Ohio emerging as microcosm of GOP race

PHILIP ELLIOTT, STEVE PEOPLES

Asso­ci­ated Press

WILLOUGHBY — This state’s Super Tues­day pri­mary is prov­ing to be the per­fect micro­cosm of the nation’s unruly race for the Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion: Mitt Rom­ney is spend­ing lots of money, Rick San­to­rum is aggres­sively court­ing con­ser­v­a­tives and Newt Gin­grich is count­ing on big ideas to swing votes his way.

Of the 10 states weigh­ing in on Tues­day, Ohio offers the hottest con­test. And with its diverse pop­u­la­tion, rep­u­ta­tion as a pres­i­den­tial bat­tle­ground and pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with the same eco­nomic wor­ries that nag the nation at large, Ohio seems des­tined to fore­shadow the shape of the cam­paign as it heads toward November.

Despite the vast ter­ri­tory in play across the coun­try, from Alaska and Idaho to Ver­mont, Vir­ginia and Geor­gia, Rom­ney will sleep in Ohio every night until Tues­day. It’s that impor­tant to him.

Even so, the race was play­ing out in sim­i­lar fash­ion in the other states with con­tests Tues­day. The for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts gov­er­nor and his allies were flood­ing the air­waves, out­pac­ing his rivals in every Super Tues­day state except in North Dakota, where San­to­rum was alone on the air but spend­ing less than $8,000. Rom­ney cam­paigned in Wash­ing­ton on Fri­day, the day before the state’s cau­cuses, as he closed a West­ern swing.

Rom­ney, who cam­paign in Wash­ing­ton state ahead of its Sat­ur­day pri­mary before return­ing to Ohio, has much of Ohio’s Repub­li­can estab­lish­ment behind him after years of court­ing the party’s county chair­men and donors.

“When a party chair­man gets a call early on from some­one per­ceived as the fron­trun­ner and they ask you to sign on as a county chair­man, it’s easy to say yes and it’s hard to say no,” said Mark Munroe, the Mahon­ing County GOP chief who is lead­ing Romney’s efforts in the north­east­ern Ohio county. “We’ve seen the Rom­ney cam­paign in action since late last year. He was able to start early and that makes such a huge difference.”

Romney’s camp insists he does not need to win Ohio to get the pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion or even to keep alive the expec­ta­tion that he even­tu­ally will.

Los­ing here, how­ever, would drive per­sis­tent doubts about the strength of Romney’s can­di­dacy. His campaign’s sched­ule — along with TV adver­tis­ing com­mit­ments — shows Ohio is his pri­or­ity on a day when Repub­li­cans in other big states also make their choice. Fig­ures pro­vided to The Asso­ci­ated Press show Romney’s cam­paign is spend­ing more than $1.5 mil­lion in tele­vi­sion ads this week in Ohio and his allies are on the air with almost $1.5 mil­lion. In total, Rom­ney and his sup­port­ers planned to spend more than $3.8 mil­lion on cable and broad­cast tele­vi­sion ads.

His rivals dis­miss the spending.

“The Rom­ney orga­ni­za­tion is noth­ing more than money,” said Ohio Attor­ney Gen­eral Mike DeWine, an early Rom­ney backer who defected to San­to­rum just as the for­mer Penn­syl­va­nia senator’s late rise cap­tured the inter­est of con­ser­v­a­tive lead­ers who were luke­warm, at best, about Romney’s record.

San­to­rum and his allies are spend­ing only $796,000 in total on Ohio. Yet a Quin­nip­iac Uni­ver­sity poll released Fri­day found San­to­rum polling at 35 per­cent sup­port and Rom­ney at 31 per­cent sup­port — essen­tially a tie.

Ohio’s Repub­li­can elec­torate is sim­i­lar to that of the most recent hard-fought state, Michi­gan, con­tain­ing both blue-collar, rural vot­ers as well as church­go­ers focused heav­ily on social issues. Here, as in that fel­low Rust Belt state nar­rowly won by Rom­ney, the econ­omy dom­i­nates vot­ers’ con­cerns, and Rom­ney and San­to­rum both were play­ing to them.

And, as they could in Michi­gan, vot­ers in Ohio will be able to declare party affil­i­a­tion at the polls.

“We’ve got the same prob­lems as every­one else does,” said Gary Green, a 56-year-old Chill­i­cothe busi­ness owner who attended a San­to­rum event Fri­day but still is lean­ing toward Ron Paul. “We need jobs.”

Sen. Rob Port­man, a Rom­ney sup­porter who plans to cam­paign with him at four events on Sat­ur­day, said Rom­ney “doesn’t have to win in Ohio but it sure would help.”

“I don’t think peo­ple in Ohio thought this pri­mary was going to be a big deal,” said Port­man added “They thought this thing would be wrapped up in Florida.”

It isn’t clear San­to­rum has any paid staff on the ground, though. As is the case else­where, San­to­rum is rely­ing on vol­un­teers and local lead­ers such as DeWine to power his cam­paign. Santorum’s top aides still don’t have a national cam­paign head­quar­ters. High­way rest stops and advis­ers’ hotel rooms are the base of their rag­tag — yet oddly durable — operation.

San­to­rum planned a rally in Willoughby, along Lake Erie, late Fri­day evening, hop­ing to gen­er­ate the enthu­si­asm that helped him win the Iowa and Min­nesota cau­cuses, as well as the Col­orado pri­mary and Missouri’s non­bind­ing primary.

Gin­grich is short on cash and has been camped out in Geor­gia try­ing to pre­vent an embar­rass­ing home state loss on Tues­day. But he’s still a player of sorts in Ohio, where he plans one day of cam­paign­ing as well as a 30-minute, policy-thick cable tele­vi­sion com­mer­cial about energy on a cable sta­tion, an ad cost­ing him $2,750 to run five times through Mon­day. The poll that found Rom­ney and San­to­rum vying for the Ohio lead put Gin­grich at 17 percent.

Paul, the favorite of the lib­er­tar­ian wing of his party, had 12 per­cent sup­port in the poll. He planned no tele­vi­sion ads or seri­ous cam­paign­ing yet was sure to draw his fer­vent sup­port­ers to the polling sta­tions for a cam­paign that has yet to win a state.

Gin­grich planned to visit Ohio on Sat­ur­day to appear in a forum with for­mer Arkansas Gov. Mike Huck­abee and give remarks to a National Rifle Asso­ci­a­tion event in Find­lay and a GOP din­ner in Bowl­ing Green.

Cam­paign­ing in Savan­nah, Ga., Gin­grich called Rom­ney the “inside, estab­lish­ment can­di­date” who would go to Wash­ing­ton “to man­age the decay,” and said San­to­rum would not change the sta­tus quo, either.

“We’re not wor­ried about los­ing Geor­gia,” said Rick Tyler, a for­mer Gin­grich aide who is with a pro-Gingrich polit­i­cal com­mit­tee that is spend­ing almost $740,000 in adver­tis­ing in Geor­gia. “But at the same time, he has to do well in Geor­gia.” Tyler described the state as “a lot like South Car­olina,” where Gin­grich pulled off his only vic­tory to date.

In Belle­vue, Wash., Rom­ney implored sup­port­ers to come out for the Sat­ur­day cau­cuses, promis­ing them “it won’t take a long time, it’ll just make a big dif­fer­ence.” His West­ern cam­paign­ing included stops in North Dakota and Idaho. Mass­a­chu­setts, Okla­homa and Ten­nessee are among the other Super Tues­day states.

Posted by AP News on Mar 2 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.