The pro-Mitt Romney super PAC Restore Our Future is training its anti-ads on a resurgent Rick Santorum in Ohio, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Alabama and Mississippi. But, in Georgia, the group continues to gun for the man who used to call this place home: Newt Gingrich.
A Restore Our Future ad that broke Tuesday night on Atlanta TV stations questions Gingrich’s ties and allegiances to former President Ronald Reagan, whom Gingrich often invokes in speeches and debates. It features a black-and-white clip from a 1986 speech in which the then-Georgia congressman declares, “President Reagan is clearly failing.”
Restore Our Future is spending about $950,000 to air spots in Georgia between now and the GOP primary on Super Tuesday, March 6. The group is spending about another $5 million airing spots from Feb. 21 to March 5 in three other Super Tuesday states -- Tennessee, Ohio and Oklahoma -- and Michigan and Arizona, which hold elections Feb. 28, and Alabama and Mississippi, which hold elections March 13. Romney was born in Michigan, and his father was governor there.
Restore Our Future spokeswoman Brittany Gross declined to say Tuesday why the group continues to target Gingrich in Georgia. "We don't talk about strategy," she said. Though Gingrich, the former U.S. House speaker, once held a sizable lead in Georgia, that appears to have eroded as Santorum has gained ground and taken the lead in some national polls.
According to an automated survey conducted Monday night and released Tuesday by InsiderAdvantage for Fox 5 Atlanta, the Georgia race is statistically a three-way tie, with Gingrich at 26 percent; Romney, 24 percent; Santorum, 23 percent; and Ron Paul, 12 percent. The margin of error is 3.6 percentage points.
The Gingrich campaign, which decided to skip Michigan and concentrate on the Super Tuesday states of Georgia and Tennessee, has yet to run ads in Georgia, nor have the Romney, Santorum and Paul campaigns. So far, the only buys have been from Restore Our Future.
The pro-Gingrich super PAC, Winning Our Future, which fueled his campaigns in South Carolina, which he won, and Florida, where he lost, hasn't spent a cent in his old home state, but it's spending about $2.5 million on pro-Gingrich ads in Ohio, the District of Columbia, Arizona and North Carolina.
Georgia Republican strategist Joel McElhannon said Tuesday he thinks the Restore Our Future strategy is to defeat Gingrich in his home state, even if Romney doesn't win.
"It doesn't matter if Romney wins, or Santorum wins, as long as Gingrich loses in Georgia, because if Gingrich loses in Georgia, it will be devastating," said McElhannon.
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