TULSA, Okla. -- Newt Gingrich punctuated his riff about rising gas prices and the Obama administration's push for smaller, more fuel-efficient cars with a flourish.
“Let me start with a simple premise that most Oklahomans will understand,” he said, pausing for the punch line. “You cannot put a gun rack on a Volt.”
The line -- referencing Chevrolet's new electric car -- made its stump speech debut over the weekend in Georgia, Gingrich’s former home state and home to a Super Tuesday primary vote March 6 that is critical to sustaining his campaign for the GOP presidential nomination. Gingrich is betting that Oklahoma Republicans, who also vote on Super Tuesday, are culturally similar to their Georgia counterparts -- and the 3,000-strong crowd at Oral Roberts University that roared its approval Monday indicated that guns and gas resonate here, too.
Gingrich held rallies in Tulsa and Oklahoma City on Monday and is scheduled to address the Oklahoma Legislature on Tuesday morning. The state is one of three -- along with Georgia and Tennessee -- where Gingrich aims to score big on 10-state Super Tuesday and revive a campaign that has notched just one primary victory so far, in South Carolina.
Oklahoma, which wields 43 convention delegates, is not exactly Southern, but its makeup does play to some of Gingrich’s strengths. The state GOP proclaims it as the “reddest state in the nation” for delivering the biggest vote share to Sen. John McCain in the 2008 presidential race: 65.4 percent.
Oklahoma also is one of the most religious states in the U.S., GOP pollster Pat McFerron said. He said about 70 percent of Oklahoma Republicans consider themselves evangelical Christians, about 70 percent attend church once a week and 40 percent attend church more than once a week.
The result, McFerron said, is a bad mix for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who has not fared as well with religious conservatives as Gingrich and former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania.
“Really what this battle is in Oklahoma for the next two weeks is between Gingrich and Santorum to see if any one of them can consolidate the anti-Romney vote,” he said.
“Quite frankly, neither one of them have much of an organizational structure in the state. It really is just a fluctuation of what’s happening nationally, though that’s starting to change. I just saw on TV the other night one of the Romney super PAC ads just blasting Santorum.”
The Romney-affiliated super PAC Restore Our Future reported a small media buy in Oklahoma of $35,000 for an ad attacking Santorum, who recently has eclipsed Romney in national polls after three wins on Feb. 7. Santorum campaigned in Oklahoma last week, drawing a larger crowd of 4,000 at the same arena in Tulsa. Santorum’s rise has helped fuel Gingrich’s drop in the polls nationally.
“The GOP electorate here is very much like [South Carolina's] -- white, evangelical, movement conservatives,” University of Oklahoma political science professor Ronald Keith Gaddie wrote in an email. “The problem for Newt is that the core GOP electorate consumes lots of Fox and talk radio, so they've become re-familiarized with Newt -- warts and all.”
Gingrich’s highest-profile endorsement in Oklahoma is former U.S. Rep. J.C. Watts, an Orange Bowl-winning quarterback for the University of Oklahoma.
The state’s GOP leaders have not lined up behind any candidate. The most influential Republicans -- Gov. Mary Fallin and U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn -- have not made endorsements. U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe backed Texas Gov. Rick Perry before he quit the race. Inhofe has not officially endorsed a new favorite, but he has spoken fondly of Santorum in recent weeks.
Coburn, who served in the U.S. House when Gingrich was speaker in the 1990s, has been hard on Gingrich.
Appearing on Fox News Sunday in December, Coburn said he found Gingrich’s leadership "lacking oftentimes.”
Coburn added: “There’s all kind of leaders, leaders that instill confidence and leaders that are somewhat abrupt, leaders that have one standard for the people that they are leading and a different standard for themselves. I will have difficulty supporting him for president of the United States.”
McFerron said Coburn, an anti-establishment figure, holds considerable sway among the state’s conservatives.
Said McFerron: “Coburn’s criticism of Gingrich probably does as much to help Santorum as anything does.”
Speaking to several hundred supporters in Oklahoma City Gingrich stressed domestic energy and earned a big cheer for saying that on his first day in office he would approve the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada. The project is planned to go through Cushing, Okla., en route to Texas oil refineries but has been held up by the Obama administration due to environmental concerns.
At the end of a longer than usual stump speech, Gingrich declared that “a victory in Oklahoma would be a huge breakthrough for us.”
In a radio interview with KRMG-Tulsa, Gingrich said he felt Oklahoma was a key Super Tuesday state and his energy policies would play well here.
“I have a message about getting back to oil and gas production, getting back to $2.50 a gallon gasoline and the kind of things that I think will be very well received in Oklahoma,” he said.
A poll by SoonerPoll.com released Sunday showed Santorum in the lead with 39 percent of the vote, trailed by Romney at 23 percent and Gingrich at 18 percent. Oklahoma state GOP chair Matt Pinnell said Romney and Santorum have staffers on the ground in the state, while Gingrich does not, and the state figures to be hotly contested. A scheduled visit from Texas Rep. Ron Paul on Saturday means that all four major GOP hopefuls will have visited the Sooner State before the primary.
“I don’t think that has ever happened before,” Pinnell said. “All of these candidates want to be able to say they won the reddest state in the country.”
About the Author
