Romney rebounds in Maine

Mitt Romney. ASSOCIATED PRESS Enlarge

PORTLAND, Maine — Mitt Romney won Maine’s Republican caucuses, state party officials said Saturday, providing his campaign with a boost after three losses on Tuesday.

But the former Massachusetts governor won just a plurality of the Maine vote, suggesting he still has work to do to unite GOP voters behind his candidacy.

At a gathering in Portland, state Republican Chairman Charlie Webster said that Mr. Romney had won with 2,190 votes, or 39 percent, compared to 1,996 — about 36 percent — for Ron Paul, the only other candidate to aggressively compete in the state.

Former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, who did not campaign in Maine, won 18 percent and 6 percent of the vote, respectively. The totals reflected about 84 percent of the state’s precincts.

Mr. Webster insisted that any caucus results that come in after Saturday wouldn’t be counted no matter how close the vote.

“Some caucuses decided not to participate in this poll and will caucus after this announcement,” Mr. Webster said. “Their results will not be factored in. The absent votes will not be factored into this announcement after the fact.”

Mr. Romney’s win, combined with his victory in a presidential straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Committee conference in Washington hours earlier, helped slow an skid that began Tuesday when he lost contests in Missouri, Minnesota, and Colorado to Mr. Santorum.

The twin triumphs Saturday dampened the perception — for now — that conservatives were unwilling to support Mr. Romney.

Mr. Romney’s campaign has demonstrated skill and flexibility in winning a big state like Florida and eking out a victory in a low-turnout contest like Maine, where organization and voter contact are essential. Out of Maine’s 258,000 registered Republicans, nearly 5,600 cast ballots in the week-long contest.

But questions about Mr. Romney’s durability as the party’s presumed front-runner persist.

Fully 61 percent of Maine voters selected a candidate other than Mr. Romney in a state practically in his back yard. And Mr. Romney’s showing was down considerably from 2008, when he won 51 percent of the vote.

Maine’s caucuses began Feb. 4 and continued throughout the week. Several communities elected to hold their caucuses at a later date.

Caucuses in Washington County that had been scheduled for Saturday were postponed until Feb. 18 because of a major snowstorm.

Mr. Quatrano said county officials had been told the results of that caucus would not count toward the total. But Washington County Republican Chairman Chris Gardner said that when the decision was made to postpone the caucuses, he didn’t realize his county’s votes wouldn’t count toward the total.

Many Paul supporters were angry.

“There’s a very good chance that you’ll find that Washington County goes for Ron Paul,” said Mark Willis, a county coordinator for the Paul campaign.

His wife, Violet, added, “We don’t want to be disenfranchised.”

Mr. Webster said there were less than 200 votes in Washington County and he doubted that including them would have changed the outcome.

Speaking to supporters in Portland, Mr. Paul expressed disappointment that only a portion of the state’s caucuses had counted.

“I wish all the caucuses had met today,” Mr. Paul said. “It’s almost like we could call it a tie.”

Mr. Romney was at a fund-raiser in California late Saturday, after visiting caucus sites in Maine earlier in the day.

“I thank the voters of Maine for their support,” he said late Saturday. “I’m committed to turning around America. And I’m heartened to have the support of so many good people in this great state.”

Mr. Romney visited two caucus sites Saturday after abandoning plans to take the day off.

He staked a claim as a Washington outsider “who has never served a day in our broken federal government.”

“The voters of Maine have sent a clear message that it is past time to send an outsider to the White House, a conservative with a lifetime of experience in the private sector, who can uproot Washington’s culture of taxing and spending and borrowing and endless bureaucracy,” he said.