CE Week #2: “Romney Maps a Strategy for Survival”
By MICHAEL LUO
DENVER — After devoting two years and more than $35 million of his money trying to win his party’s nomination for the presidency, Mitt Romney and his advisers face the possibility that his effort could end with the nominating contests on Tuesday.
Senator John McCain of Arizona has won a series of major primaries and landed big-name endorsements as he seeks to present himself as the Republican Party’s putative nominee.
Operating in survival mode, Mr. Romney’s circle of advisers has come up with a detailed road map to try to salvage his campaign. The plan is complete with a new infusion of cash from Mr. Romney, a long-term strategy intended to turn the campaign into a protracted delegate fight and a reframing of the race as a one-on-one battle for the future of the party that seeks to sound the alarm among conservatives about Mr. McCain.
The advisers have drawn up a list of states, dividing and ranking them into those considered relatively easy and inexpensive targets, along with a broader grouping of more costly battlegrounds where the advisers hope that Mr. Romney can be competitive.
Some states like Arizona and Arkansas, the home states of Mr. McCain and Mike Huckabee, respectively, are largely written off.
The question is whether the planning, along with the campaign’s one trump card, the candidate’s vast wealth, can overcome the growing sense of inevitability that has begun to attach itself to Mr. McCain.
Complicating the outlook, Mr. Romney’s campaign has been racked by infighting over advertising strategy between some senior advisers, including some consultants who joined the campaign after leaving Mr. McCain’s.
Polls in many major primary states on Tuesday, including California, the linchpin of Mr. Romney’s strategy, where he is spending $1.7 million on advertising, according to a rival campaign, show Mr. McCain with a comfortable lead. He also appears to hold significant edges in New York and New Jersey, winner-take-all states where many former backers of Rudolph W. Giuliani have joined the McCain camp.
The endorsement by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California boosts Mr. McCain there, and the national news media buzz contributes to the air of a coronation.
“I don’t think anyone should write Mitt Romney’s obituary yet,” said Todd Harris, a political consultant who worked on Fred D. Thompson’s campaign. “He can be a compelling candidate with a ton of money. But at some point if he’s not winning, the entire rationale for his campaign becomes that he is a well-funded candidate who’s not John McCain, and that’s not enough.”
Another unforeseen complication is the funeral on Saturday of Gordon B. Hinckley, president and prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in Salt Lake City. The funeral, taking Mr. Romney off the trail on the most important weekend of campaigning so far, will draw attention once again to Mr. Romney’s Mormon faith.
His advisers point to some signs of hope in an election cycle in which conventional wisdom has often been turned upside down. They say they are starting to see a groundswell of opposition to Mr. McCain among conservative leaders, as well as at the grass roots, especially on talk radio.
The day after Mr. Romney’s loss to Mr. McCain in Florida, his aides said, the campaign set a record for one-day online contributions, almost $400,000.
Mr. Romney’s advisers are also convinced that their mantra on the economy and bringing change to Washington and the economy remains compelling.
The campaign’s director of strategy, Alex Gage, sent a memorandum to supporters on Thursday that highlighted exit poll data from the previous nominating contests, saying just a few percentage points of support to Mr. Romney from conservatives would swing the nomination to him.
Besides California, the campaign has also bought airtime for commercials in other states as part of a “significant” buy, advisers said, although they declined to say where. A rival campaign also reported that Mr. Romney has bought nearly $350,000 in advertising time to run nationally on the Fox News Channel.
Alex Castellanos, a media strategist for Mr. Romney, said regardless of the delegate count, the winner in California would have the momentum to move on.
“California’s the one to watch,” Mr. Castellanos said.
Rob Stutzman, a senior adviser for the California campaign, said the Republican electorate there was traditionally quite conservative. Mr. Stutzman predicted that Mr. McCain would run into problems because of his moderate stance on illegal immigration.
“The immigration vulnerability is amplified in California for McCain,” he said.
The Romney campaign has had four paid staff members in California since last summer and has been making calls throughout the state since the beginning of January, when absentee voting began.
The field operations are focused on Congressional districts where it believes that organization can have productive effects. The state is set up so that each district is worth the same number of delegates, no matter how many Republicans are in it. A small organizing effort could swing a district.
The Romney campaign is banking on winning Utah, with its heavy concentration of Mormons.
Beyond that, the campaign is also focused on picking off the handful of states holding caucuses or state conventions on Tuesday. The campaign says some minimal organization — it has had at least one paid worker in almost every Feb. 5 state since the fall — and spending can produce results. The states include Colorado, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota and West Virginia.
Adding Alaska, where Mr. Romney’s son Josh has been dispatched, more than 250 delegates are at stake in this first group of states out of the more than 1,000 delegates up for grabs on Tuesday.
The campaign has then drawn up a broader list of battlegrounds where it believes it can be competitive, including Georgia, Illinois, Missouri and Tennessee. Advertising will most likely be focused on those primary states.
The most serious obstacle in many places is Mr. Huckabee, who continues to pull social conservative voters from Mr. Romney.
“The more the Romney strategy hinges on picking up red states, the bigger a factor Mike Huckabee is going to be,” Mr. Harris said.
In the face of difficult odds, Mr. Romney’s advisers said, he had been the individual raising their morale whenever it sagged. After his weary advisers dozed on the flight from Florida to California on Wednesday, Mr. Romney gathered them at the front of the plane.
Trying to lighten the mood, he turned to Cindy Gillespie, a senior adviser who worked with him in rescuing the scandal-ridden 2002 Winter Olympic Games, and said: “We’ve been here before, haven’t we? Salt Lake was always three steps forward, two steps back.”
I hate to say it, but I think that Mitt Romney is fighting a losing battle to McCain. Actually, not even all to McCain, but to Huckabee, who I believe, is also on his way out. Today I heard it said on the news from Romney that “a vote for Huckabee is a vote for McCain.” And he is right. The issue is that Huckabee has not had a win since the Iowa caucuses, and has continually dropped. But he hasn’t dropped out yet, and does not look like he plans to. He still thinks that he has a big enough chance to beat out both Romney and McCain. But he doesn’t.
The other major factor, as the article briefly suggests, is Romney’s religion. There are many people out there that simply do not want a Mormon as their president. A woman who called into a talk radio show yesterday (I can’t remember which) said that if Romney was elected as president, it would be “just as bad as voting in an Islamic (regime).” It is that kind of narrow-minded thinking that will make McCain (once Huckabee is pushed past) the GOP nominee. And McCain’s ideals are not at all what he cracks them up to be. I think that in the very end, it will not come down to who does the most advertising, or the most mud-slinging. It will come down religion. And Americans are not as tolerant as they pretend to be.
~Liz
“Three steps forward, two steps back.”
Ahh, Mitt Romney, the conservative/liberal of the candidates, who won’t let McCain run away with the party nomination. In a way I feel inspired by his comment how he said, ““We’ve been here before, haven’t we? Salt Lake was always three steps forward, two steps back.”” I admire that statement, and well it’s interesting because I look back at our own country’s history and pretty much see the same thing. Let’s travel back to the first colonies. Well there were about 3 colonies that first began, and really only one—Jamestown, really survived. “Three steps forward, two steps back.” Continuing on the colonial road, we come to the French and Indian War. At the time we were considered Britains, and well, we won the war, but in the end lost loyalty to Britain for we no longer needed their support. “Three steps forward, two steps back.” The Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution of the United States of America, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Civil Rights Movement, etc. At one point or another these were steps forward, but we see steps backwards as well: the American Revolution, weak, incapable government, slavery/representation, the Civil War, segregation, discrimination. Unfortunately we look back at our so-called “glorious” history and well, it’s really not. It really is “three steps forward, two steps back.” Mitt Romney would be a great president, no I do not agree with his religious doctrines at all, but for him to pursue the nomination of his party, definitely hardest aspect of the presidency, despite McCain standing in the limelight, I hold Romney at much higher regards. How many of us would stick through the times that he has experienced and yet still trudge on?
Danny Porter
Personally, I think Mitt Romney should really stop wasting his money and just drop out of the race. He doesn’t understand that he does not even have a small chance of winning the presidency. The one reason that he doesn’t have a chance is because he is mormon. People won’t get over that fact. The one thing that Mitt Romney has going for him is the court case that gave canadates the right to fund their own campaign with unlimited funds. With Mitt Romney’s almost unlimited wealth, he doesn’t have to worry about any funding problems. Huckabee, who is still in the race, really draws a lot of votes who would seem to vote for Romney away. This is seriously hurting Romney, and with what I just heard from the TV in the other room, Huckabee won a few of the southern states, Romney is in a bit of a pickle. It doesn’t look like Huckabee is going away any time soon with his momentum from doing better than expected on super tuesday, and Mitt Romney really has to consider how much money he is willing to potentially waste. It boggles my mind that someone could be so incredibly power hungry that they could use up so much of their personal wealth as their chances of actually getting the spot as president fade slowly away.
I see all this controversy over Romney’s religion and I really don’t understand it. Okay, he’s a Mormon, but really, how much of that do you think will play into the way he runs the country? I think people who are so critical of it don’t understand the religion and still look upon it as a cult, which, to the extent he practices, it is not. Obviously Romney isn’t going out and marrying seven different women or anything to that extent. I guess its just my personal opinion, but I don’t get why this seems to be such a large issue, making him unelectable while it seems as if we can widely accept a woman and a black man and deem them electable. Now, in now way am I saying that they’re not, but I just think that if we’re able to see past color and sex, why can’t we see past religion?
While I think its really sad that he’s seen as less electable because of his religion, I do believe that he’s losing the very conservative vote because of it. And as we talked about in class, McCain has been very crafty in his efforts to keep Huckabee in to draw votes away from Romney. “A vote for Huckabee is a vote for McCain.” And pretty much anything that isn’t a vote for Romney is a vote for McCain. He seemed like a front runner for a while, but it really does look like Romney is just about finished.
Mitt Romney’s plan sounds like a pretty good one to me, and I hope that it works and he does win the Republican candidacy. Honestly he seems to be the best candidate now. I know I don’t want a man in his 70’s as our president, nor do I want Ron Paul. In the article it talked about the death of the president and prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon Leader), and how Mitt Romney attended his funeral. Unfortunately for Romney I think his only down fall as a candidate is his Mormon faith. Has the United States matured enough to get over time to be able to elect a Mormon president? I think not that’s why I think McCain will win the Republican Candidacy. When we looked at the numbers in class today it looked like McCain was running away with the delegate count, so maybe we have seen the last of Romney. One thing I did not understand in the article was when it said McCain’s status was brought down in California because of his moderate stance on illegal immigration. It also talked about how Arnold Schwarzenegger is endorsing McCain. I thought he already won California, but I am not sure.
Romney’s strategy served him well in several of his target states, but West Virginia particularly cost him dearly, and as the author correctly predicted, Huckabee was behind the loss. The longer Huckabee remains in the race, the more convoluted his intentions become. I suppose his goal has always been to be elected, but with the polls coming back around 10% and 15% for him, the nation began to wonder whether he was simply campaigning for VP. On Super Tuesday, the backlash votes seemed to play a pivotal role as the conservatives opposing Romney voted for Huckabee, attempting to throw away their vote and keep Romney from pulling ahead. Instead they catapulted Huckabee into a position of claiming himself a more likely winner than McCain. How could this have happened?
Exactly as the article states, this race has defied most of the conventional trends that were expected. The frontloading did not change the structure other than to eliminate the weaker candidates that were inevitable dropouts, Iowa and New Hampshire didn’t predict the leader, and the republicans don’t have their frontrunner even this late in the game. All three of the major candidates on the right side of the race have some form of backlash movements against them. Castellanos may have been right that McCain received a lot of delegates from winning California, but he is wrong that the race will fall to him as a result of that victory. Nothing at this point is clear cut and I think that Romney has just as much of a chance as any of the leaders. He not only falls in the middle as far as the number of delegates, but his image is one of a balance between the “conservative” McCain that seems too liberal and the bible-thumper Huckabee. Romney offers a way out, and while this is not the most desirable way to vote it can certainly be an effective campaign.
The battleground states his campaign plotted out did not prove to yield Romney any victories but he polled close behind his two competitors, especially in Georgia where the three were within 4% of each other. In the national election, a different strategy is often developed with respect to states that may swing to the left or right. The candidates often focus on these states much more in the general election because they know that strong Republican states will vote for the nominee anyway. In the nomination race, however, the battleground states pose a greater risk for wasting money and time that could be better devoted to shoring up support in states they are more likely to win. Swing states are important in both cases, but approached differently in the two separate races.
Money is the mother’s milk of politics. That’s traditionally the case. But when a candidate with money meets a candidate with both the media and momentum on his side, 2 Ms beat out the one. Romney faces a nearly insurmountable climb against the now-monolithic McCain.
Romney has always had the funds to run his campaign and had quite a bit of media attention for a while. He has been near the front of the Republican herd for most of the past few months. However, the media largely left him alone after the initial LDS-based controversy, and Romney’s momentum dwindled.
Then came McCain. He found that momentum, and he caught the wave at the perfect time. As Romney slid toward the trough, McCain coasted on the crest. The Comeback Kid. Lazarus. I-Was-Lost-But-Now-I-Have-Been-Found. I-Was-Dead-But-Now-I-Have-Risen. And the media set after him like a pack of eager puppies. Once one has momentum and media, the money is sure to follow; and now McCain is handily winning the Republican majority.
Romney had the money wrapped up, but now he is losing to the overwhelming convergence of M power: McCain.
“The campaign’s director of strategy, Alex Gage, sent a memorandum to supporters on Thursday that highlighted exit poll data from the previous nominating contests, saying just a few percentage points of support to Mr. Romney from conservatives would swing the nomination to him.”
I think that’s the problem right there. In other terms, Mike Huckabee is the problem. In class we talked about how Mike Huckabee is “stealing” votes from Mitt Romney because they split the conservative vote (because obviously, those voters won’t pick John McCain). This makes me wonder how last night would have turned out had Huckabee not been in the race. Would Romney have won a lot more states?
I believe so. If you take the sum of the percentage points of Romney and Huckabee, Romney could have beaten McCain in many states last night. The article I think, also supports my thought because it mentions that Romney was expected to win in Georgia and Tennesee. You have to remember, that McCain barely got 30% of the vote in Georgia last night, and Romney and Huckabee got at least 60% of the vote in Georgia.
I’m hoping that if Huckabee drops out, he’ll give his delegates to Romney, even though that’s not likely because I think he should endorse a more conservative candidate, like Romney, that fits the Republican mold, unlike McCain.
-Jason Wong
Oh boy oh boy oh boy. As of recently, Romney lost to McCain in basically a landslide in California. And while McCain has an overall significant delegate lead, he still does not have it in the bag. It’s too early to predict a winner for each party, and Romney definitely has the finances to boost his campaigning. If the nomination and election were truly just a beauty contest, Romney would have it in the bag ;-D He is the most “Presidential” and good looking. I somewhat admire Romney’s morale; it seems everything is working against him (besides his $$$), such as McCain receiving several big-name endorsers and “a vote for Huckabee is [truly] a vote for McCain.” Liz mentioned that America is not really as tolerable as we would like to think; I agree with her. Ultimately, I feel Romney’s religion is going to be his number one enemy. While it shouldn’t play a large role in the way people would believe he would run the country, it does. A few remaining key states are left, and Romney’s strategy seems to be worthwhile. It’s a toss-up for now. All in all, last minute advertising is going to play a big role. It will be interesting to see if one of the top 2 candidates gets big-time negative on the other. And who knows, maybe Huckabee will drop out tomorrow… what a race that would make.
Response to Liz and Zander
Always so negative, do you have no faith in Romney. Yes I know this is a wee bit late since Romney’s campaign has been suspended and all, but I really think he should have kept on going. I say this in thinking possibly that Romney and with Huckabee in his favor could actually have drawn enough delegates away from McCain in the thought it would have to be decided at the Republican convention. At this time the conservatives might have had enough time to realize what a bad choice McCain could have been. However, they might then choose Huckabee as the solid conservative and just skip over Romney. That would really be disappointing to him, all that work for nothing.
The thing that I dislike the most about this situation is reiterated exactly through what Zander has said, “The one reason that he doesn’t have a chance is because he is Mormon.” This really says something about the way people are. People are uninterested in change and judge people by what they believe or what they look like and not what they are capable of. Now I am not sure how qualified Romney would have been as president, but it seems no one ever gave him a chance since he has different beliefs.
Seeing as how Mitt Romney has for the time dropped out of the running, it seems like this master plan he laid out this past week, if not earlier, didn’t really work out for him. I think I’d have to agree with Cody on the stand point that out of the candidates left, Romney seems the most sensible. I agree that I really don’t want a 71 year old man running our country, and possibly keeling over one of these days to let his second man in charge take over. I think with what happened yesterday in the caucuses somewhat throws things up in the air for Romney. I found it really interesting that Mike Huckabee won so many states. This complicates things for McCain, as he has been set out to win, or is the front running candidate in the Republican Nomination since this past Tuesday. McCain got thrown a curveball yesterday, which tells Romney that his chances are higher than he imagined. I think it’s a good plan to wait things out a little bit and see how things are looking once the next group of primaries and caucuses are through. We have to remember that Romney has 278 delegates still and once everything is through, can reenter himself into the running and use those delegates how he pleases. I think it also matters on the amount of fund raising Romney can do if he reenters. Whether this is PAC money, or donations sent separately from individual people. For example, Obama has been raising money like crazy over the past few days, and look what happened in yesterday’s caucuses, a clean sweep over Hillary. We will just have to wait and see what happens with the pre-elections to come.
I really have to agree with Mckena in this instance that it really makes no sense to me why Romney should be ostracized as a candidate merely because of his religion. Romney may not be my favorite candidate but it still seems unfair to judge him by just his religion. It is sort of the same though with Clinton and Obama, they are both being judged, one by gender and the other by race. I agree that I don’t think that this would really be a big factor in how he would run the presidency but nonetheless it is all that the media focuses on. It is just really odd because nobody cares what religion McCain or Huckabee is, but then they fit the general characteristics of white, male, and protestant right?
However, beyond that Romney did have to pull out of the race after the Super Tuesday races when he did not win near enough states to stay in the race. It is really interesting to see that Romney just gave up and pretty much gave the candidacy to McCain. Yet, he also was not raising enough money and had to donate his own money to the campaign which I think is a bad sign for any campaign. It seems that no matter how great Romney’s strategies were they did not work well enough to keep Romney in the race.
Lindsey Devaney