Ohio is proving to be the Super Tuesday centerpiece

3/2/2012

WILLOUGHBY, Ohio — This state’s Super Tuesday primary is proving to be the perfect microcosm of the nation’s unruly race for the Republican presidential nomination: Mitt Romney is spending lots of money, Rick Santorum is aggressively courting conservatives and Newt Gingrich is counting on big ideas to swing votes his way.

Of the 10 states weighing in on Tuesday, Ohio offers the hottest contest. And with its diverse population, reputation as a presidential battleground and preoccupation with the same economic worries that nag the nation at large, Ohio seems destined to foreshadow the shape of the campaign as it heads toward November.

Despite the vast territory in play across the country, from Alaska and Idaho to Vermont, Virginia and Georgia, Romney will sleep in Ohio every night until Tuesday. It’s that important to him.

Even so, the race was playing out in similar fashion in the other states with contests Tuesday. The former Massachusetts governor and his allies were flooding the airwaves, outpacing his rivals in every Super Tuesday state except in North Dakota, where Santorum was alone on the air but spending less than $8,000. Romney campaigned in Washington on Friday, the day before the state’s caucuses, as he closed a Western swing.

Romney has much of Ohio’s Republican establishment behind him after years of courting the party’s county chairmen and donors.

“When a party chairman gets a call early on from someone perceived as the frontrunner and they ask you to sign on as a county chairman, it’s easy to say yes and it’s hard to say no,” said Mark Munroe, the Mahoning County GOP chief who is leading Romney’s efforts in the northeastern Ohio county. “We’ve seen the Romney campaign in action since late last year. He was able to start early and that makes such a huge difference.”

Romney’s camp insists he does not need to win Ohio to get the presidential nomination or even to keep alive the expectation that he eventually will.

Losing here, however, would drive persistent doubts about the strength of Romney’s candidacy. His campaign’s schedule — along with TV advertising commitments — shows Ohio is his priority on a day when Republicans in other big states also make their choice. Figures provided to The Associated Press show Romney’s campaign is spending more than $1.5 million in television ads this week in Ohio and his allies are on the air with almost $1.5 million. In total, Romney and his supporters planned to spend more than $3.8 million on cable and broadcast television ads.

His rivals dismiss the spending.

“The Romney organization is nothing more than money,” said Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, an early Romney backer who defected to Santorum just as the former Pennsylvania senator’s late rise captured the interest of conservative leaders who were lukewarm, at best, about Romney’s record.

Santorum and his allies are only spending $796,000 in total on Ohio. Yet a Quinnipiac University poll released Friday found Santorum with a slim lead over Romney in the state, 35 percent to 31 percent.

Ohio’s Republican electorate is similar to that of the most recent hard-fought state of Michigan, containing both blue-collar, rural voters as well as churchgoers focused heavily on social issues. Here, as in that fellow Rust Belt state narrowly won by Romney, the economy dominates voters’ concerns, and Romney and Santorum both were playing to them.

“We’ve got the same problems as everyone else does,” said Gary Green, a 56-year-old Chillicothe business owner who attended a Santorum event Friday but still is leaning toward Ron Paul. “We need jobs.”

Sen. Rob Portman, a Romney supporter who plans to campaign with him at four events on Saturday, said Romney “doesn’t have to win in Ohio but it sure would help.”

“I don’t think people in Ohio thought this primary was going to be a big deal,” said Portman added “They thought this thing would be wrapped up in Florida.”

It isn’t clear Santorum has any paid staff on the ground, though. As is the case elsewhere, Santorum is relying on volunteers and local leaders such as DeWine to power his campaign. Santorum’s top aides still don’t have a national campaign headquarters. Highway rest stops and advisers’ hotel rooms are the base of their ragtag — yet oddly durable — operation.

Santorum planned a rally in Willoughby, along Lake Erie, late Friday evening, hoping to generate the enthusiasm that helped him win the Iowa and Minnesota caucuses, as well as the Colorado primary and Missouri’s nonbinding primary.

Ohio’s primary allows only Republicans to vote, meaning Romney won’t be able to count on the support of independents and Democrats who tend to vote for him over Santorum when they’re allowed to take part.

Gingrich is short on cash and has been camped out in Georgia trying to prevent an embarrassing home state loss on Tuesday. But he’s still a player of sorts in Ohio, where he plans one day of campaigning as well as a 30-minute, policy-thick cable television commercial about energy on a cable station, an ad costing him $2,750 to run five times through Monday. The poll that found Romney and Santorum vying for the Ohio lead put Gingrich at 17 percent.

Paul, the favorite of the libertarian wing of his party, had 12 percent support in the poll. He planned no television ads or serious campaigning yet was sure to draw his fervent supporters to the polling stations for a campaign that has yet to win a state.

Gingrich planned to visit Ohio on Saturday to appear in a forum with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and give remarks to a National Rifle Association event in Findlay and a GOP dinner in Bowling Green.

Campaigning in Savannah, Ga., Gingrich called Romney the “inside, establishment candidate” who would go to Washington “to manage the decay,” and said Santorum would not change the status quo, either.

“We’re not worried about losing Georgia,” said Rick Tyler, a former Gingrich aide who is with a pro-Gingrich political committee that is spending almost $740,000 in advertising in Georgia. “But at the same time, he has to do well in Georgia.” Tyler described the state as “a lot like South Carolina,” where Gingrich pulled off his only victory to date.

In Bellevue, Wash., Romney implored supporters to come out for the Saturday caucuses, promising them “it won’t take a long time, it’ll just make a big difference.” His Western campaigning included stops in North Dakota and Idaho. Massachusetts, Oklahoma and Tennessee are among the other Super Tuesday states.