Still in race despite cuts, Gingrich says

LOS ANGELES — Despite severely trimming his lagging campaign to cut costs, Newt Gingrich vowed Wednesday to stay in the Republican presidential race until frontrunner Mitt Romney has the necessary support to become the nominee.

Until Romney has won the 1,144 convention delegates it takes to win the nomination, Gingrich said, “I owe it to the people that helped me for the last year to represent their views and their values.”

He bristled at the pressure building on him and Rick Santorum to drop out and make way for Romney.

“For some reason, everybody in the establishment is chanting that Santorum and I should quit,” Gingrich told Washington, D.C., radio station WTOP. “Romney has to earn this. It’s not going to be given to him.”

But Gingrich still intends to support Romney if he gets the required number of delegates before the party’s national convention in Tampa, Fla., in August, Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond said.

One-third of Gingrich’s campaign staff has been laid off and campaign manager Michael Krull was asked to resign, Hammond said Tuesday night. Hammond and communications director Joe DeSantis will stay on.

The new strategy calls for the former House speaker to spend less time in primary states and more time trying to persuade delegates to back him at the Republican National Convention. The campaign’s focus also is expected to begin emphasizing digital outreach, in particular YouTube, Twitter and other social media.

This latest reshaping of Gingrich’s campaign came after he reported more than $1.5 million in outstanding debt by the end of February, according to Federal Election Commission filings, including legal fees and advertising production costs. At the same time, he had about $1.5 million cash on hand, the least of the four Republican candidates.

“Cash flow was shorter than we’d like it to be, so we’re doing the appropriate things to be able to campaign,” he said Wednesday.

Meanwhile, casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, whose family has donated millions to a Gingrich-friendly super political action committee, said “it appears as though he’s at the end of his line.” The remark, reported Wednesday by JewishJournal. com, came Mo n d ay a s Adelson informally discussed the race during a leadership retreat in Las Vegas.

Romney leads with 568 delegates, according to an Associated Press tally. Santorum has 273, Gingrich 135 and U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas 50.

Meanwhile, Romney’s campaign announced Wednesday that Romney will receive the backing of former President George H.W. Bush today.

A series of elected officials, business leaders and party activists have endorsed Romney in the past week, including one of Bush’s sons, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. Former first lady Barbara Bush has also formally backed Romney.

Another of the elder Bush’s sons, former President George W. Bush, has yet to endorse in the Republican race.

Additionally, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., a Tea Party favorite who had been neutral in the race, endorsed Romney on Wednesday night, saying it was clear that he would be the nominee and that the primary fight should end.

In Iowa, meanwhile, Vice President Joe Biden said Wednesday that Romney is “consistently wrong” on U.S. manufacturing, painting him as someone who doesn’t believe the sector is crucial to future U.S. economic success and as a proponent of outsourcing.

Biden mocked Romney for allowing state contractors to set up call centers in India while he was Massachusetts governor and said the Bain Capital private-equity firm Romney once headed had shipped jobs overseas after acquiring companies in the 1990s.

Biden said manufacturing was recovering under Obama, with 430,000 jobs added since January 2010, and that Romney had spent his career in business and politics undermining American workers with policies that favor the wealthy.

“Mitt Romney has been remarkably consistent — as an individual investor, a businessman, as governor of Massachusetts, and now as a candidate for president,” Biden told supporters at PCT Engineered Systems, a growing Davenport firm that makes equipment for manufacturers. “And I respectfully suggest: consistently wrong.”

Romney’s campaign said Biden was on the attack to cover for an administration “that has done more to devastate the middle class than any in modern history.”

“Under President Obama’s leadership, over 800,000 fewer Americans have a job, home prices have plummeted and gas prices have hit record highs. With that kind of record, it’s no surprise that the Obama White House has taken to attacking a proven job creator like Mitt Romney,” spokesman Amanda Hennenberg said.

Information for this article was contributed by Kasie Hunt, Brian Witte, Beth Fouhy, Philip Elliott, Jack Gillum, Ryan J. Foley, David Espo, Thomas Beaumont, Steve Peoples and Margery A. Beck of The Associated Press and by Lisa Lerer of Bloomberg News.