PORTLAND, Maine — Rick Santorum is pursuing an aggressive strategy to challenge Mitt Romney in the state where the Republican presidential front-runner grew up.
Santorum said Sunday that he could do “exceptionally well” in Michigan, where Romney’s father served as governor. The Midwestern state and Arizona host Republican presidential nominating contests on Feb. 28.
“We’re going to spend a lot of time in Michigan and Arizona, and those are up next. And that’s where we’ve really been focusing on,” Santorum told ABC’s This Week. He suggested that a strong showing in those contests would make the presidential contest “a two-man race,” dismissing current rivals Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul.
Santorum shrugged off his third-place finish Saturday in caucuses in Maine, where he didn’t actively compete, as well as his second-place finish in a straw poll of conservative activists. He described Romney’s recent criticism as “desperate.” Romney is painting Santorum as a longtime Washington insider who pursued home-state projects.
“You reach a point where desperate people do desperate things,” said Santorum, who represented Pennsylvania during 16 years in Congress, first in the House and then in the Senate.
Maine state GOP officials declared Romney the winner of Saturday’s caucuses. Saturday’s results ended a three state losing streak to Santorum, who swept contests in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri on Tuesday.
The break until the next primaries is unusually long in the rapid-fire race that’s featured six contests in the past two weeks. The Republican rivals now have 15 days to raise cash and bolster their organizations for what’s shaping up to be a slog to the party’s nomination and the right to face President Barack Obama in November.
As Santorum looks toward Romney’s second home state, Romney turns his attention to extending his huge cash advantage over his rivals.
The former Massachusetts governor left Maine before the caucus results were announced to attend a West coast fundraiser Saturday night and issued a written statement to mark his victory in the low-turnout contest.
“I’m heartened to have the support of so many good people in this great state,” Romney said. “The voters of Maine have sent a clear message that it is past time to send an outsider to the White House.”
Romney is expected to spend much of next week courting donors, while sprinkling in a handful of campaign events. He’ll be in Arizona tonight.
In Maine, Romney won a plurality of the vote just hours after winning the presidential straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Committee conference in Washington.
But questions about Romney’s durability as his party’s presumed front-runner persist. Fully 61 percent of Maine voters selected a candidate other than Romney in a state practically in his backyard. And Romney’s showing was down considerably from 2008, when he won 51 percent of the vote.
In Maine, Romney captured 39 percent of the vote, narrowly defeating Paul’s 36 percent, according to state Republican Chairman Charlie Webster. Santorum and Gingrich, who didn’t actively campaign in Maine, won 18 percent and 6percent respectively.
It was a disappointing showing for Paul, who on Sunday suggested that there was virtually no difference between his rivals.
“All three of them have represented the same system, the same status quo,” Paul said on CBS’ Face the Nation.
The Maine vote totals reflected about 84 percent of the state’s precincts, with nearly 5,600 Republicans voting out of 258,000 registered. The contests scheduled for the coming days will not be counted, including an entire county that postponed its caucuses because of a snowstorm.
Coming off last week’s success, Santorum saw a surge in donations. His campaign reports gathering $3 million in the three days immediately after last week’s victories, but he’s unlikely to catch Romney in the money race.
Santorum reported just $279,000 in the bank at the end of December, compared with Romney’s $19.9 million. Gingrich, a former U.S. House speaker, had $2.1 million, but is still carrying substantial debt, while Paul, a member of the U.S. House from Texas, reported $1.9 million.
Romney won 11 delegates and Paul 10, according to an analysis of the Maine results by The Associated Press. Santorum and Gingrich were shut out. That brings the delegate count to 123 for Romney, 72 for Santorum, 32 for Gingrich and 19 for Paul, with 1,144 delegates needed for the nomination.
‘RADICAL FEMINISTS’
Also Sunday, Santorum explained a remark in his book It Takes a Family that blamed “radical feminists” for undermining families and trying to convince women that they could find fulfillment only in the workplace.
Asked by George Stephanopoulos about that remark on This Week, Santorum said that his wife, Karen, had written that section of the 2005 book - though only his name is on the cover and he does not list her in his acknowledgments among those “who assisted me in the writing of this book.” He said that when Karen Santorum, a nurse and a lawyer, had quit working to raise the couple’s children, she felt that many people “looked down their nose at that decision.”
“Sadly the propaganda campaign launched in the 1960s has taken root,” Santorum, or his wife, wrote in the book. “The radical feminists succeeded in undermining the traditional family and convincing women that professional accomplishments are the key to happiness.”
In the interview Sunday, Santorum pleaded unfamiliarity with the citation, saying, “I don’t know - that’s a new quote for me,” before adding that “the bottom line is that people should have equal opportunity to rise in the work force.”
In Santorum’s book, he also argued that more women should perhaps stay home instead of working and that many problems facing the poor could be solved by building stronger families and communities, including by making divorce more difficult and providing fatherhood training programs.
Santorum had faced criticism after saying on Thursday in a CNN interview that to put more women in combat roles “could be a very compromising situation, where people naturally may do things that may not be in the interest of the mission because of other types of emotions that are involved.”
He said later that he was referring to the emotional reactions of male soldiers.
“Men have emotions when you see a woman in harm’s way,” he said Friday on NBC, adding that it was “the natural inclination to not focus on the mission but to try to be in a position where you might want to protect someone.” Information for this article was contributed by Steve Peoples of The Associated Press and by Brian Knowlton of The New York Times.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 02/13/2012