Romney, Santorum battle for first place in Iowa GOP caucuses

Former Pennsylvania U.S. senator's underfunded, shoe leather campaign secures a stunning turnaround

JOHNSTON, Iowa -- Former Sen. Rick Santorum and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney were within a handful of votes of one another with more than 95 percent of the vote counted in the Iowa precinct caucuses.

With 96 percent of the votes counted, Mr. Santorum led Mr. Romney by just 54 votes among the roughly 100,000 ballots counted.

The results allowed Mr. Santorum to claim the mantle of conservative challenger to Mr. Romney as the nomination battle moves on to New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida through the balance of the month.

His strong showing represented a stunning resurgence for a politician whose career foundered six years ago with a devastating loss to Sen. Bob Casey, the steepest margin of defeat for any incumbent senator on the 2006 ballot.

For much of the last two years, his relentless retail campaigning seemed almost quixotic as he was mired at the bottom of the polls while rivals rose and fell in the GOP sweepstakes. But the groundwork of his underfunded, shoe-leather campaign suddenly began to pay dividends a week before the balloting as a series of surveys both reflected and enhanced the former senators late momentum.

Whatever happens in the coming contests, Mr. Santorum's showing will be remembered as one of the most stunning political turnarounds of recent decades. Still, Mr. Romney retains significant financial and tactical advantages as the campaign moves on to the broader field of competition beyond Iowa.

Mr. Santorum spent more campaign days in the state than anyone else in Republican field. Mr. Romney spent the fewest days in the state, but his financial advantages and the residual organization of his campaign here four years ago allowed him to rise to the top of the Iowa sweepstakes after former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, the frontrunner as recently as early last month, fell before an advertising blitz pressed by his rivals and a superPAC supportive of the Romney campaign.

Mr. Romney and Mr. Santorum were bunched in a tight race with Texas Rep. Ron Paul in the early counting. Their tallies managed to put some distance between themselves and the Texan, but as the leaders's totals mounted, the margin between them was seldom exceeded double digits in a contest in which roughly 100,000 Republican voted at just over 800 venues across the state.

The results came after a long and often nasty race in which the candidates repeatedly leap-frogged one another atop the Iowa polls.

"My team and I are trying to build a party and a county, then all this negativity comes down on us in the last two weeks or three weeks,'' said the GOP chairman of Polk County, the state's largest county, which includes Des Moines. "Now my team and I are going to be faced with having to spend most of 2012 trying to repair damaged feelings among candidates and workers instead of building ... it is terrible, it is offensive.

Former House Speaker Mr. Gingrich, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Rep. Michele Bachmann, each of whom had appeared atop the polls here at some point, rounded out the field of candidates who competed here. Jon Huntsman, who spurned the state to concentrate on New Hampshire, got a mattering of votes among the 1,774 precincts.

As he greeted his supporters after a disappointing fourth place result, Mr. Gingrich congratulated Mr. Santorum for a "great, positive campaign.''

He was conspicuously silent on Mr. Romney's effort. He also congratulated Mr. Paul, while assailing his foreign policy views as "stunningly dangerous.''

This is a state that rebuffed Mr. Romney four years ago as conservatives, unmoved by his extensive organization and ample spending, coalesced behind the candidacy of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. For much of the past year, Mr. Romney appeared diffident about a return to the state that had spurned him. He declined to participate in the party's straw poll in August and made relatively few campaign appearances relative to his 2008 standard.

But in the past month he focused new effort on the caucuses. He also benefitted from the superPAC dollars spent by a supportive, though ostensibly independent group which relentlessly attacked Mr. Gingrich.

Mr. Romney now heads to a state where he has a seemingly commanding lead in the polls. New Hampshire frustrated him the last time around as he lost to John McCain. Now he heads back to the state with a substantial lead in the polls. In the Granite State, he was more than 20 points ahead of his closest competitor, Ron Paul. Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman was still further back, at 10 percent and Mr. Gingrich had 9 percent. Mr. Santorum was further back at 5 percent, in the latest Suffolk University tracking poll..

If Mr. Gingrich continues his slide, said David Paleologis, Suffolk's polling director, Mr. Santorum could be the chief beneficiary.

That was the case here, as social conservatives appeared to move toward the former senator after months in which their collective allegiance had shifted between Ms. Bachmann, Mr. Perry and Mr. Gingrich.

Mr. Gingrich had vowed to be "relentlessly positive'' in the face of the attacks from Mr. Romney, Mr. Paul and Mr. Perry, but the effects of the of the barrage showed in a Tuesday morning interview as he called the Massachusetts front-runner "a liar.''

Anything but a Romney win would be a surprise in New Hampshire -- although the state has offered its share of surprises in the past, as when Hillary Clinton blindsided Barack Obama four years ago.

South Carolina is more of a question mark. Mr. Gingrich had a strong lead there in mid-December polling, but its contest is likely to be recast in the context provided by Iowa and New Hampshire.

"I do think it's going to be a wide open race here,'' Chad Connelly, the South Carolina Republican chairman, said yesterday. "Whoever gets here quickly will do well. It's amazing to me, but we are getting intel that three candidates are going to be here this week. ... what you're going to see in the coming week is unparalleled resources pouring into the state.''

Mr. Santorum has been to South Carolina more than any other candidate, according to a tally kept by the state's largest newspaper, The State. His Iowa results suggest that person-to-person campaigning still matters. But the downward spiral of the Gingrich campaign here is one more reminder of the overwhelming impact of advertising. The next three weeks will test whether the Santorum campaign can take that kind of punch.

"We know Mitt Romney is going to attack us but this isn't Rick's first rodeo; he's been in tough fights in big states before,'' said J. Hogan Gidley, Mr. Santorum's communications director.

In Iowa, in addition to his own tireless efforts, perhaps Mr. Santorum's strongest asset has been the fact that his long months trailing the pack inoculated him against the kind of negative assault that most of his rivals had to endure. That immunity wore off in the last week as polls results suddenly certified him as a legitimate contender. In the last few days, that's changed target of changed in the last week, as he became the target of new criticism form his rivals.

Mike Biundo, Mr. Santorum's political director, said the campaign never wavered on its decision to go on to contest New Hampshire vigorously, despite the conventional wisdom that it is less friendly territory for a conservative than ensuing contest in South Carolina.

"We made a decision early that we were going to have an early three state strategy,'' he said. "He's a northeastern guy who has a great manufacturing jobs plan. He's been all over that state. There's a lot of Catholics there; there's a lot of reason why he can do well there.''

Politics editor James O'Toole: jotoole@post-gazette.com

First published on January 3, 2012 at 9:12 pm

Source: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12003/1201067-176.stm?cmpid=rss.xml

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