Super Tuesday showdown: Romney-Santorum big day

DAVID ESPO

AP Spe­cial Correspondent

WASHINGTON — On the eve of their Super Tues­day show­down, Mitt Rom­ney and Rick San­to­rum strained for an edge in Ohio on Mon­day and braced for the 10 pri­maries and cau­cuses likely to rede­fine the race for the Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nomination.

Newt Gin­grich, though win­less for more than a month, cam­paigned in Ten­nessee and issued a stream of sig­nals that he intended to stay in the race.

In a race marked by unpre­dictabil­ity, Romney’s supe­rior orga­ni­za­tion and the sup­port of an espe­cially deep-pocketed super PAC allowed him to com­pete all across the Super Tues­day land­scape and poten­tially pick up more than half of the 419 del­e­gates at stake.

San­to­rum cast the race in bib­li­cal terms, his David vs. Romney’s Goliath. Even that “is prob­a­bly a lit­tle bit of an under­state­ment,” he added.

By con­trast, Rom­ney pro­jected con­fi­dence. “I hope that I get the sup­port of peo­ple here in Ohio tomor­row, and in other states across the coun­try. I believe if I do, I’ll get the nom­i­na­tion,” he said.

Pri­maries in Ohio, Geor­gia, Mass­a­chu­setts, Ver­mont, Vir­ginia, Okla­homa and Ten­nessee plus cau­cuses in Idaho, North Dakota and Alaska make Tues­day the busiest day of the pri­mary season.

Unlike pre­vi­ous Repub­li­can cam­paigns, when a pri­mary win­ner would typ­i­cally win all of a state’s del­e­gates, allo­ca­tions this year gen­er­ally reflect the split in the pop­u­lar vote. As a result, sev­eral can­di­dates may be able to claim suc­cess once the Super Tues­day results are known.

Rom­ney kept his focus on the econ­omy in a final sprint across Ohio, the state that has drawn the most atten­tion and tele­vi­sion adver­tis­ing. Pre-primary polls show him with momen­tum in a close race with Santorum.

“Other peo­ple in this race have debated about the econ­omy, they’ve read about the econ­omy, they’ve talked about it in sub­com­mit­tee hear­ings,” Rom­ney said dis­mis­sively of his oppo­nents. “But I’ve actu­ally been in it. I’ve worked in busi­ness, and I under­stand what it takes to get a busi­ness suc­cess­ful and to thrive.”

San­to­rum, who nar­rowly lost Michi­gan to Rom­ney last week, said that no mat­ter how much his rival spends, “con­ser­v­a­tives will not trust him, will not rally around him this pri­mary sea­son. … We will be the nominee.”

He said he looked for­ward to the day when Gin­grich drops out and clears the way for him to chal­lenge Rom­ney one-on-one. “And when we do that, we’ll win,” San­to­rum said.

Gin­grich, the for­mer speaker of the House, was hav­ing none of it.

Seem­ingly con­fi­dent of a pri­mary vic­tory in Geor­gia, where he launched his polit­i­cal career more than three decades ago, he unveiled a new tele­vi­sion com­mer­cial in Ten­nessee promis­ing to reduce the ris­ing cost of gaso­line. Eager to demon­strate his stay­ing power, he said the com­mer­cial would soon begin run­ning in Alabama and Mis­sis­sippi, which hold pri­maries next week, and he announced a list of sup­port­ers in Kansas, where cau­cuses are on the sched­ule for Saturday.

Gin­grich linked oil, Iran and war in remarks at a rally in Alcoa, Tenn. “We should indi­cate calmly and deci­sively that any threat to close the Straits of Hor­muz would be con­sid­ered an act of war and we will elim­i­nate the gov­ern­ment of Iran,” he said. About 20 per­cent of the world’s oil exports pass through the Straits of Hormuz.

The fourth man in the race, Texas Rep. Ron Paul, cam­paigned in Idaho after a week­end visit to Alaska, where he hopes to claim his first vic­tory of the campaign.

Rom­ney has won four con­tests in a row, includ­ing a double-digit vic­tory in Wash­ing­ton state cau­cuses on Saturday.

He has 203 del­e­gates in the Asso­ci­ated Press count, while San­to­rum has 92, Gin­grich 33 and Paul 25.

It takes 1,144 to win the nom­i­na­tion at the con­ven­tion in Tampa, Fla., next summer.

Romney’s itin­er­ary on Mon­day under­scored the extent to which the cam­paign for the nom­i­na­tion has changed from closely watched statewide con­tests into to an all-out bat­tle for indi­vid­ual del­e­gates. While he hoped to win the Ohio pri­mary out­right, he arranged stops in Can­ton and Youngstown, in and around areas where San­to­rum isn’t eli­gi­ble for all the del­e­gates avail­able on Tuesday.

San­to­rum was ham­pered by his fail­ure to file any del­e­gates in three of the state’s 16 con­gres­sional dis­tricts. That meant he was for­feit­ing any chance at nine of the 63 at stake, even if he won statewide.

More dam­ag­ing to their hopes of stop­ping Rom­ney, San­to­rum and Gin­grich failed to qual­ify for the Vir­ginia pri­mary bal­lot, and Rom­ney appeared in line to cap­ture all 46 del­e­gates there. The for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts gov­er­nor also has vir­tu­ally no com­pe­ti­tion on his home turf in that state, with 38 del­e­gates, and lit­tle in Ver­mont, with 17 more.

Rom­ney pressed his advan­tage in other ways, from per­sonal endorse­ments to a huge dis­par­ity in tele­vi­sion ads across the country.

One day after win­ning the sup­port of House Major­ity Leader Eric Can­tor of Vir­ginia and Okla­homa Sen. Tom Coburn, he drew back­ing from for­mer Attor­ney Gen­eral John Ashcroft. Rom­ney has long claimed he is the most elec­table of all the Repub­li­cans in the race, and the endorse­ments were a fresh sign that the party estab­lish­ment has begun to rally to his side.

While San­to­rum recently reported tak­ing in $9 mil­lion in cam­paign dona­tions in Feb­ru­ary, he was out­spent across the board on television.

Rom­ney pur­chased about $1.5 mil­lion in tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials in Ohio, and Restore our Future, the super PAC that sup­ports him, spent even more, $2.3 million.

San­to­rum and Red, White and Blue, a super PAC that backs him, coun­tered with about $1 mil­lion com­bined, accord­ing to infor­ma­tion on file with the Fed­eral Elec­tion Com­mis­sion, a deficit of nearly 4–1.

In Ten­nessee, where Rom­ney did not pur­chase tele­vi­sion time, Restore Our Future spent more than $600,000 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.

Posted by AP News on Mar 5 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.