day. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

DAVID ESPO

AP Spe­cial Correspondent

WASHINGTON — A vic­to­ri­ous Mitt Rom­ney and runner-up Rick San­to­rum both claimed sat­is­fac­tion from the close Michi­gan pri­mary on Wednes­day as they swiftly shifted their duel for the Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion to Ohio and the rest of next week’s delegate-rich Super Tues­day contests.

Cam­paign­ing in Bex­ley, Ohio, Rom­ney promised “more jobs, less debt and a smaller gov­ern­ment” if he wins the nom­i­na­tion and defeats Pres­i­dent Barack Obama in the fall. “Inter­est­ingly, the peo­ple who said that the econ­omy and jobs were their No. 1 issue, they voted for me, over­whelm­ingly” in the Michi­gan pri­mary, he said.

San­to­rum saw the events of the pre­vi­ous 24 hours dif­fer­ently, hav­ing won half of the 30 del­e­gates in his rival’s home state pri­mary even though he lost the pop­u­lar vote. “We had a much bet­ter night in Michi­gan than maybe was first reported,” he said, in Tennessee.

While San­to­rum con­tended the race to pick an oppo­nent for Demo­c­rat Obama was down to two men, Newt Gin­grich and Ron Paul had other ideas as they set their own pri­or­i­ties for the 10 Super Tues­day contests.

That made Washington’s cau­cuses on Sat­ur­day some­thing of a cam­paign way-station, worth 40 del­e­gates but squeezed in between two big pri­mary nights.

The pat­tern of the can­di­dates’ sched­ules under­scored a shift in the nature of the race, away from one-or-two-state nights where polit­i­cal momen­tum counted for much, and into a period of mul­ti­ple con­tests, where the object is to pile up del­e­gates in pur­suit of the 1,144 needed to win the nom­i­na­tion at the party con­ven­tion this sum­mer in Tampa, Fla.

As the cam­paigns piv­oted toward Super Tues­day, it appeared Romney’s nar­row home state tri­umph after a string of weak per­for­mances had quelled talk of a late entrance into the race by another contender.

There seemed no doubt that the next major clash would occur in Ohio, a big indus­trial state with 8.1 per­cent unem­ploy­ment, 63 con­ven­tion del­e­gates at stake and a long his­tory as a bat­tle­ground in gen­eral elec­tion cam­paigns. Rom­ney and San­to­rum have already cam­paigned there, and tele­vi­sion adver­tis­ing has topped $4 mil­lion in the state, a total that includes not only the two lead­ing con­tenders but also super PACs that sup­port them and Gin­grich, as well.

In a renewed com­mit­ment, the super PAC sup­port­ing Gin­grich also dis­closed it would spend more than $800,000 in radio ads in upcom­ing pri­mary states, includ­ing Ohio, Okla­homa and Tennessee.

San­to­rum has been run­ning a shoe­string cam­paign, but a spokesman, Hogan Gid­ley, said the for­mer Penn­syl­va­nia sen­a­tor had raised $9 mil­lion in Feb­ru­ary for his candidacy.

Rom­ney is all but assured of vic­to­ries in at least two of next Tuesday’s states — Mass­a­chu­setts, where he was gov­er­nor and faces lit­tle or no com­pe­ti­tion in the pri­mary, and Vir­ginia, where nei­ther Gin­grich nor San­to­rum qual­i­fied for the bal­lot. Those two con­tests offer 84 del­e­gates combined.

Gin­grich looked to Geor­gia, where he launched his polit­i­cal career 30 years ago, to ignite an improb­a­ble come­back. The for­mer House speaker con­ceded it was a state he must win, and he pre­dicted he would, deci­sively. Polls show him lead­ing but below the 50 per­cent level he would need to sweep all 76 delegates.

Sur­veys show San­to­rum run­ning strongly in Okla­homa, which has 40 del­e­gates, while Ten­nessee, with 55, shapes up as a strug­gle. There are mod­est amounts of tele­vi­sion adver­tis­ing in both states, indi­cat­ing that sev­eral camps view then as competitive.

Paul appears to be con­test­ing Rom­ney in Ver­mont, with 17 delegates.

Paul also intends to make a rare cam­paign trip to Alaska for the week­end in hopes of gain­ing his first vic­tory of the year in the state’s cau­cuses. There are 24 del­e­gates up for grabs. Two other cau­cus states, Idaho, 32 del­e­gates, and North Dakota, 28, were draw­ing unusual inter­est from all four contenders.

So far, 290 del­e­gates have been awarded, while 419, are on the bal­lot next Tues­day alone.

In the Asso­ci­ated Press tally, Rom­ney now has 167 del­e­gates, San­to­rum has 87, Gin­grich has 32 and Paul has 19.

Rom­ney spent much of Wednes­day in Ohio, where he cam­paigned on a promise to help the econ­omy recover from the worst reces­sion in decades. He was asked about other issues as well.

Asked by a mem­ber of the audi­ence at a town hall-style event how he would pro­tect Sec­ond Amend­ment rights, he replied, “I have guns myself; I’m not going to tell you where they are.” Aides later said he owns a pair of hand­guns but would not say where they are registered.

Rom­ney also said that if Iran gains nuclear weapons and there is an attack from a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion, the Iran­ian gov­ern­ment would “become one in the cir­cle of sus­pects and Amer­ica will be free to take action against them just as they would if they launched it themselves.”

Romney’s remark about win­ning the votes of Michi­gan primary-goers who said econ­omy and jobs were their top pri­or­ity was grounded in exit polls, which showed he defeated San­to­rum among that group, 47 per­cent to 30 percent.

The same sur­veys sug­gested a con­tin­u­ing divide within the party that could give San­to­rum and Gin­grich an oppor­tu­nity to extend the nom­i­nat­ing cam­paign far longer than the cus­tom­ary GOP race.

Rom­ney won the votes of Michi­gan pri­mary vot­ers who said they were some­what con­ser­v­a­tive, 50 per­cent to 32 per­cent. San­to­rum topped him among those who said they were very con­ser­v­a­tive, 50–36. Each group accounted for roughly 30 per­cent of the over­all elec­torate. Half of all primary-goers said they sup­ported the tea party, and Rom­ney and San­to­rum split those vot­ers’ sup­port down the middle.

The same exit poll turned up evi­dence of dis­sat­is­fac­tion among pri­mary vot­ers with their choices. Slightly more than a third said they had reser­va­tions about their candidate.

Even so, turnout rose in both Michi­gan and Ari­zona over four years ago, a change in a recent trend of dimin­ished voter par­tic­i­pa­tion. Roughly one mil­lion votes were cast in Michi­gan, com­pared to 869,000 four years ago.

Turnout in Ari­zona topped 600,000, up from about 540,000 in 2008.

Posted by AP News on Feb 29 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.