BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Call it Grits Tuesday.
A week after 10 states cast Republican presidential ballots from coast to coast on Super Tuesday, the eyes of the political world turn to the Alabama and Mississippi primaries on Tuesday – where the three major candidates have all spent significant time and resources and polls show tight races.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney could deliver a major blow to his two major rivals by claiming one or both of the contests. Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum could firmly establish himself as Romney’s foremost challenger. And former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich could give much-needed attention and fuel to his imperiled campaign.
Grits, in fact, have become a point of contention as the trio has exchanged barbs leading into Tuesday’s voting. After Romney declared that he was learning to like grits during a visit to Mississippi, Gingrich began pointing out in each appearance that he has loved grits for decades – emphasizing that he is the only one of the three with Southern roots.
Gingrich is also the candidate who most needs victories to keep his long-shot campaign going. He has said he will go on regardless of the outcomes, but time is running out to prove that he can emerge as the conservative alternative to Romney.
“If Newt can’t win one of these two states he will be hard-pressed to answer the question: Where can he win?” said Republican pollster and strategist Whit Ayres.
For the other two candidates competing here – Texas Rep. Ron Paul is focusing on caucus states and running a distant fourth in polls in Alabama and Mississippi – victories would establish credentials in the deep-red heart of conservatism and possibly force Gingrich out.
“This is going to be much more important than I think people thought,” said Adam Stone, a political science professor at Georgia Perimeter College. “A lot of people thought a few weeks ago this was going to be Newt’s week to shine, but it may turn out that’s not the way it is.”
All three candidates – as well as their allied Super PACs -- have spent campaign time and advertising money in the two states. Gingrich has spent the past week, since winning the Georgia primary on Super Tuesday, exclusively in Alabama and Mississippi. Romney and Santorum have both made multiple stops in the states.
The Romney campaign has aggressively made the case that its delegate lead is insurmountable. According to an Associated Press tally Monday, Romney led with 454 delegates followed by Santorum with 217, Gingrich with 107 and Paul with 47. In order to clinch the nomination, a candidate must amass 1144 delegates at the August Republican convention in Tampa.
Santorum and Gingrich advisers argue that their task is not to reach that number by late summer, but merely to deny Romney the clinching total and force a chaotic brokered convention.
There are 50 delegates at stake in Alabama and 40 at stake in Mississippi on Tuesday, allocated proportionally based on the candidates’ vote share and performance by congressional district. The Hawaii and American Samoa caucuses also are being held Tuesday; Romney is widely expected to take those contests.
Aside from delegates, the Tuesday contests can provide momentum -- and the ensuing donations and press attention -- to the victors.
Santorum also is at a perilous point in his campaign, and John Fortier, a political scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and Brookings Institute think tanks, argued that he has the most to lose of the three. Santorum fell just short of major victories against Romney in Michigan and Ohio, and he has been unable to nudge Gingrich out of the race, as the two continue to split the most conservative votes.
“If somehow a combination of Gingrich or Romney wins one or both of those states, it makes the case for Santorum as less strong because he’s not the one who’s clearly going to win in another place," Fortier said. "He has won very small caucuses and border states, but he hasn’t really shown that he’s won in big places.”
A pair of surveys by Public Policy Polling show tight races in both states. PPP has Gingrich slightly ahead with 33 percent of the vote, with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney at 31 percent and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum at 27 percent. In Alabama, PPP found Romney with 31 percent, Gingrich at 30 percent and Santorum at 29 percent.
Both polls were conducted Saturday and Sunday through automated telephone interviews. The margin of error in Mississippi is 3.8 percent; in Alabama it is 4 percent.
On Monday Romney campaigned in Mobile, Ala., while Gingrich and Santorum both appeared – though not together – at forums in Biloxi, Miss., and Birmingham.
At the Gulf Coast Energy Forum in Biloxi, both candidates made a pitch for more oil drilling.
Gingrich, drawing primarily from his energy-focused stump speech, accused the Obama administration of being against fossil fuels and said technological advances on display in North Dakota show that we will not run out of domestic fuel anytime soon.
“If we exist in a world where there is not peak oil, and we exist in a world where the United States can become the No. 1 producer in the world, then you have a total new array of possible policy strategies,” he said.
Gingrich did not take any direct shots at his opponents, but Santorum made his pitch as the best GOP standard-bearer for the oil crowd by saying he never bought into man-made global warming. Santorum touched most of the same pro-drilling, anti-Obama themes as Gingrich, but he added that he never strayed from fossil fuel orthodoxy.
“When it was tough to say that stuff in the ground is an asset and not a liability, I stood up and said the science was bogus,” Santorum said. “I said this isn’t climate science, this is political science. And we called it for what it was and we opposed cap and trade. Unlike other people in this race who sat on couches with the Speaker of the House, who crowed when he was governor of Massachusetts about imposing the first carbon tax.”
Santorum was referencing Gingrich’s famous 2008 advertisement when he sat on a couch with then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a liberal Democrat, to say that the country needed to work on solutions for global warming. Gingrich has said it was one of the dumbest political moves he ever made, and the ad has been the subject of many an attack since.
In Birmingham Santorum argued that he was the most conservative candidate in the race and made a direct appeal to the 2,000 boisterous attendees.
“Don’t vote with what the pundits say,” Santorum said. “Vote with your own heart and you own head.”
Gingrich brought up the runaway spending when Santorum was in Senate leadership and his blowout loss in 2006. He stressed that he made his political career next door in Georgia -- starting in the 1970s when Democrats had a stranglehold on the state.
"Look at what i've done," Gingrich said. "I worked for the Georgia GOP when there was no Georgia GOP."
About the Author
