Super Tuesday challenge for Santorum in Ohio

CUYAHOGA FALLS, Ohio (AP) — Rick Santorum is facing a crucial test in Ohio, where he's drawing upon his working-class background and underdog image to try to stop Mitt Romney from scoring a pivotal victory in Super Tuesday's premier contest.

An unapologetic social conservative, Santorum has cast the race in Biblical terms: He's David vs. Romney's Goliath. Even that "is probably a little bit of an understatement," Santorum said Monday.

The former senator from neighboring Pennsylvania has a shell of a campaign in Ohio, with no state headquarters and a barebones staff. In Romney he faces a challenger who enjoys a massive cash advantage and a political machine that's produced high-stakes victories in other states when his front-runner status was in doubt.

Santorum expects to be competitive in several states Tuesday — Tennessee, Oklahoma and Georgia among them. But Ohio voters, perhaps more than any others among the 10 states voting on this Super Tuesday, may shape the fate of his campaign.

A Santorum victory could reshuffle the Republican contest, sending a powerful message that Romney's grasp on his party's nomination is by no means assured. A loss in Ohio, where Santorum has devoted much of his time and resources, may have lasting consequences.

Santorum will spend Tuesday night watching returns in Steubenville, an eastern Ohio town just a 90-minute drive from his own Pennsylvania hometown.

On Monday, Santorum largely set his aggressive social agenda aside and focused on his plans to revitalize the nation's manufacturing sector, while reminding voters across Ohio about his family's blue-collar roots. But as public polls showed a tightening race, Santorum's team also sought to lower expectations.

"This fight will continue and it's going to go on for a long time after this," a Santorum supporter, state Attorney General Mike DeWine, said on the eve of the election. "We're going to fight state to state. I think Rick is going to win ... but it's going to be a close race."

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After losses, Santorum reaches out to women

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. - Although when he walked on the stage the race here had yet to be called for Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum gave an address that seemed to focus on some of the mistakes he has made over the past week.

"A  month ago they didn't know who we are, but they do now," Santorum said,  flanked by his wife, eldest daughter Elizabeth, and son John. "We came to the backyard of one of my opponents, in a race where people said, 'You know, just ignore it, you're going to have no chance here.' And the people of Michigan looked into the hearts of the candidates, and all I have to say is, 'I love you back.'"

The crowd was enthusiastic, with one man shouting, "I love you," but there was a sad tone in the air that began even before they took the stage, as the theme song to the "The Natural" played.

Santorum mentioned his 93-year-old mother, something he hasn't in previous speeches, and he told the audience in what seemed to be a pitch to female voters who might feel put off by some of his previous comments about women in the workplace, that his mother made more money than his father.

"She was someone who did get a job in the 1930s and was a nurse, and worked full time. She continued to work through my childhood years," Santorum said to the crowd that was heavy on families with young children. "She balanced time working different schedules. A professional who made more money than her husband."

Santorum's mother was a nurse and his father was a psychologist for the Veteran's Administration.

The former Pennsylvania senator also touted his wife's work experience, saying she was a "professional" as well, and thanked his daughter, Elizabeth, who has been on the campaign trail with him since the early days in Iowa.

"[Karen] worked as a nurse, but after we got married, she decided to walk away, yet didn't quit working. She was a mother, and also wrote two books," Santorum said, in what also seemed to be an appeal to female voters.

He spent most of his speech repeating the themes he does on the stump, including his mention of the Declaration of Independence, but this evening there was a twist on that, too.

"The men and women who signed that declaration wrote the final phrase, 'We pledge to each other our lives, our fortune, and our sacred honor," Santorum said.

There were no women who signed the Declaration of Independence.

Longtime Santorum strategist John Brabender said it wasn't a direct appeal, but more about mentioning and thanking other people in the candidate's life besides his grandfather, who Santorum consistently talks about the trail.  Brabender did acknowledge they have to "struggle with misperceptions" and said that is "something we will always be doing."

Brabender said they have won at least five districts here and tried to spin the loss that Santorum may come out of Romney's home state as the victor of the popular vote.

He said the campaign is "much better organized" than it has ever have before, but he called it the "MacGyver campaign," a reference to the TV series in which the main character is a special agent who is constantly able to create complex devices out of everyday objects.

"Every pundit, every opponent acknowledges the Santorum campaign does more with less," Brabender said. "And we are doing pretty darn well so far."

After the speech, Brabender told reporters they wouldn't call on Newt Gingrich to drop out of the race, but did urge "conservatives and tea party supporters" to "unify" to "stop a moderate like Mitt Romney."

During his speech, Santorum hardly mentioned his rival, Romney, who won his home state and received a phone call from Santorum conceding before he even took the stage. The call was made when Santorum was away from his advisers and just sitting with his family before he took the stage.

"I just congratulated him, he had a very good night," Santorum told reporters about the phone call.

Despite the loss - a win in Romney's home state would have been devastating - he said he "feels great."

"This was going to be Romney's night," Santorum told reporters while greeting supporters on the ropeline. "The question was going to be how big? And it wasn't very big. It is a two-person race right now. We are doing excellently."

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Gingrich slams Santorum as a 'big labor Republican'

NASHVILLE (AP) — Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich on Monday slammed rival Rick Santorum as a "big labor Republican," accusing him of siding with unions over Memphis-based FedEx when the Senate grappled with a labor dispute in the 1990s.

Gingrich, the former Georgia congressman and House Speaker, is hoping to revive his struggling campaign in the South, and he tailored his message Monday to Republican voters in Tennessee. Although polls show a close race between Santorum and Mitt Romney, Gingrich challenged the former Pennsylvania senator and his conservative credentials.

"I think there are profound reasons that Rick lost the Senate race by the largest margin in Pennsylvania history in 2006 and I think it's very hard for him to carry that all the way to the general," Gingrich said. "Then he comes South and you take the case right here. He voted for the unions over FedEx. I suspect most folks in the state don't know that. But in fact he was a big labor Republican in Pennsylvania and I suspect when you get to Memphis and you say to people, 'Gee, this is a guy who wanted to guarantee that FedEx give into the unions.' Santorum won't be as popular the following morning."

Gingrich was referring to a provision in a 1996 spending bill for the Federal Aviation Administration that sought to help FedEx truck drivers in their efforts to organize. A group of Democrats held up the FAA bill to protest what they said was an attempt to help FedEx prevent its truck drivers from forming a union.

In 2006, Democrat Bob Casey soundly defeated Santorum in his re-election bid.

Gingrich said if Romney wins the Michigan primary on Tuesday, "you'll see things start to clarify. If, as people expect, you end up with a Romney victory in Michigan tomorrow, I think you'll see Santorum getting a very different second look."

Bypassing Michigan and Arizona, the other primary on Tuesday, Gingrich said voters in Tennessee and his home state of Georgia could rejuvenate his presidential bid, which has stalled since he claimed a surprise victory in last month's South Carolina primary. The former House speaker said a handful of states voting on the mega-contest day of March 6 could propel him to wins in Mississippi and Alabama next month and delegate-rich primaries later in the spring in Texas and California.

"Then all of the sudden, the same media which said I was dead in the fall, I was ahead in December, I was dead in early January, I was ahead in mid-January, all of the sudden they're going to say ... Gingrich will be back again," he said during a luncheon with local Republicans.

Tennessee and Georgia hold nearly one-third of the 419 delegates at stake in the 10 states voting on Super Tuesday, contests Gingrich views as crucial to his struggling presidential bid. His campaign sees a potential backdoor opening if either Romney or Santorum stumbles, setting the stage for another showdown in a prolonged series of primary contests.

At a rally on the grounds of the State Capitol, Gingrich, a former history professor, said President Andrew Jackson would have been "enraged" by President Barack Obama, citing the president's recent decision to apologize for the actions of U.S. troops who burned Qurans while destroying documents on a military base in Afghanistan.

"Jackson understood that you want your opponents to respect you," Gingrich said, overlooking a statue of the 19th century president riding horseback. "They don't have to like you but they have to understand that you're formidable and you're dangerous."

Gingrich was reaching for a strong showing in Tennessee even as a statewide poll underscored his challenges here. A Vanderbilt University poll showed Gingrich at 10 percent in the state, trailing rivals Santorum with 33 percent and Romney with 17 percent. The poll of 767 likely Republican primary voters was conducted Feb. 16-22 and had a margin of error of 3 percent.

"The race remains very fluid in this state and will likely continue to move in response to the primaries in Michigan and Arizona," said John Geer, a Vanderbilt political scientist and co-director of the Vanderbilt Poll. "Still, this poll suggests the climb is steep for the speaker, but far from impossible in this unpredictable year."

Earlier, Gingrich attended a health care forum at the law firm of former Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker Jr., R-Tenn., urging Republicans to think of this time as "the beginning of the replacement debate rather than just the anti-Obamacare debate." Gingrich has said he would repeal Obama's health care law if Republicans win congressional majorities.

Gingrich has offered a number of alternatives to the new health law, offering a tax credit to help people buy health insurance or the ability to deduct part of the costs from their taxes.

The former speaker returns to Georgia on Tuesday for a three-day bus tour around his home state, hoping to halt a monthlong slide.

"My basic hope is to pick up some delegates virtually everywhere, pick up a lot of delegates in the South and Southwest and then with Texas and California, be totally in the race," Gingrich said.

___

Follow Ken Thomas on Twitter at http://twitter.com/AP_Ken_Thomas

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For Santorum voters, he's a candidate like them

COLUMBUS, Ohio (Reuters) - Sporting his signature sweater vest and telling stories of his coal miner grandfather, Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum has struck a chord in the Rust Belt that is helping propel his once long-shot candidacy.

Although he is a millionaire, Santorum has found a common touch that has helped put him atop opinion polls in the industrial states of Michigan and Ohio and raised serious doubts about whether longtime front-runner Mitt Romney can win the Republican nomination to take on President Barack Obama in the November 6 election.

Santorum's portrayal of himself as the blue-collar Republican has managed to overshadow Romney's jobs message in a part of the country troubled by unemployment.

In conversations with nearly a dozen voters preparing to cast ballots for the former Pennsylvania senator in the Ohio and Michigan primaries, not one person volunteered that Santorum was the best candidate to revive American industry.

Instead, voters said they were coming to Santorum's side because his everyman style and Christian faith reminded them of themselves.

"He's basically down-to-earth," said Janice Thomas, 56, of Pickerington, Ohio, who is retired.

"Maybe I think he is more like me," said David Diyani, 58, a pastor at the Vineyard Church in Etna, Ohio. "I feel like I can relate to him."

Santorum's life, though, is far from ordinary.

He spent 12 years in the Senate, known as the "world's most exclusive club," and earned degrees in law and business. He purchased a luxury Audi sedan and earned hundreds of thousands of dollars as a consultant in recent years. Santorum's 2010 salary - $923,000 - placed him squarely within the top 1 percent of income earners in America.

Yet he can still draw a sharp contrast to Romney, a former Massachusetts governor whose fortune is estimated at up to $270 million and who often makes gaffes that show a lack of familiarity with ordinary Americans' struggles.

"I do my own taxes," Santorum said at the Detroit Economic Club on Thursday. "Heck, Romney paid half the taxes I did. He doesn't do his own taxes. Maybe I should hire an accountant in the future."

Santorum's previous criticism of the government bailout of the auto industry in 2009 might be a problem in Michigan where millions of people rely on the car companies. But Romney was a more vocal opponent of the rescue, leaving his rival's opposition to it largely overlooked.

A Detroit News poll, released last week, showed Santorum leading Romney 34 percent to 30 percent in Michigan, the state where Romney was born and where his father was governor. A Quinnipiac poll had Santorum leading Romney 36 percent to 29 percent in Ohio. Michigan's primary is on February 28 and Ohio votes on March 6.

GINGRICH DEFECTORS

Part of the Santorum surge can be accounted for by disaffected supporters of Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

"I decided to support him three weeks ago. Before that, I was for Gingrich," said Steve Izev, 34, of Westerville, Ohio. "The more popular he got, the more I liked him."

Santorum's rise in the polls is also fueled by the same phenomenon that successively lifted Texas Governor Rick Perry, former pizza magnate Herman Cain, and Gingrich to the front of the pack: He is not Romney.

In a Pew Research Center poll released last Monday, 50 percent of Republican and Republican-leaning respondents nationwide said Romney was not a strong conservative.

"They are the 'anybody-but-Romney' people. They are the 'un-Romney' people," said Bill Ballenger, editor of the "Inside Michigan Politics" newsletter. "There is no reason in Michigan that they should be for Santorum. They don't really know who he is really."

A political climate featuring renewed debate over religious freedom, contraception and gay rights has benefited the devoutly

Catholic Santorum among evangelical Republicans.

In the Inside Michigan Poll, Michigan voters who said social issues were most important to them chose Santorum over Romney by 64 percent to 19 percent.

Faith is never far from the Santorum campaign. At a phone bank for Santorum in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, the Ten Commandments were nailed to the wall. Paintings of Jesus and Mary hung in a back room.

Supporters of the conservative Tea Party movement praise Santorum for his frequent references to the U.S. Constitution. Santorum campaigns with a pocket-sized version that he removes from his coat for emphasis on the campaign trail.

In a MRG/Inside Michigan Poll released on Wednesday, Santorum bettered Romney among Tea Party supporters by 51 percent to 22 percent.

Female voters are the most resistant to Santorum. In Michigan polls, where Santorum leads Romney among a number of groups, the two are neck and neck in support among women.

In recent weeks, Santorum has drawn controversy with comments about working women and women in the military.

On the campaign trail, Santorum stokes voters' outrage that they are underappreciated by people in power.

"You are not being talked to as adults," Santorum told a Tea Party rally in Columbus on Saturday. "You are being treated as mindless, fly-over-country rubes who don't need to know the truth."

"We used to be called the Silent Majority," said Terry McGiffin, 69, a retired management trainer from Westerville, Ohio, describing Santorum's supporters.

Many supporters confess a lack of familiarity with Santorum's policy prescriptions but say they find him to be the Republican field's most likable entrant.

"I don't know a lot about him," said Gary Henson, 32, the owner of a medical supply company in Columbus. "I like his demeanor. I like his personality."

(Editing by Alistair Bell and Peter Cooney)

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Santorum touts energy industry, free market at campaign stop in Detroit

Santorum (Paul Sancya/AP)

DETROIT, Mich-- The manufacturing and energy industries--if freed from the shackles of the Obama administration--hold the keys to economic recovery, Rick Santorum told guests gathered here today at the Detroit Economic Club.

Brandishing a hunk of coal (which he said he received during a campaign stop yesterday in North Dakota), Santorum touted the energy industry as a path forward for the U.S. economy in addition to manufacturing-- an issue of great importance to this area, which was hard hit by the collapse of the auto industry.

"The average job in western North Dakota: $90,000 dollars a year," the former Pennsylvania senator said. "Goes a long way in Tioga, North Dakota. There's the opportunity for you, folks. That's what energy and manufacturing can do."

Santorum attacked President Obama for rejecting the Keystone XL Pipeline and failing to support other U.S. energy sources, and for allowing union ties and bailouts to stifle the country's manufacturing industry.

"This is a president who is suffocating this economy. This is a president who doesn't care about you and the cost of living you have to deal with," Santorum said.

Santorum, who was not in office in 2008 when Congress voted for the TARP auto bailouts, took a hard stance against bailouts during the question-and-answer session following his speech. Contrasting himself with opponent Mitt Romney, Santorum said that while Romney, a former Massachusetts governor who earned significant wealth from a private equity firm, supported the Wall Street bailout but rejected the auto bailout, Santorum has been consistent in his opposition.

"If we had just stayed out of it completely and let the market work, I believe the market would have worked," Santorum said. "Would the auto industry look different than it does today? Yes, it would be. Would it still be alive and well? I think it would be alive and equally as well if not better."

In explaining his opposition to the auto bailout, Santorum, grandson of a coal miner, cited his experiences in Pennsylvania dealing with a struggling steel industry, which he concedes today is smaller and experiences inconsistent profits, but is alive and competitive.

Santorum used Thursday's appearance ahead of Michigan's Feb. 28th primary to contrast himself with Romney, who was born in Michigan where his father served as governor, and to argue against some of the attacks he's recently faced.

"I know you folks here in Michigan have been hearing some things on the television from one of my opponents that I am a big spender," Santorum said, referencing a recent ad from Romney's super PAC. But Santorum said any objective look at his records says otherwise, noting a Weekly Standard article published Wednesday that reported the National Taxpayers' Union gave Santorum high-- sometimes even the highest-- marks on spending during his tenure in the Senate.

Santorum also alluded to a statement that continues to haunt Romney-- Romney's comments about being unconcerned about the "very poor," because there are safety nets in place for many of these individuals. "I'm a candidate who cares about 100 percent," Santorum said.

Santorum criticized President Obama for creating class warfare, creating a system where Americans are reliant on government support, and where union bosses rule the public sector. Santorum, who mentioned his grandfather was his union's treasurer, said he does see a place for private sector unions. It's public sector unions that he's "not quite as warm and fuzzy about," Santorum said.

In between arguing that the president's first priority is the government, and Romney's is Wall Street, Santorum spent much of his speech arguing that he's for all Americans. I want to create "an atmosphere for everyone to rise in America," Santorum told the audience.

Recent polls show Santorum cutting into and even overtaking Romney's lead in Michigan as the state's "native son." Santorum is scheduled to hold two more public events in Michigan-- one Thursday night and another Friday morning-- before heading to Ohio, one of the states where voters head to the polls on Super Tuesday Mar. 6.

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Santorum made $1 million a year, tax returns show

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s income rose each successive year that he was out of Congress until he was earning about $1 million a year, according to four years of tax returns that the former senator from Pennsylvania made public late on Wednesday.

In 2007, after he lost his bid for reelection, Santorum earned $659,000, mostly from his Washington, D.C.-based consulting business. He made $952,000 in 2008, $1.1 million in 2009, and about $923,000 in 2010. Santorum and his wife, Karen, also made between roughly $42,000 and $45,000 each year from rental properties. 

They paid $167,000 in taxes in 2007, about $262,000 in 2008, $310,000 in 2009, and $263,000 in 2010, meaning they paid between 25 and 30 percent of their income to the government each year. 

Santorum said on CNN Wednesday evening that he thinks he paid an effective rate of 25 to 28 percent on his income, and that he decided to release tax forms for every year he was out of public service. “I thought it was important to let people know what I’ve done since I’ve been in the private sector,” he said.

Santorum is the third 2012 presidential candidate to release tax returns. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich released his 2010 returns, and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney made public his 2010 and 2011 returns.

Santorum released the most information of any candidate, and the forms show he paid a higher tax rate than Romney, who paid about 14 percent on mostly unearned income from investments, and a slightly lower rate than Gingrich, who paid about 32 percent in taxes.

Each year, the Santorums gave between $13,000 and $30,000 to charity, with a maximum of $29,882 in 2009. In 2010, he gave $16,289 in charitable donations.

Santorum, who prepares his own taxes, left the campaign trail in late January to prepare them for release. Politico published copies on its website, but other news organizations were not provided copies on Wednesday.

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