Romney Looks to Solidify Front-Runner Status

By John McCormick and Amanda J. Crawford - Feb 4, 2012 12:00 PM GMT+0700

Mitt Romney is looking to solidify his front-runner status in the Republican presidential nomination race today with a win in Nevada’s caucuses, a victory that polls show is within his grasp.

Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Romney’s closest rival, is seeking a better-than-expected showing in a contest that comes four days after the former Massachusetts governor easily beat him in Florida’s primary.

Gingrich, who lightened his campaign schedule in Nevada to make more time for fundraising calls needed to keep his campaign alive, has sought to exploit a comment Romney made the morning after his Florida victory that the “very poor” don’t concern him because they get assistance from various federal programs.

“It’s going to be a great showing, I think, tomorrow,” Romney told several hundred supporters gathered last night in an office space in Las Vegas where they were making calls to turn out supporters for today’s vote. “I’m convinced that I can beat Barack Obama. I don’t think anyone else can.”

Political observers will be watching to see whether Romney, who planned to campaign in Colorado today before returning to Nevada for the results, can top the 51 percent he scored in the state’s 2008 caucuses. Entrance polls in 2008 showed 26 percent of Republican caucus-goers were Mormon, like Romney, and he won 95 percent of that vote.

The two other survivors in the Republican race, Representative Ron Paul of Texas and former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, were also trying to generate momentum in the typically lightly attended caucus meetings where casting a vote takes more time than casting a ballot.

The Right Tone

The final day of Nevada campaigning came as Romney sought to find the right tone amid signs of an improving U.S. economy.

In a report released yesterday, the U.S. jobless rate fell in January to the lowest in three years as payrolls climbed more than forecast. The unemployment rate dropped to 8.3 percent, the lowest since February 2009. The 243,000 increase in jobs was the biggest in nine months and exceeded all forecasts in a Bloomberg News survey.

“This president has not helped the process; he’s hurt it,” Romney told 14 local businessmen he met with yesterday in Sparks, Nevada. “If I’m the president, I will see what you do as being a very good thing, a patriotic and good thing.”

The economy “has taken a lot longer than it should have to come back, in part because of the policies of this administration,” Romney said. “For that, the president deserves the blame that he’ll receive in this campaign.”

November Battleground

The contest in Nevada is playing out in a state that is seen by political analysts as a battleground in November’s election. That means Romney or some other Republican is likely to return to the state repeatedly later this year.

Nevada had the nation’s highest unemployment rate, 12.6 percent, in December. For the fifth straight year, Nevada (STEHNV) also had the highest rate of home foreclosure filings in 2011, according to RealtyTrac Inc., a data seller in Irvine, California.

Speaking to several hundred people at a rally inside an airport hangar in Elko, Nevada, Romney charged that Obama has “failed the American people.”

Fred Weeks, 67, a geography and government teacher from Spring Creek, Nevada, said it impressed him that Romney visited the state’s sparsely populated northeast corner.

“It shows he cares,” Weeks said. “We’ve got to get Obama out of office and Romney probably has the best chance.”

Romney Leading Gingrich

A Nevada poll by Public Policy Polling showed Romney leading Gingrich, 50 percent to 25 percent. The survey was taken Feb. 1-2 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.

Besides Nevada, there will be five state contests in February, including the Maine caucuses this weekend. Lower- profile competitions in Colorado and Minnesota will come next, followed by primaries in Arizona and Michigan on Feb. 28. A non- binding primary will be held Feb. 7 in Missouri, although delegate allocation will be based on the state’s caucuses in March.

At a campaign event in Las Vegas, Gingrich criticized Obama as an impediment to an economic rebound. He cited as an example the president’s rejection earlier this month of a permit for TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL pipeline.

In an interview on CNN, Gingrich said of Obama that, if the economy “gets better and better and better between now and the election, he will get some credit. On the other hand, if this is a lull before it starts getting worse, his re-election will be in enormous trouble.”

Growing Stronger

Obama, in remarks yesterday in the Washington suburb of Arlington, Virginia, said the jobs data show “the economy is growing stronger,” and the recovery “is speeding up.”

Gingrich, at his Las Vegas event, alternated his criticism between Obama and Romney.

He assailed a Romney proposal to tie minimum wage increases to inflation, saying it would worsen unemployment among young people and hurt small businesses. Romney doesn’t understand the free market or that small businesses drive the economy, Gingrich said.

“My theory of life is simple: We want you to get a job, then we want you to get a better job and someday we want you to own the job,” he told the crowd at a country-western bar where sawdust covers much of the floor.

Gingrich said he would cut taxes and regulations while developing American energy -- the opposite of what he said Obama has done. “He is sort of the anti-jobs presidency,” he said.

Presidential Ambitions

Gingrich also sought to turn a negative into a positive on a topic that has hurt his presidential ambitions: his consulting work after leaving Congress for the government-backed mortgage company Freddie Mac.

“We did not create Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac so that rich guys like Mitt Romney and Goldman Sachs could make money,” Gingrich said to cheers from the crowd. “We created them to provide low-cost housing to the American people and their current behavior is a betrayal of the very purpose of founding them and Congress should be investigating them right now.”

Paul, who finished a distant second to Romney in Nevada in 2008, has been trying to capitalize on the loyalty of an active volunteer base that his campaign believes will help him in the caucus states. He also has targeted gun owners, veterans and home-schoolers and has tried to convince Mormons that he, not Romney, better represents their view of the Constitution.

Romney has dominated his rivals in television advertising in Nevada. His campaign spent an estimated $488,460 on broadcast ads there through Feb. 2, according to New York-based Kantar Media’s CMAG, which tracks advertising. One ad attacks Gingrich as a “D.C. insider” who “cashed in” after leaving the speakership “in disgrace.”

Restore Our Future, a political committee that is independently supporting Romney’s campaign, spent $73,240 through Feb. 2 on an ad that accuses Gingrich of exaggerating his ties to former President Ronald Reagan.

To contact the reporters on this story: John McCormick in Las Vegas, Nevada, at jmccormick16@bloomberg.net; Amanda J. Crawford in Las Vegas at acrawford24@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jeanne Cummings at jcummings21@bloomberg.net