NOVI, Mich. – Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum awaited results Tuesday evening following a tumultuous three weeks that had both candidates fighting for momentum in the Republican nomination contest. Most of the attention is focused on Michigan’s primary, where the results could prove to be a turning point in the race.
In Michigan, the state where Romney was born and raised and where his father served as governor, the on-again, off-again front-runner had to wage a tougher-than-expected campaign to avoid an embarrassing loss to Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator.
The Republican candidates also awaited results Tuesday from a primary in Arizona, a contest which Romney had been expected to win.
It was Michigan, though, that had been transformed into a battleground in the Republican campaign after Santorum swept a trio of mid-February nominating contests, and vowed to take the battle to Romney in his home state.
Romney fights to stave off embarrassment in Michigan
Romney had barnstormed the state in stops meant to remind voters of his roots here, and taken a newly-aggressive tack against Santorum on the campaign trail. His campaign and a supportive super PAC added support by spending over $4 million combined on advertising.
But unlike other instances in which Romney’s Republican challengers had been unable to respond, Santorum’s campaign and a similarly supportive super PAC spend over $2 million in response. The former Pennsylvania also aggressively went after Romney on the campaign trail, framing Romney as a poor choice for conservatives to face off against President Obama.
A loss for Romney could provoke new hand-wringing from the GOP’s establishment class about the viability of the former Massachusetts governor’s candidacy. Romney has long been thought of as the Republican frontrunner, but his struggles to string together wins in the primary season threaten to drag the battle for the nomination into a protracted delegate fight.
Related: Romney and Santorum court Michigan's blue-collar vote
To that end, the Arizona primary, which is closed to Republican voters, awards all of its delegates to the winner. Michigan allots delegates on the basis of which candidate wins a congressional district; three delegates are given to the winner of each of the state’s 14 districts. Two delegates are awarded to the winner of the statewide popular vote. The allocation process raises the prospect of Santorum winning the most delegates in the state, while failing to win the popular vote.
A bigger haul of delegates are at stake in just a week, however. The Republican campaign will now move into its next pivotal stretch preceding Super Tuesday, when 10 states host primaries or caucuses.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Texas Rep. Ron Paul are poised to re-emerge as contenders in some of those contests, and states like Ohio may well pose the next test of whether Romney or Santorum gain any sustained momentum out of tonight’s results.
Arizona and Michigan are both considered potential battleground states come November, and the president’s re-election campaign has acted aggressively to bracket primary results in both states this evening. The president’s campaign ran ads here in Michigan promoting the administration’s decision to assist GM and Chrysler in 2009, and Obama himself reminded the autoworkers’ union of the Republican candidates’ opposition to the bailout in a campaign-style speech today.
First Read: Is Arizona in play for Team Obama?
“And you will recall there were some politicians who said we should do that,” Obama said of many Republicans’ resistance to providing help to the troubled automakers. “Some even said we should ‘let Detroit go bankrupt.’”
Romney and Santorum each provided the Obama campaign with fodder for the general election, too, from Romney’s comments about his wife owning two Cadillacs or being friends with NASCAR team owners, to Santorum’s calling the president a “snob” for supporting a policy advocating higher education for young people.