Romney routs Santorum in GOP primary in Illinois

DAVID ESPO

STEVE PEOPLES

Asso­ci­ated Press

SCHAUMBURG, Ill. — Front-runner Mitt Rom­ney won the Illi­nois pri­mary with ease Tues­day night, defeat­ing Rick San­to­rum in yet another indus­trial state show­down and padding his already-formidable del­e­gate lead in the race for the Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nomination.

Rom­ney tri­umphed after ben­e­fit­ting from a crush­ing advan­tage in the tele­vi­sion adver­tis­ing wars, and as his chief rival strug­gled to over­come self-imposed polit­i­cal wounds in the marathon race to pick an oppo­nent to Demo­c­ra­tic Pres­i­dent Barack Obama.

Returns from 29 per­cent of the state’s precincts showed Rom­ney gain­ing 55 per­cent of the vote com­pared to 28 per­cent for San­to­rum, 9 per­cent for Ron Paul and 7 per­cent for Newt Gingrich.

Pre­lim­i­nary exit poll results showed Rom­ney pre­ferred by pri­mary goers who said the econ­omy was the top issue in the cam­paign, and over­whelm­ingly favored by those who said an abil­ity to defeat Obama was the qual­ity they most wanted in a nominee.

The pri­mary capped a week in which the two cam­paigns seemed to be mov­ing in oppo­si­tion direc­tions — Rom­ney increas­ingly focused on the gen­eral elec­tion bat­tle against Obama while San­to­rum strug­gled to escape self-created controversies.

Most recently, he backpedaled after say­ing on Mon­day that the econ­omy wasn’t the main issue of the cam­paign. “Occa­sion­ally you say some things where you wish you had a do-over,” he said later.

Over the week­end, he was hum­bled in the Puerto Rico pri­mary after say­ing that to qual­ify for state­hood the island com­mon­wealth should adopt Eng­lish as an offi­cial language.

While pre-primary polls taken sev­eral days ago in Illi­nois sug­gested a close race, Rom­ney and Restore Our future, a super Pac that backs him, unleashed a bar­rage of cam­paign ads to erode Santorum’s stand­ing. One ad accused the for­mer Penn­syl­va­nia sen­a­tor of chang­ing his prin­ci­ples while serv­ing in Con­gress, while two oth­ers crit­i­cized him for vot­ing to raise the debt limit, raise his own pay as a law­maker and side with for­mer Sen. Hillary Rod­ham Clin­ton to sup­port leg­is­la­tion allow­ing felons the right to vote.

In all, Rom­ney and Restore Our Future out­spent San­to­rum and a super PAC that backs him by $3.5 mil­lion to $500,000, an advan­tage of 7–1.

Nei­ther Newt Gin­grich nor Ron Paul cam­paigned exten­sively in Illinois.

Rom­ney and San­to­rum did, though, and not always in respect­ful tones.

“Sen­a­tor San­to­rum has the same eco­nomic light­weight back­ground the pres­i­dent has,” Rom­ney said at one point. “We’re not going to replace an eco­nomic light­weight with another eco­nomic lightweight.”

San­to­rum had a tart reply. “If Mitt Romney’s an eco­nomic heavy­weight, we’re in trouble.”

Includ­ing Romney’s vic­tory last week­end in Puerto Rico, the for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts gov­er­nor had 522 del­e­gates going into the Illi­nois vot­ing, accord­ing to The Asso­ci­ated Press count. San­to­rum had 253, Gin­grich 135 and Paul 50. If Rom­ney con­tin­ues on the same pace, he will lock up the nom­i­na­tion before the con­ven­tion opens in Tampa, Fla., next August.

How­ever, the San­to­rum cam­paign argued Tues­day that the race for del­e­gates is closer than that.

San­to­rum con­tends the Repub­li­can National Com­mit­tee at the con­ven­tion will force Florida and Ari­zona to allo­cate their del­e­gates on a pro­por­tional basis instead of winner-take-all as the state GOP decided. Rom­ney won both states.

On Tues­day, about four in 10 vot­ers inter­viewed as they left their polling places said they were evan­gel­i­cal or born again. That’s about half the per­cent­age in last week’s pri­mary states of Alabama and Mis­sis­sippi, where San­to­rum won nar­rowly. Despite an unusu­ally lengthy race for the nom­i­na­tion, less than a third of those vot­ing said in the polling-place sur­vey they hoped the pri­mary sea­son would come to a quick end even if that meant their can­di­date might lose the nomination.

The find­ings came from pre­lim­i­nary results from the sur­vey of 1,078 Illi­nois Repub­li­can vot­ers, and had a mar­gin of error of plus or minus 4 per­cent­age points. The exit poll was con­ducted for The Asso­ci­ated Press and the tele­vi­sion net­works by Edi­son Research at 35 ran­domly selected polling places around the state.

As Illi­nois Repub­li­cans voted on Tues­day, Rom­ney raised more than $1.3 mil­lion at a lun­cheon in Chicago. He planned an election-night event in nearby Schaum­burg, Ill., while San­to­rum was in Get­tys­burg, Pa., site of Illi­nois favorite son Abra­ham Lincoln’s most famous speech.

San­to­rum, the for­mer Penn­syl­va­nia sen­a­tor, has been seek­ing to make up in broad­cast inter­views what he has lacked in adver­tis­ing money.

On Mon­day, his cam­paign began before sun-up and ended well after dark, includ­ing four appear­ances at ral­lies around the state as well as an extra­or­di­nary 19 radio and tele­vi­sion inter­views. He accused Rom­ney anew of putting his sig­na­ture on a Mass­a­chu­setts health insur­ance law that is sim­i­lar to the one Obama pushed through Congress.

Rom­ney cut short his planned time in Puerto Rico, site of a pri­mary last week­end, to max­i­mize his time in Illi­nois. He has eked out vic­to­ries in other big indus­trial states over the past few weeks, begin­ning in Michi­gan on Feb. 28 and Ohio on March 6. Defeat in any would be likely to trig­ger fresh anx­i­ety within the party about his abil­ity to wrap up the nomination.

Illi­nois was the 28th state to hold a pri­mary or cau­cus in the selec­tion of del­e­gates to the nom­i­nat­ing con­ven­tion, about halfway through the cal­en­dar of a Repub­li­can cam­paign that has remained com­pet­i­tive longer than most.

A change in party rules to reduce the num­ber of winner-take-all pri­maries has accounted for the dura­tion of the race. But so has Romney’s dif­fi­culty in secur­ing the sup­port of the most con­ser­v­a­tive of the GOP polit­i­cal base. San­to­rum and Gin­grich have strug­gled to emerge as the front-runner’s sole chal­lenger from the right.

What­ever the rea­sons, the race appeared unlikely to end soon, with San­to­rum and even Gin­grich vow­ing to cam­paign into the convention.

Next up is a pri­mary Sat­ur­day in Louisiana where San­to­rum projects con­fi­dence fol­low­ing twin tri­umphs a week ago in Alabama and Mis­sis­sippi. There are 25 del­e­gates at stake.

Behind Louisiana is a three-primary night in the Dis­trict of Colum­bia, Mary­land and Wis­con­sin on April 3, with 95 del­e­gates com­bined at stake.

San­to­rum is not on the bal­lot in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., but is ahead in opin­ion polls in Mary­land. Wis­con­sin — adja­cent to Illi­nois — shapes up as the most com­pet­i­tive pri­mary of the night.

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