Romney edges into mop-up phase of campaign

DAVID ESPO

AP Spe­cial Correspondent

WASHINGTON — After a three-month strug­gle, Mitt Rom­ney edged into the mop-up phase of the race for the Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion on Wednes­day, buoyed by Newt Gingrich’s deci­sion to scale back his cam­paign to the van­ish­ing point and Rick Santorum’s state­ment that he would take the No. 2 spot on the party ticket in the fall.

Rom­ney cam­paigned by phone for sup­port in next week’s Wis­con­sin pri­mary while he shut­tled from Cal­i­for­nia to Texas on a fundrais­ing trip, prais­ing Gov. Scott Walker, for “try­ing to rein in the excesses that have per­me­ated the pub­lic ser­vices union.” The gov­er­nor faces a recall elec­tion in June after win­ning pas­sage of state leg­is­la­tion vehe­mently opposed by orga­nized labor.

Rom­ney aides eagerly spread the word that for­mer Pres­i­dent George H.W. Bush would bestow a for­mal endorse­ment on Thurs­day, although they declined to say whether for­mer Pres­i­dent George W. Bush has been asked for a pub­lic show of support.

Seven months before Elec­tion Day, there was ample evi­dence of a prepa­ra­tion gap with the Democrats.

A spokesman at the Repub­li­can National Com­mit­tee said the party had recently opened cam­paign offices in three states expected to be bat­tle­grounds this fall and would soon do the same in seven more.

By con­trast, Obama’s re-election cam­paign has 18 offices in Florida, nine in Michi­gan, a dozen in Ohio, 13 in Penn­syl­va­nia and seven in Nevada, accord­ing to offi­cials. While Rom­ney was cam­paign­ing in last winter’s Iowa cau­cuses, Democ­rats claimed to have made 350,000 calls to vot­ers as part of an early orga­ni­za­tional effort.

And while Rom­ney is still rais­ing money for the sec­ond half of the pri­mary cam­paign, Obama recently reported $84 mil­lion in the bank for the gen­eral election.

Not that Rom­ney was leav­ing the pri­mary wars behind. He and Restore Our Future, a super PAC that sup­ports him, were out­spend­ing San­to­rum and his allies on tele­vi­sion by a mar­gin of more than 4–1, with an attack-heavy diet of tele­vi­sion ads.

In addi­tion, Romney’s cam­paign attacked San­to­rum in a recorded mes­sage called into thou­sands of homes.

“I was shocked to find out that Rick San­to­rum repeat­edly sup­ported big labor and joined with lib­eral Democ­rats in vot­ing against right-to-work leg­is­la­tion dur­ing his time in Wash­ing­ton,” it says. “He even opposed the hir­ing of per­ma­nent replace­ments for strik­ing work­ers. When it comes to big labor, Rick Santorum’s record of oppos­ing right-to-work leg­is­la­tion and stand­ing with union bosses speaks for itself.”

San­to­rum is cam­paign­ing across the state as an ally of Walker.

“I’m excited to stand here with Gov. Walker. Not only should he not be recalled, he should be re-elected,” San­to­rum said in LaCrosse, Wis. “When Gov. Walker ran and your lieu­tenant gov­er­nor ran, they didn’t run as they would be mod­er­ates. They said the prob­lems in Wis­con­sin were serious.”

There was no let-up in Santorum’s crit­i­cism of Rom­ney, whom he said is “com­pletely out of sync with Amer­ica” and “uniquely dis­qual­i­fied” to lead the party against Pres­i­dent Barack Obama.

But after absorb­ing defeats in a string of indus­trial states in the past month — Michi­gan, Ohio and Illi­nois — he said of Wis­con­sin: “I think we’ll do well here. The ques­tion is how well.”

Wash­ing­ton, D.C., and Mary­land also hold pri­maries next week, but San­to­rum is not on the bal­lot in the first con­test, and he has lit­tle if any cam­paign pres­ence in the sec­ond. There are 95 del­e­gates at stake in the three contests.

For the first time, San­to­rum on Mon­day seemed to acknowl­edge pub­licly that his quest for the pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion may end in failure.

Asked in an inter­view with Chris­t­ian Broad­cast­ing Net­work whether he would con­sider run­ning as Romney’s vice pres­i­den­tial tick­et­mate, he said: “Of course. I’ll do what­ever is nec­es­sary to help our country.”

Gin­grich took an even more obvi­ous step toward the cam­paign exit, although he struck a defi­ant note one day after announc­ing that he would sup­port Rom­ney if the front-runner can win a major­ity of del­e­gates by the time the pri­mary sea­son ends in June.

“For some rea­son every­body in the estab­lish­ment is chant­ing that San­to­rum and I should quit. Rom­ney has to earn this. It’s not going to be given to him,” he said. At the same time, his aides were explain­ing that he had pushed out his cam­paign man­ager, trimmed his staff by one-third and would cut back on per­sonal cam­paign time in pri­mary and cau­cus states in favor of con­tact­ing unpledged delegates.

The Asso­ci­ated Press tally showed Rom­ney with 568 del­e­gates and on a pace to reach the required 1,144 in the remain­ing pri­mary and cau­cus states. San­to­rum has 273, and Gin­grich 135.

Rom­ney has reaped sev­eral endorse­ments in the past week, since trounc­ing San­to­rum in the Illi­nois primary.

Bush has long been in his cor­ner, but aides to Rom­ney said Thursday’s event was some­thing dif­fer­ent, a for­mal endorse­ment from the ex-president and his wife, Barbara.

Bush’s son was gen­er­ally viewed as the more con­ser­v­a­tive pres­i­dent of the two, but his pop­u­lar­ity waned among Repub­li­cans as well as Democ­rats and inde­pen­dents when the econ­omy cratered in 2008.

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