Rivals Vie For 2nd As Romney Leads In N. Hampshire

NASHUA, New Hampshire (AP) — Mitt Romney seemed all but assured of victory in Tuesday’s Republican presidential primary in New Hampshire despite some last-minute gaffes and sharp attacks from his rivals who are vying to finish a strong second and turn the race into a two-man contest.

Expectations were so high for Romney in the northeastern state where voters know him that anything short of a huge victory might be seen as a sign of weakness. Romney is a former governor of the neighboring state of Massachusetts and has a vacation home on a New Hampshire lake.

Romney is coming off a narrow win in last week’s Iowa’s caucuses, the first contest in the race to select a challenger to President Barack Obama in the November election.

Given Romney’s lead, the focus is now largely on the wide-open contest for second place, with Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich and Jon Huntsman in contention.

“Second place would be a dream come true,” said Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator and staunch social conservative who came within eight votes of beating Romney in Iowa after drawing strong support from evangelical Christians.

Romney has benefited from a fractured opposition that has allowed him to remain in first place even while national polls have shown his support among Republicans at 25 to 30 percent.

A strong showing in New Hampshire, which holds the first state primary in the campaign season, could give a candidate momentum and galvanize the anti-Romney vote ahead of the crucial Jan. 21 primary in South Carolina. The conservative southern state has a strong track record of picking the eventual Republican nominee.

Romney has been considered vulnerable in South Carolina, where he finished fourth in the 2008 primary. Some conservatives see him as too moderate and some evangelicals, a key constituency, are wary of his Mormon faith. But recent polls show him leading there against a split field. A win in South Carolina, following victories in Iowa and, likely, New Hampshire, could make his nomination seem inevitable.

Gingrich, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who is not campaigning in New Hampshire, and Santorum are trying to position themselves as the conservative alternative to Romney in South Carolina.

“Mitt Romney cannot campaign with a straight face as a conservative,” Gingrich said.

Gingrich, whose Iowa campaign was damaged by a barrage of negative ads from Romney allies, has promised a tougher tone in the race. Gingrich and his allies are criticizing Romney’s work as the head of a private equity firm, Bain Capital, in the 1980s and 1990s. On Monday, he said Bain “apparently looted” many of the companies it took over.

In the final days before the primary, Romney gave his opponents more ammunition to target his business background, which he has made the centerpiece of his campaign to unseat Obama by touting his record as a job creator.

On Sunday afternoon, Romney told an audience that he understood the fear of being laid off, adding, “there were a couple of times when I was worried I was going to get pink-slipped.”

Perry seized on the unlikely comment from the multi-millionaire businessman whose father headed a major Detroit auto company and served as governor of Michigan: “I have no doubt that Mitt Romney was worried about pink slips — whether he’d have enough of them to hand out.”

On Monday, Romney came under fire for saying: “I like being able to fire people who provide services to me.”

Obviously weary, he was talking off-the-cuff about Americans being able to “fire” their private health insurers and choose another. But Huntsman seized on the opening in an election expected to be dominated by lingering high unemployment and other economic issues.

“It may be that he’s slightly out of touch with the economic reality playing out in America, and that’s a dangerous place for someone to be,” Huntsman said.

Romney in a previously unscheduled appearance before reporters, emphasized he had been talking about insurance companies.

“Things can always be taken out of context, and I understand that’s what the Obama people will do. But as you know I was speaking about insurance companies and we need to be able to make a choice and my comments entirely reflected that discussion,” he said.

Huntsman, a former Utah governor and Obama’s first ambassador to China, skipped the Iowa caucuses to stake his campaign on New Hampshire, where he has campaigned almost exclusively. With him running at the bottom of national polls, he needs a strong showing to stay in the race. He is the only one of the six candidates — plus two others who dropped out — not to have enjoyed at least a brief surge in the polls.

Paul, a congressman, is also counting on a solid performance in New Hampshire, a traditionally independent northeastern state where his small-government, libertarian message should resonate. Paul has a loyal core of supporters, but goes against the Republican mainstream with his calls to pull troops out of Afghanistan, cut defense spending, and end the war against drugs, making him unlikely to win the nomination.

The Republican establishment has largely rallied behind Romney, hoping to avoid a long, divisive primary fight that could undermine prospects of defeating Obama, whose popularity has fallen because of the slow U.S. economic recovery.

A Romney victory in New Hampshire would make him the first Republican in a contested presidential nomination battle to capture the first two races of the campaign since Iowa began leading off for the party in 1976.