MICHIGAN – Mitt Romney is raising the stakes in Michigan, predicting he can’t lose despite trouble in the polls and a surge in support for Rick Santorum. Asked by Michigan Live on Wednesday whether he might lose the state, Romney said simply:
“That won’t happen.”
Michigan is considered a crucial test for Romney’s campaign. Not only does it come one week ahead of Super Tuesday, when many have predicted the GOP nomination will be clinched, but it has long been considered a lock to go for Romney. Michigan is Romney’s home turf — he was born in Detroit and his father was a popular three-term GOP governor — and he won the state in 2008, beating John McCain in the GOP primary.
Santorum winning Michigan would be a serious blow to Romney’s already-faltering status as the Republican Party’s “inevitable nominee.”
(Reuters) – Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney won the endorsement of Michigan’s popular governor on Thursday, as polls showed him locked in a tight battle ahead of the February 28 primary in his boyhood state.
Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, who is widely credited with helping kickstart a slow but sustained economic recovery, wrote in The Detroit News daily newspaper that Romney “has deep ties to our state.”
“Mitt understands the challenges confronting Michigan as few Americans do,” Snyder wrote. (Details)
Ohio – When the boss called in late yesterday from Columbus, Ohio, where he gave a speech and had a couple meetings, he said he was struck how light support seemed to be for Mitt Romney—and how receptive people seemed to be toward Rick Santorum. Rasmussen’s latest poll seems to confirm the boss’s general impressions, as it shows an enormous uptick of support for Santorum:
Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum continues to ride his polling momentum into Ohio where he leads Mitt Romney by nearly two-to-one in the first Rasmussen Reports survey of Republicans in the state.
The new statewide telephone survey of Likely Republican Primary voters shows Santorum picking up 42% of the vote to Romney’s 24%. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich draws 13% support, while Texas Congressman Ron Paul picks up 10%. Three percent (3%) prefer some other candidate, and eight percent (8%) are undecided.
This Ohio survey of 750 Likely Republican Primary Voters was conducted on February 15, 2012 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 4 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.
The poll taken of Ohio Republican voters prior to this one was by Quinnipiac, almost half a week ago, which found Santorum leading by 7 percentage points, with 36 percent of support. In that poll, Romney had support from 29 percent and Gingrich 20 percent. The Ohio primary is on Super Tuesday, March 6 (details)
Georgia – ROMNEY and SANTORUM CANCEL DEBATE – The front of the GOP pack will be absent at the March 1 debate in Atlanta sponsored by CNN and the Georgia Republican Party, CBS News/National Journal has learned.
The Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum campaigns said they have decided to skip the debate, throwing into question whether it will happen as planned.
“With eight other states voting on March 6, we will be campaigning in other parts of the country and unable to schedule the CNN Georgia debate,” Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said. “We have participated in 20 debates, including eight from CNN.” The 20 debates include one scheduled for Feb. 22 in Mesa, Ariz.
Santorum “has no plans of doing it right now,” spokesman Hogan Gidley said of the March 1 debate. Asked about his plans, Newt Gingrich, whose home state is Georgia, said that “our expectation is that we’ll participate in debates.” He added that “the Romney model is to go to Wall Street and raise huge amounts of money to run negative ads, and you can understand why having to defend that strategy is probably not something he’s very happy with.” (details)
ARIZONA – Republican Mitt Romney faces a new challenge in Arizona’s February 28 presidential primary, where the growing momentum of rival Rick Santorum could threaten to derail what had been an expected romp for the on-again, off-again front-runner.
Romney was counting on Arizona to be his safety net as he fell behind Santorum in polls nationally and in his native state of Michigan, which holds a crucial primary the same day.
But Republican Party officials and activists in Arizona say Santorum’s national surge has sparked new interest in his candidacy there, raising the possibility of another surprise in a topsy-turvy Republican nominating race that has seen repeated momentum shifts.
“I still see Mitt Romney as the guy to beat, but I’m not counting out Rick Santorum,” said Russ Clark, a conservative talk radio host and chairman of the Colorado River Tea Party in Yuma, near the Mexican border. (details)
TEXAS – His campaign is running low on money, he’s falling behind in voter surveys and he has begun to aim his biting criticism at the leadership of his own political party. In Republican Newt Gingrich’s roller-coaster presidential campaign, is this a big dip – or the beginning of the end?
Just three weeks after his stunning victory in South Carolina’s primary made him the man of the hour in the state-by-state race for the Republican nomination, Gingrich is struggling to remain relevant.
The former U.S. House of Representatives speaker not only has run behind Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum in recent voting contests and polls, he appears to be losing ground in a battle with Santorum to be the anti-Romney candidate some conservatives want so desperately.
While Romney and Santorum campaign for key contests in Arizona and Michigan on February 28, Gingrich essentially has embarked on a high-risk strategy to try to save his campaign: Forego campaigning in several states to try to raise millions of dollars, then direct that money toward the “Super Tuesday” contests on March 6, when 10 states hold primaries or caucuses.
This week, Gingrich is on a fundraising tour of California, which does not hold its primary until June 5. “It starts and ends with fundraising,” Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond said, acknowledging that right now, “we don’t have the money you need … to fend off Romney.”
It’s unclear whether Gingrich will be able to count on any more support from Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, whose family has given nearly $11 million to Winning Our Future, a political action committee that supports Gingrich.
Adelson has been noncommittal on future donations, but has said that he likely would back Romney if the former Massachusetts governor were the Republican nominee.
Gingrich’s campaign said it raised $2 million in Las Vegas earlier this month – before Santorum caught fire with conservative Republicans and won contests in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri last Tuesday. Since then, the Gingrich team has been relatively quiet about how much cash was coming in.
The contests on March 6 could determine whether Gingrich’s campaign will make it to the spring. Gingrich is focused on a southern strategy for Super Tuesday, figuring that if he can do well in his home state of Georgia, Oklahoma, Tennessee and a couple of other conservative states where he thinks Romney will fare poorly, Gingrich could get back in the game.
Most importantly, Gingrich is counting on winning the April 3 primary in Texas, where 155 delegates to the Republican convention will be at stake, more than any state except California. Gingrich has been endorsed by Texas Governor Rick Perry, who dropped out of the race last month, and Hammond said Perry and his supporters have been “exceptionally good to us.”
A candidate needs 1,144 delegates to win the nomination at the party’s convention in August; Gingrich now has 29, well behind Romney’s 105 and Santorum’s 71.