WASHINGTON — Mitt Romney won the Republican presidential primaries in Virginia, Massachusetts and Vermont on Tuesday, more firmly establishing himself as the candidate to beat for the 2012 GOP nomination.
WASHINGTON — Mitt Romney won the Republican presidential primaries in Virginia, Massachusetts and Vermont on Tuesday, more firmly establishing himself as the candidate to beat for the 2012 GOP nomination.
Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, won his former home state of Georgia. And Rick Santorum, the former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, won Tennessee and Oklahoma. Texas Rep. Ron Paul was doing well in smaller caucus states.
As voters went to the polls in 10 states on “Super Tuesday,” the biggest primary and caucus day of the year, Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, was piling up delegates to this summer’s Republican National Convention. While his rivals scored a few victories, Romney was competitive in all 10 states as he inched closer to the 1,144 delegates needed to nominate.
The biggest prize was Ohio, where polls said the race was a dead heat between Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, and Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator.
Ohio matters because it’s a big state mixture of urban and rural, blue collar and high tech. And no Republican has ever won the presidency without winning the state.
A Romney win, one week after he triumphed in neighboring Michigan, his native state, would be an important sign that he has broad appeal in crucial states. But a Santorum victory, after his close second-place showing in Michigan, would raise fresh doubts about Romney’s viability.
Gingrich, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, was hoping the Georgia victory would revitalize his almost-moribund campaign. Its 76 delegates are the day’s single-biggest state total.
Paul, the Texas congressman who has focused largely on caucus states, was hoping he could win North Dakota, Idaho and Alaska.
At stake Tuesday were 419 delegates to August’s Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla.; 1,144 are needed to nominate.
Santorum and Gingrich started the day far behind in delegates and were expected to remain well behind Romney. But they hoped to demonstrate strength in the South, where Romney has proven less popular.
Romney’s wins in Massachusetts and Virginia, where only he and Paul qualified for the ballot, were expected. Romney also was expected to do well in North Dakota, Alaska and Idaho, where he has mounted strong efforts.
The less competitive states have 194 delegates. Ohio has 66, but Santorum may not have qualified to compete for 18 of those delegates, giving Romney a big edge.
However, Romney needed more than numbers Tuesday — he needed to demonstrate strong, broad appeal to a Republican constituency that has had qualms about his commitment to conservatism. Romney governed Massachusetts as a center-right executive, and it’s common on the campaign trail to find GOP voters still upset that he signed into law a near-universal health care requirement in his state.
Those same voters, though, are eager to see President Barack Obama defeated and often say Romney is the most electable challenger.
Polls suggest that attitude could help Romney in Tennessee and Oklahoma, two conservative states where Santorum and Gingrich have pushed hard. Strong Romney showings in either state would signal that conservatives have warmed to him.
Ohio, though, remains the big test.
Santorum and Romney battled across the state Monday, with Romney insisting he was best-equipped to handle the ailing economy and Santorum arguing that he was the race’s true conservative.
Santorum pounded away at Romney’s embrace of the Massachusetts health care law, widely seen as a model for the 2010 federal health care law that Republicans despise.
“Why would we put someone up who is uniquely unqualified to take (Obama) on in this issue? You don’t think it will be used against him? You don’t think we will hear this? It will be a drumbeat,” Santorum told a Columbus rally. “Don’t let that happen, Ohio.”
Romney, a veteran financial executive, has been sticking to an economic message. He has proposed lowering marginal income tax rates by 20 percent and running the government like a business.
He awaited results in Boston Tuesday, and he planned to draw sharp contrasts with Obama in his victory speech.
“Today, our debts are too high and our opportunities are too few. And we’ve seen enough of this president over the last three years to know that we don’t need another five,” Romney planned to say, according to an advance text. “This president is out of ideas. He’s running out of excuses. And, in 2012, he’ll be out of office.”
Many voters were swayed by the idea that Romney is the GOP’s best bet to beat Obama. Exit polls found 42 percent of voters said electability was the most important quality they sought — and Romney topped Santorum among those voters by a 2-to-1 margin.
Exit polls from Ohio and Tennessee found voters there overwhelmingly gave Romney the edge as the candidate most likely to beat Obama.
Romney’s business experience helped him in Ohio as well as Georgia and Tennessee, as voters preferred business to government experience by a 2-to-1 margin. But they were also conservative — evangelical Christians were about two-thirds of the Georgia electorate, three-fourths of Tennessee voters and nearly half of Ohio’s.
Paul traveled to Idaho and North Dakota on Tuesday. He attracted about 900 people in Nampa, Idaho, where he outlined his “Path to Restore America,” including $1 trillion in federal spending cuts his first year in office.
Gingrich, campaigning in Duluth, Ga., outside Atlanta, told supporters that he was the only candidate capable of making bold changes in Washington. “The truth is that I have opponents who are — in a normal period — adequate,” he said, “but they don’t have anything like the scale of change” he would implement.