Romney wins Ohio, 4 other Super Tuesday states

Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts Gov. Mitt Rom­ney and his wife Ann wave to sup­port­ers at his Super Tues­day cam­paign rally in Boston Tues­day night. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Stephan Savoia)

DAVID ESPO

AP Spe­cial Correspondent

WASHINGTON — Mitt Rom­ney squeezed out a win in piv­otal Ohio, cap­tured four other states with ease and padded his del­e­gate lead in the race for the Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion but was forced to share the Super Tues­day spot­light with a resur­gent Rick Santorum.

“I’m going to get this nom­i­na­tion,” Rom­ney told cheer­ing sup­port­ers in Mass­a­chu­setts,” point­ing par­tic­u­larly to his grow­ing del­e­gate totals.

On the busiest night of the cam­paign, he scored a home-state win in Mass­a­chu­setts to go with pri­mary vic­to­ries in Ver­mont and in Vir­ginia — where nei­ther San­to­rum nor Newt Gin­grich was on the bal­lot. He added the Idaho cau­cuses to his column.

Ohio was the big win, though, and the clos­est con­test of all as the Repub­li­can rivals bat­tled for the chance to face Demo­c­ra­tic Pres­i­dent Barack Obama in November.

San­to­rum coun­tered crisply, win­ning pri­maries in Okla­homa and Ten­nessee and the North Dakota cau­cuses — rais­ing fresh doubts about Romney’s abil­ity to cor­ral the votes of con­ser­v­a­tives in some of the most Repub­li­can states in the country.

Ohio was the mar­quee matchup, a sec­ond industrial-state show­down in as many weeks between Rom­ney and San­to­rum. It drew the most cam­paign­ing and tele­vi­sion adver­tise­ments of all 10 Super Tues­day con­tests and for good rea­son— no Repub­li­can has ever won the White House with­out car­ry­ing the state in the fall.

After trail­ing for much of the night, Rom­ney forged ahead in a count that stretched past mid­night. With votes tal­lied in 99 per­cent of the state’s precincts, he led by about 12,000 out of more than 1.1 mil­lion cast.

Gin­grich had a vic­tory in his col­umn, too — his first win in more than six weeks. The for­mer House speaker tri­umphed at home in Geor­gia, but a bar­rage of attack ads by a super PAC sup­port­ing Rom­ney helped hold him below 50 per­cent and forced him to share the delegates.

Texas Rep. Ron Paul pinned his hopes on Alaska as he scratched for his first vic­tory of the cam­paign season.

San­to­rum waited until Okla­homa and Ten­nessee fell into his col­umn before speak­ing to cheer­ing sup­port­ers in Ohio. “This was a big night tonight,” he said. “We have won in the West, the Mid­west and the South, and we’re ready to win across this country.”

In all, there were pri­maries in Vir­ginia, Ver­mont, Ohio, Mass­a­chu­setts, Geor­gia, Ten­nessee and Okla­homa. Cau­cuses in North Dakota, Idaho and Alaska rounded out the calendar.

Rom­ney picked up at least 183 of the 419 Super Tues­day del­e­gates at stake. San­to­rum gained at least 64, Gin­grich 52 and Paul 15. About 100 remained to be allo­cated, and Rom­ney and San­to­rum appeared in line for many if not most of them.

That gave the for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts gov­er­nor 386, more than all his rivals com­bined, a total that included endorse­ments from mem­bers of the Repub­li­can National Com­mit­tee who auto­mat­i­cally attend the con­ven­tion and can sup­port any can­di­date they choose. San­to­rum had 156 del­e­gates, Gin­grich 85 and Paul 40. It takes 1,144 del­e­gates to win the nom­i­na­tion at the Repub­li­can National Con­ven­tion in Tampa, Fla., this summer.

The split of the states ensured that the most tur­bu­lent Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial cam­paign in a gen­er­a­tion would continue.

Already, the can­di­dates were look­ing ahead to the next con­tests, Kansas and Wyoming cau­cuses on Sat­ur­day, fol­lowed by Alabama and Mis­sis­sippi pri­maries on March 13.

Restore our Future, the super PAC that backs Rom­ney, dis­closed a near-$1 mil­lion invest­ment for tele­vi­sion ads in Illi­nois, the next big-state pri­mary on the cal­en­dar, on March 20. The orga­ni­za­tion is already air­ing com­mer­cials in Mis­sis­sippi and Alabama, as is a group that sup­ports Gin­grich, although at lower levels.

Ohio Repub­li­cans were a party divided, based not only on the pop­u­lar vote but also on inter­views with vot­ers as they left their polling places.

San­to­rum out­polled Rom­ney among Ohioans with incomes under $100,000, while Rom­ney won among those with six-figure incomes and up. Rom­ney won among work­ing women, San­to­rum among women who do not.

San­to­rum won among self-described con­ser­v­a­tives, while Rom­ney out­pointed his rival among those who said they are mod­er­ate or liberal.

San­to­rum was pre­ferred by the half of the elec­torate that is born-again. Rom­ney was the favorite among the half of the elec­torate that said it is not.

In inter­views in all the pri­mary states, Repub­li­cans said the econ­omy was the top issue and an abil­ity to defeat Obama was what mat­tered most as they made their Super Tues­day choices.

They also indi­cated nag­ging con­cerns about the can­di­date they sup­ported, even in Mass­a­chu­setts, There, one-third of all pri­mary vot­ers said they had reser­va­tions, and about three-quarters of those voted for Romney.

Mass­a­chu­setts is a reli­ably Demo­c­ra­tic state in most pres­i­den­tial elec­tions, but in Ohio, 41 per­cent of pri­mary vot­ers said they, too, had reser­va­tions about the can­di­date they sup­ported. No Repub­li­can has ever won the White House with­out cap­tur­ing Ohio.

Gingrich’s vic­tory was his first since he cap­tured the South Car­olina pri­mary on Jan. 21, and the for­mer House speaker said it would pro­pel him on yet another come­back in a race where he has faded badly over the past six weeks.

Obama, the man they hope to defeat in Novem­ber, dis­missed the almost-constant crit­i­cism of his for­eign pol­icy efforts and accused Repub­li­cans of “beat­ing the drums of war” over Iran. “Those folks don’t have a lot of respon­si­bil­i­ties. They’re not com­man­der in chief,” he said. Unop­posed for the Demo­c­ra­tic nom­i­na­tion to a sec­ond term, he stepped into the Repub­li­can race with a Super Tues­day news con­fer­ence at the White House, then attended a $35,800-a-ticket fundraiser a few blocks from the White House.

Ohio was the day’s biggest prize in polit­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance, a heav­ily pop­u­lated indus­trial state that tested Santorum’s abil­ity to chal­lenge Rom­ney in a tra­di­tional fall bat­tle­ground. Geor­gia, Gingrich’s home polit­i­cal field, out­ranked them all in the num­ber of del­e­gates at stake, with 76, a total that reflected a reli­able Repub­li­can vot­ing pat­tern as well as population.

Rom­ney, the leader in the early del­e­gate chase, flew to Mass­a­chu­setts to vote and said he hoped for a good home-state win.

He also took issue with Obama, say­ing, “I think all of us are being pretty seri­ous” about Iran and its pos­si­ble attempt to develop nuclear weapons.

Gin­grich effec­tively acknowl­edged he had scant Super Tues­day prospects out­side Geor­gia, where he launched his polit­i­cal career nearly three decades ago. Instead, he was point­ing to pri­maries next week in Alabama and Mis­sis­sippi, and he told an audi­ence, “With your help, by the end of next week we could really be in a totally new race.”

The polls show the president’s chances for re-election have improved in recent months, as the econ­omy has strength­ened, unem­ploy­ment has slowly declined and Repub­li­cans have ripped into one another in the most tumul­tuous nom­i­nat­ing cam­paign the party has endured since 1976.

The for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts gov­er­nor cam­paigned into Super Tues­day on a win­ning streak. He cap­tured the Wash­ing­ton state cau­cuses last Sat­ur­day, days after win­ning a little-contested pri­mary in Ari­zona and a hard-fought one in Michi­gan. He won the Maine cau­cuses ear­lier in February.

The vic­to­ries helped set­tle his cam­paign, which was stag­gered when San­to­rum won a pair of cau­cuses and a non-binding Mis­souri pri­mary on Feb. 7.

San­to­rum and Gin­grich have vied for months to emerge as the sole con­ser­v­a­tive alter­na­tive to Rom­ney, and they bat­tered him as a mod­er­ate who would lead the party to defeat in November.

But Rom­ney, backed by a heav­ily financed super PAC, coun­tered Gingrich’s vic­tory in the South Car­olina pri­mary with a come­back win in Florida. Last week, it was Santorum’s turn to fall, as Rom­ney eked out a win in Michi­gan after trail­ing by dou­ble dig­its in some polls 10 days before the primary.

Santorum’s recent rise has trans­lated into cam­paign receipts of $9 mil­lion in Feb­ru­ary, his aides announced last week.

Even so, Rom­ney and Restore our Future, the super PAC sup­port­ing him, out­spent the other can­di­dates and their sup­port­ers on tele­vi­sion in the key Super Tues­day states.

In Ohio, Romney’s cam­paign pur­chased about $1.5 mil­lion for tele­vi­sion adver­tise­ments, and Restore Our Future spent $2.3 mil­lion. San­to­rum and Red, White and Blue, a super PAC that sup­ports him, coun­tered with about $1 mil­lion com­bined, accord­ing to infor­ma­tion on file with the Fed­eral Elec­tion Com­mis­sion, a dis­ad­van­tage of nearly four to one.

In Ten­nessee, where Rom­ney did not pur­chase tele­vi­sion time, Restore Our Future spent more than $1 mil­lion to help him. San­to­rum paid for a lit­tle over $225,000, and Win­ning our Future, a super PAC that backs Gin­grich, nearly $470,000.

In Geor­gia, where Gin­grich acknowl­edged he must win, the pro-Romney super PAC spent about $1.5 mil­lion in hopes of hold­ing the for­mer House speaker below 50 per­cent of the vote, the thresh­old needed to max­i­mize his del­e­gate take.

While the day boasted more pri­maries and cau­cuses than any other in 2012, it was a shadow of Super Tues­day in 2008, when there were 20 Repub­li­can contests.

There was another big dif­fer­ence, a trend away from winner-take-all con­tests to a sys­tem of allo­cat­ing del­e­gates in rough pro­por­tion to a candidate’s share of the pop­u­lar vote.

Sen. John McCain won eight states on Super Tues­day in 2008 and lost 12 to Rom­ney and Mike Huck­abee com­bined. But six of McCain’s vic­to­ries were winner-take-all pri­maries, allow­ing him to build an insur­mount­able del­e­gate lead that all but sealed his nomination

Posted by AP News on Mar 7 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.